Update

It's busy in the shop and Tim and I are fairly happy with the way things are going. The next 11 days are the most important of the year, and we'll be doing all we can to persuade people to come and get their presents at the Big Green Bookshop. We're trying a few things that aren't books this year, like Gruffalo Pencils and Plasters and some brilliant Ladybird mugs, as well as some fab retro Penguin notebooks, and we're also selling some amazing Beano and Dandy giftwrap.. It's a hit.

It rained rather heavily on Decmeber 2nd in London. By the look of it, it rained mostly in Brampton Park Road, Wood Green N22 6BG. Our roof is not in very good condition either.
The combination of a busted roof and a massive downpour is not good, and we suddenly found small torrents of water coming through the ceiling. Not good for the CBeebies books unfortunately. Iggle Piggle and Upsy Daisy quickly put on their waterwings and Noc Toc took shelter in a hollowed out tree trunk. Numberjacks 3 and 4 were at sixes and sevens and Mister Maker hurriedly made an umberella from gloopy glue and some paper plates. But it just wasn't enough and we've now got a box of books that are completely wrecked.
Unfortunately it wasn't just the CBeebies books, and another box of lovely books has been waterdamaged too.
Our landlord's a good guy, and he accepts it's his fault, so we'll be taking the appropriate cash off the rent, but it's not eactly what you want to happen in December, or at any time of year for that matter.

Now that the Big Green Bookshop Top 50 has been announced and is proudly on display in the shop, we're putting together new and exciting plans for next year. There's a couple of great ideas which we'll be announcing in january, and we're also (as always) looking to put on some great events.
If any of you out there can help with getting authors to come to the shop, or have any ideas that you reckon might work at the Bookshop called Big Green, please get in touch.

That's it for now. I'll take some choice photos of things in general soon to please your eyes.

Hardback Fiction

Imagine this, if you will.

The new Arctic Monkeys album is released after months of excitement. The music press has been banging on about how brilliant it is and how it would be ridiculous not to get it now that it's finally released.
People queue for hours to get hold of a copy because they want to be the first person to listen to it.
The shop opens and there it is!! The new Arctic Monkeys album...
But hang on a minute, it's not in a usual CD case... no, it's in this slightly thicker plastic case and the box is a bit bigger too. And hang on a minute, it's double the price of a normal CD.
You pick up your copy and you take it up to the person working in the shop.
'Excuse me, but i'm a bit confused', you say, 'I want to buy this, but it's really expensive. Where are the normal CDs?'
'This is all there is' says the person in the shop.
'Is the quality of the album any better?' you ask.
'Not at all. The recording is exactly the same as you'd expect on a normal CD, but the record company decided that they'd put it in a slightly bigger protective box, and sell it to you for twice the amount.'
'but that's crazy' you say. 'why would I want to pay double for something that is pretty much exactly like a normal CD, but it's packaging is sturdier. I don't care about the packaging, I just want to listen to the album'
'Well' says the person in the shop 'the record company will be bringing out a normal packaged CD in about 9-12 months time. All the big record companies are going to start doing this from now on'
'but this is really unfair' you say. 'it just means that normal people who love music can't afford to buy stuff when it gets released. No one will put up with it. It's just a great big con.'
'well' says the person in the record shop 'it seems to work for books'

The Top 10!

We’ve been running a survey where we asked our customers to name their 5 favourite books of all time (in no particular order). We had thousands of replies and we’re really grateful to all of you who took the time to vote. From all your choices we can now reveal the Top 50 most popular books.

