THANK YOU to all that helped support our Crowd Funding campaign – we raised a grand total of £12,000 (£7,000 net after reward packs have been accounted for) which will cover the costs of essential building work in the bookshop. A section will be added to the website with full details, a thank you page and photographs very soon.
Category: Local News
James Patterson Grant Award
Scarthin Books is thrilled to announce that we have been successful in our bid to secure a James Patterson Grant, which we’ll be putting towards the cost of our current refurbishment programme (including new carpets and the opening of a brand new Music Room).
From the Booksellers Association Website:
Over £130,000 has been allocated to independent bookshops following the first round of applications, spread across 73 stores across the UK and Ireland. Donations will be used to fund everything from creating a children’s book festival, to running a weekly story-time, to creating and improving children’s sections. They will ensure more book events in schools, funding of an ‘on the road vehicle’ for a mobile bookshop and replacement of shelving and signage, as well as redevelopment of bookshop websites.
Any independent bookshop with a dedicated children’s book section was eligible for a grant of between £250 and £5,000. Patterson is committed to bringing attention to the important contributions of independent bookshops, and he is especially concerned with inspiring children to become lifelong readers.
James Patterson says: “I have been completely overwhelmed by just how many people have applied for the grants and impressed and enthused by the calibre of the applications. It’s been a very difficult decision process and I have worked to identify independent bookshops for whom this money may make a difference. I’m excited to follow their progress and see the proposed ideas in action.”
Tim Walker, President of The Booksellers Association, says: “We are very much looking forward to seeing the grant funding being implemented by the successful bookshops. We are thrilled that so many UK and Irish indies have shown such creativity and passion in their applications. For the lucky 73 shops, the James Patterson money will make a real difference to how they reach children and encourage them to read. There are some really exciting projects that this money will help get off the ground, from converting a van into a mobile school bookshop to running a model train around the shop to get kids engaged.
For the less lucky, we are encouraging them to re-apply next year, when the second tranche of funding will come on stream. I am very proud to be BA President at a point when a bestselling author is making such an unequivocal statement of confidence in the independent sector, and proud of the booksellers who are proving him right.”
To see the full list of successful bookshops (first round of grants), CLICK HERE
40th Anniversary Prize Winners
Many congratulations to the winners of our 40th Anniversary Prize Draws and the Bookshop Quiz.
First prize of £200 worth of Scarthin Vouchers (and the namer of our soon-to-be-opened new Music Room) went to Michael from Sheffield.
Second Prize of £75 worth of Scarthin Vouchers went to John from London.
Third prize of £50 worth of Scarthin Vouchers went to Gill from Cromford.
The Scarthin Quiz, with a prize of £25 worth of Scarthin vouchers, was won by Kathleen from Alfreton.
All of our prize-winners are now in receipt of their vouchers and we look forward to seeing them at the bookshop very soon!
Many thanks to EVERYONE who took part in our week-long celebrations and in particular those of you who turned up on 70s Saturday in suitable attire. Our evening party was a huge success and a wonderful time was had by all!
Scarthin Books’ 40th Anniversary!
40th Anniversary of Scarthin Books – a week of celebrations from Monday 22nd – Saturday 27th September
Take the Scarthin Books Quiz for your chance to win £25 worth of Scarthin Vouchers >HERE<
Scarthin Books would like to offer a huge thank you to the customers and staff (past and present) that have helped turn this humble bookshop – from its birth in 1974 – into the much-loved institution that it is today.
By way of thanks, we’re having a week of celebrations with not-to-be-scoffed-at prizes, culminating in an after-hours party at the shop, to which you are ALL cordially invited (just turn up from 6pm on Saturday 27th September, 70s attire optional but welcomed). There’ll be food and drink and a chance to chat to staff. The prize draw for the £200 Scarthin Voucher (and 2nd & 3rd place draws) will also take place during the party, with the lucky winner having the opportunity to NAME our NEW MUSIC ROOM (part of our forthcoming improvement programme, together with make-overs for the Art Room, Spirituality Room and Foreign Languages Annex). Our vegetarian/vegan Café has also undergone a transformation recently, so come and take a look!
Prize Draw Information:
Any purchase made between Monday 22nd September and Saturday 27th September entitles you to entry into a free draw (an additional ticket will be given for each £20 spent). 1st prize is £200 worth of Scarthin Vouchers PLUS the chance to name the soon-to-be-opened Music Room. 2nd prize is £75 worth of Scarthin Vouchers and 3rd prize is £50 worth of Scarthin Vouchers.
Click on the poster below for details of all the events:
Apple Day 2014
Help celebrate the fruitfulness of the Earth
Cromford Apple Day 2014 will be held on Saturday October 18th between 12pm and 5pm on Scarthin Promenade.
Bring your surplus apples (or pears, grapes or other fruit, which need a muslin bag or pillow-case) to be minced and pressed, together with a board and knives and time to quarter the fruit ready for efficient hand-powered processing.
There will also be trees and plants for sale, hot and cold refreshments, Morris Men, musical entertainment (including Wobble and Wheeze, a fiddle duo who played at this year’s Glastonbury festival) and children activities (craft, apple dunking of course and a few other apple related games).
For the last 3 years, we’ve also run a few competitions (best apple pudding and longest apple peel… with 450cm to beat! – record set by Graham Roberton last year). This year, we’re running even more competitions:
*The 3 Ps… best Pudding, best Pie, best Preserve (3 categories, prizes for winners and runners-up – must contain some apple… even if just a slice)
*The Heaviest Apple (grown locally… not at Morrison’s!)
