The Aardvark Blog

Yes Santa Claus is coming and you better make sure you have been good!
13/10/2020

It is well known that there is no better way to please Santa than to buy a friend or family member a book. What do you think Santa does the other 11 months - he has his nose buried in a book! (Mrs Aardvark makes the same complaint about Arthur but that's another story).

Fortunately should you be in the Santa book-pleasing business, Aardvark has a ton of fantastic books in stock at the moment and more are coming in every day. There truly is no excuse. So go on, make the big guy happy.

For those who follow us on social media I apologise for the terrible bull (or maybe a bullock I didn't look that carefully) /Gunter Grass joke. But honestly, as I drove into the car park he came up to greet me over the fence and he was just so damned cute. This is the extra value you get when you come in person to Aardvark Books - the only major bookshop crazy enough to bury itself in the midst of the world's most bucolic countryside.

We had lots of really nice, appropriately distanced people through the bookshop over the weekend. One group told me that they come to us (even though we are over one and a half hours away) because we are one of the few places they know to really take Covid restrictions seriously. And it is true that we do, although I hope with a suitable Aardvark sense of humour (it has become a thing to ask each party who is the most responsible one to fill in the contact tracing form, if they are eating/drinking inside).

We have officially decided to cancel the idea of doing a Christmas event (but there will be scraps for the lepers, Alan Rickman so there), but I am thinking of doing a late night shopping evening - maybe with some local craftspeople in the shop - so watch this space.

FInally, stuff I have been reading/listening to: 1) the new Jean-Luc Bannalec 'The MIssing Corpse' is fab, and as good as his previous outings (yes I know that he is not really called Bannalec and lives in Germany but the books are great); 2) 'Women in Music III' by Haim is far and away their best album. Favourite so far is '3AM' but there are so many great tracks. Haim were the BBC's new artists winners some years back and their sound pulls off that great trick of being both new and retro. Last night we put on 'Revolver' in a fruitless competition to see if it truly is the greatest Beatles Album (spoiler alert, yes it probably is, as every song is a banger and the other contenders have some weak tracks - you know who you are, 'Maxwell's SIlver Hammer'); 3) Continuing to read the New Yorker religiously in lockdown, and this week's issue has a great article on Peter Zumthor, some of whose books we do have in stock. Access for a certain number of NY articles is free online.

So, back to the never-ending work of making Santa happy.