First of all a recap on numbers 50-11

11 One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
12 Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
13 Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
14 Catcher in the Rye by J D Salinger
15 Master & Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
16 Northern Lights by Philip Pullman
17 1984 by George Orwell
18 Road by Cormac McCarthy
19 Middlemarch by George Eliot
20 Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
21 Persuasion by Jane Austen
22 Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
23 Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
24 Wind-up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
25 Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
26 Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter
27 Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald
28 Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier
29 Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
30 Captain Corelli's Mandolin by Louis De Bernieres
31 Alice's Adventures in Wonderland & Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll
32 Book Thief by Markus Zusak
33 Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
34 Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula Le Guin
35 Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
36 Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
37 Color Purple by Alice Walker
38 Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
39 Bone People by Keri Hulme
40 Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night by Mark Haddon
41 Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
42 Life of Pi by Yan Martel
43 Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts
44 We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver
45 Shipping News by Annie L Proulx
46 Of Mice & Men by John Steinbeck
47 Tess of the D'Urbevilles by Thomas Hardy
48 Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
49 Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks
50 Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh


Now here's the Top 10

10 Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
9 Twilight by Stephenie Meyer
8 God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
7 Secret History by Donna Tartt
6 Time Traveller's Wife by Audrey Niffeneger
5 To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
4 Great Expectations by Charles Dickens
3 Pride & Prejudice by Jane Austen
2 Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
1 Lord of the Rings by J R R Tolkien


There are 29 men and 21 women in the list, and every book on the list is a work of fiction. There have been a number of similar polls in the last ten years in the UK, most notably The BBCs Big Read and Waterstone’s Books of the Century. Lord of the Rings topped both of these surveys too, so it’s clearly a book that the public love.

Where's Harry Potter? Well it was a bit of a surprise to us too. Even if you add all the votes together for each of the HP books, they don't manage to squeeze into the top 50.
Obviously 2 years is a long time in the world of books. Stephenie Meyer is the latest sensation and unsurprisingly made the top 10. It was a similar scenario ten years ago, when Waterstones did their Books of the Century poll. Trainspotting had just hit the cinemas and the book was the must have title at the time. I think it made it into the Top 10 in that poll, and (although it's a good book) I suspect it wouldn't score quite so highly now. It didn't bother our chart anyway.

We really enjoyed putting this together and hope you find it as thought provoking as we do.

Now, what are we going to do next....

Top 50 - Numbers 20-11

We're getting to the business end of the chart now. Here are the books that just missed out on a Top 10 slot.

20. The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
19. Middlemarch by George Eliot
18. The Road by Cormac McCarthy
17. Nineteen Eighty Four by George Orwell
16. Northern Lights by Philip Pullman
15. Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov
14. Catcher in the Rye by J D Salinger
13. Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
12. Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams
11. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Still, we have no non-fiction in the list, thanks to Joe at the Bristol Prize for picking up on that.
So all that's left to do is tell you the Top 10 books, as voted for by friends, customers, colleagues and anyone else who knows us.
You'll have to wait until tomorrow...

Top 50 - Numbers 30-21

So here's the third installment of the big countdown, which takes us through the halfway mark and into the bit... well, the bit that comes after the halfway mark. Here they are beginning in traditional numerical fashion with:

30. Captain Corelli's Mandolin by Louis De Bernieres
29. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
28. Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier
27. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
26. Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter
25. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
24. Wind-up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murakami
23. The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
22. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
21. Persuasion by Jane Austen

Join us at about this time tomorrow for the next stage, which will no doubt involve the numbers 20-11, hope to see you here.

Top 50 - Numbers 40-31

We're slowly climbing up the chart and today we creep into the Top 40. So without further ado here are the next ten most popular books as voted for by you

40. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
39. The Bone People by Keri HulmeNot many people know of this book and the few i do know, haven't really enjoyed it, but for some reason, i loved it. It just spoke to me. I wish more people would like this book, as much as i do. It did after all, win the Booker prize. (Toni Sessa)
38. Portrait of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
37. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
36. Half a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
35. Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut
34. Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula Le Guin
33. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
32. Book Thief by Markus Zusak
31. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

So there we are. Tomorrow, numbers 30-21.

Top 50 - numbers 50-41

here's part 1 of the Big Green Bookshop favourite books of all time list. I shall expand on this when I get more time, but let's just cut to the chase shall we

50. Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waughany book about a dying breed of aristocrats that can melt the heart of a Socialist Worker is worth a punt (Kate Bayley)
49. Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks

48. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon
47. Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardythe first time I realised 'classic' didn't have to mean 'boring'. Tessa Ware
46. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
45. Shipping News by Annie L ProulxProux is a great writer and draws an unforgettable picture with a sense of love in the bleak hopelessness of life.(Caroline Johnson-Marshall
44. We Need to Talk about Kevin by Lionel Shriver
43. Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts
42. Life of Pi by Yann Martel
41. Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry

Tomorrow (earlier than this) I shall announce numbers 40-31, and later on tonight i'll put a bit more detail behind the votes....