*The Longest Apple Peel: come with your peeler or pen knife, with your apple or pick one of ours and try to beat Graham’s record!
Apple pressing generates quite a bit of pulp. If you have any pigs you would like feeding with the pulp, please let us know.
The pressing and entertainment are free but donations to Celebrating Cromford are welcome. For further information see www.celebratingcromford.org or contact Dave Mitchell: davescarthin@gmail.com or via 01629 823272 (Scarthin Books).
Glennie Kindred Book Signing Event
Glennie will be here on Sunday the 10th of August between 3pm-5pm signing copies of her new book ‘Sacred Earth Celebrations’ (paperback, £9.95)
Want to be on TV?
Would you like to be on TV (ITV Daybreak) tomorrow morning?
We need as many people as possible to turn up on the Prom in Cromford to help launch our St. George’s Day celebrations. We’ll be doing some jousting and singing (and laughing). If you can make it, be up and here by 6am prompt (yes, 6AM!).
PLEASE LET US KNOW ASAP if you can attend by calling 01629 823272
Chapeltown Academy Competition Winner
Chapeltown Academy student, Kosana Pilling, has won a £25 Scarthin Books Voucher in a book review competition run by her school.
Many congratulations, Kosana, from all at Scarthin Books!
Her brilliant review of Ransom Riggs’ ‘Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children’ can be found here ->Book Review by Kosana Pilling (and the book is available to buy from the bookshop, as is his newly released sequel, ‘Hollow City’).
Our Best-Selling Books 0f 2013
Well, the results are in for our top 25 best-selling books of 2013, so start humming the chart run-down music (you know the one, from Radio One back in the day) and see how many of these you’ve read (or may want to come and buy)…
- Cromford Revisited (Doreen Buxton & Christopher Charlton, £18)
- Buddhist Boot Camp (Timber Hawkeye, £7.99)
- Cromford Guide (Freda Bayles, £3.99)
- Already Dead (Stephen Booth, £17.99)
- The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot (Robert MacFarlane, £9.99)
- Lattice Labyrinth Tessellations (David Mitchell, £7.95)
- Dead and Buried (Stephen Booth, £6.99)
- Wolf Hall (Hilary Mantel, £9.99)
- Street Cat Named Bob (James Bowen, £7.99)
- The Fault in Our Stars (John Green, £7.99)
- Some Kind of Fairy Tale (Graham Joyce, £7.99)
- Field Barns of the Peak District (Sheila Hine, £16.95)
- The Reason I Jump (Naoki Higashida, £12.99)
- Bring Up the Bodies (Hilary Mantel, £9.99)
- Matlock and Matlock Bath Through Time (Alan Roberts, £14.99)
- Illustrated Life (Danny Gregory, £16.99)
- Art of Clean Up (Ursus Wehrli, £9.99)
- First Book of Nature (Nichola Davies, £14.99)
- BBC Proms Guide 2013 (£6.50)
- Print Workshop (Christine Schmidt, £14.99)
- George Orwell: English Rebel (Robert Colls, £25)
- Flight Behaviour (Barbara Kingsolver, £7.99)
- The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald, £6.99)
- Hundred-Year-Old-Man Who Climbed Out of a Window and Disappeared (Jonas Jonasson, £8.99)
- Lighthouse (Alison Moore, £8.99)
This list excludes multiple copies ordered by institutions (such as schools or councils) and doesn’t include gift items or maps.
Several of the books in the top ten were helped by book-signing events and/or were well publicised by us. A couple (Cromford Revisited and Lattice Labyrinth Tessellations) were only published a month or so ago and have still sold an incredible 84 and 30 copies respectively. Dave’s book (Tessellations) should continue to sell well this year (with enough encouragement and cajoling). It’s also interesting to note that a number of Art books – not traditionally multi-selling titles, have made it onto the list – all of which are given prominence on the display table in the Art Room (Illustrated Life, Art of Clean Up, Print Workshop, First Book of Nature), selling almost 60 copies between them.
It’s great to see local authors (David Mitchell, Stephen Booth, Alison Moore, Sheila Hine, Alan Roberts, (the late) Freda Bayles, Doreen Buxton & Christopher Charlton and Graham Joyce) dominating the list, despite competition from big names such as Hilary Mantel and (the film-inspired resurgence of) F. Scott Fitzgerald.
Many of the titles just outside this top 25 include some of the classic children’s books. Items on sale in our Gift Room sold incredibly well, with five of the ‘Poems Instead of Cards’ range outselling all of the books from 11-25 in the list, and our Parkwood Pottery range continues to sell incredibly well.
Of course, this is only a snapshot of what’s been POPULAR at Scarthin Books over the past year – this doesn’t make them more important to us than the more obscure titles that we will always strive to stock and that may only ever sell every now and then. Heaven forbid we should have decided to stock and promote the latest book (whatever that may be) by Jeremy Clarkson (for example) and put our efforts into promoting that, I dare say we could have scraped it in at number 24 (but we didn’t). Nonetheless, it’s a fascinating picture of what folk have been buying throughout 2013 here in Cromford and we’ll wait and see what 2014 holds in store…
David Booker | January 2014
Inundated with Cookery Books
We’ve just taken in over THREE HUNDRED cookery books (with about four hundred still to come!) – a few being the usual modern ‘classics’ (Jamie Oliver, River Cottage, etc) but the majority are more unusual and desirable…from French country cuisine to Jewish recipes to signed Elizabeth David books.
Plenty to choose from and many would make great Christmas gifts.
You’ll find them in the Cafe conservatory.