The Big Green Bookshop Top 50

For the last 92 days we've been asking, begging, bothering, encouraging and persuading you all to send us a list of your 5 favourite books of all time (in no particular order). Thankfully, loads of you did as you were asked and we are now able to add up all the (thousands) of votes to find the 50 most popular books, as voted for by you.

The BBC did something similar to this in 2003 and looking at their list, it's interesting to see what's not being voted for now. You'll be amazed at some of the books that aren't in our Top 50. We're also very pleasantly surprised about some of the brilliant titles that have found their way into our list. Titles that are unlikely to have made it into a national poll.

Throughout the week we'll be counting down from 50-1, revealing 50-41 tomorrow, 40-31 on Wednesday, 30-21 on Thursday, 20-11 on Friday. We'll then announce the top 10 on Saturday, when all the Top 50 will be on display in the Big Green Bookshop.
We'll also announce the winnner of the competition on Saturday. That lucky person will win their choice of 20 of the Big Green Bookshop Top 50. What a prize!

Without giving too much away I'll tease you all with a few titles that got votes but didn't quite make it into TBGB's Top 50.

Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons!
Watchmen by Alan Moore!!
Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S Thompson!!!
Viz Book of Crap Jokes!
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov!!

Right, that's enough. You'll haver to wait until tomorrow...

Greg Stekelman's 5 Favourite Books of all time (in no particular order)

As this is the last chance for you to send us your favourite books, I thought i'd ask Greg Stekelman if he'd share his top 5 (in no particular order).



And he kindly agreed.

Greg;

Of course, I don’t really have five favourite books. Like most people I have quite a few books I quite like, and this vague list changes fairly often. Generally speaking, as soon as I say a book is my favourite, I stop reading it.

The Book of Sand, by Jorge Luis Borges.
Borges was a 20th Century Argentine writer most famous for his short stories. Influenced by everyone from Eastern philosophers to GK Chesterton and Edgar Allen Poe, his stories are a curious mixture of the gothic and the intellectual. A lot of his stories explore secret worlds, or secret identities, and that always intrigued me. More importantly, he’s Argentine, and my father is from Argentina, so I’ve always felt a strange form of kinship with Borges. When he’s writing about Buenos Aires, it feels like my own secret playground. No world he writes about seems as magical and exotic as the streets of Corrientes or Callao. His most famous book is probably Labyrinths, which is a very good introduction to his work, but I’ve plumped for The Book of Sand, which is just as good and contains The Other, a fantastic little story about a young and elderly Borges encountering each other on a bench in Cambridge.

Long Goodbye – by Raymond Chandler
Both my parents read Chandler – in fact I think that Raymond Chandler is the only novelist my father has ever read – so I grew up with the books lying around. When I hit my mid-teens I started reading them all, and The Long Goodbye struck me as the best of his Phillip Marlowe writing. Like lots of Chandler, it’s an exercise in style over content, in that the plot is always the same (the woman is always the villain. I think Chandler had a few issues) but the writing itself is breathtaking. The story revolves around Marlowe’s friendship with a charming drunk named Terry Lennox, whose apparent death sets off a chain of disastrous events. The prose; slack, laconic, staccato, whatever other cliché you wish to apply, is stunning. The dialogue is raw and heavy with portent. It is infinitely quotable. It is very good. Ignore all the film adaptations. They are mostly crap.

For Esme, with Love and Squalor – by JD Salinger
JD Salinger is, of course, best known for The Catcher in the Rye, which I read once as a teenager and disliked. Many of you may well have had similar experiences. Don’t let this put you off as Salinger’s short stories, mostly centered around the Glass family, are beautiful. If you like the films of Wes Anderson or the music of Belle and Sebastian, you will quickly fall in love with Salinger. Written in the early 1950’s, For Esme, with Love and Squalor (known in the US as Nine Stories) concerns itself with the lives of various members of the Glass family. There is something incredibly modern and yet sickly sentimental about this flawed, intelligent, morose, witty, wisecracking family. The central character is most often Seymour Glass, a sweet, sensitive young man who is unable to cope with normal life after witnessing the horrors of World War II. The eponymous short story For Esme… deals with an army officer (known only as Sergeant X) and his relationship with a young English girl named Esmé, whom he befriends in England and whose presence somehow enables him to survive the rigours of war. It’s a story I often return to.

The Dark is Rising – by Susan Cooper
There are few books that have as much power as the books you read when you’re young. And like lots of kids, I grew up reading fantasy novels: Ursula le Guin, CS Lewis, Alan Garner… anything to do with magic, monsters or King Arthur. I remember one week I was ill and my mother bought me Over Sea, Under Stone, the first in a five-book fantasy series. I enjoyed it, without thinking it was particularly great. Nevertheless, I bought the second book, The Dark is Rising. I loved it. I read it over and over. I obsessed over it. On his eleventh birthday, the young protagonist, Will Stanton, discovers he is an Old One, an agent of The Light, destined to fight against the powers of The Dark. I remember my own disappointment when I awoke on my eleventh birthday and discovered I had no amazing new magical powers. Still, I’ve come to terms with that.
I still have my copy of The Dark is Rising (complete with strange typo where one of the character’s names changes from Mary to Margaret). It has been read 40 or 50 times and is falling apart. Books are one of the few items where neglect is a sign of affection.

A Year in the Life of TheManWhoFellAsleep – by Greg Stekelman
I wasn’t going to include this, but Simon said I should, and who am I to ignore Simon? This is my first novel – based on writing originally on my website. I’m terrible at summarizing my own work, so let’s call it a surreal, dark diary covering a year in the life of a fantastical character in north London. It is a celebration of both the cripplingly banal and the magically improbable. It has talking polar bears, Justin Timberlake, jokes, poems and interstellar porn. It’s available exclusively through The Big Green Bookshop. You should buy it.

Thanks Greg.

there's still time to vote, so don't be shy. You could win 20 books.

It's Almost Christmas. How did that happen?

When should a bookshop put up it decorations? The answer is next week.
When should a bookshop order it's Xmas Cards? The answer is yesterday.
When should a bookshop order it's Christmas books? the answer is last week and then maybe a few more this week and then another check next week.
When should a bookshop do its Christmas window? um, next week.
When should bookshops check they have enough bags and till roll to last through xmas? Look, stop asking all these questions OK.

although lots of shops start their christmasses in September, we prefer to wait until the floods start and Children in Need is on the TV. This is a start of the traditional Big Green Bookshop Christmas, and we hope you understand.

The reason we do all our book ordering and stuff in November is because we are poor, and in the booktrade you have to pay for the stuff you buy at the end of the following month from when you bought it. So if we'd bought all our books in September, we'd have had to pay for them in October (not really the time when I do my Christmas shopping). So by buying everything in November, we can then screw are eyes shut really tight and cross our fingers in the hope that we sell lots of books over christmas, so that we can afford to pay for it all.

The other reason for slight tardiness is that we've been a bit busy lately, what with trying to organise loads of events, having 20 school classes coming in to do buy books for a fine fine thing called the Reading Challenge (a Council funded scheme in which kids are 'challenged' to read six books), as well as all the other bookshop stuff that we do, like sell books.

We're also coming towards the end of our 5 Favourite Books of all time (in no particular order) survey that we've been running. The final day for you to vote is this Sunday, and we've had loads and loads of your entries. But we'd love more, so feel free to send in your top 5. You could win 20 books!

Two events next week

Utter! poetry and Andrew Blackman, author of award winning On the Holloway Road.

Two events the following week.

Wine Adventurer Francis Gimblett and the launch of a new (and the only) history of Tottenham.

Then it'll be christmas i'd imagine, and we can all relax.