It has sure been a while. It has been a while since I sent you an email , it has been a while since I wrote a “Tales from a Bookshop” blog, and it has been a while since we have hosted events, but all of that is about to change !
So what has been happening around the bookshop? Both a lot and not much. The thing that has kept me busiest is the Chatting Books Online social media posts that we started right after the lockdown in 2020. As I write this we are actually only a day or two away from having posted 2 FULL YEARS OF REVIEWS. In case you are not familiar with “Chatting Books Online” it is a daily (yep, DAILY) social media post on Facebook and Instagram ( @conundrumbooks ) where I recommend a book and give you a short review of it every day of the week except Sunday , on which I recap the entire week’s reviews. It has been a fun two years and we have no intention of stopping . These posts have brought us new fans from all over the area – and outside of the area – and due to them we receive orders, and ship and hold the books we recommend nearly every day . It is also just a great way for me to be able to share with you all the great new books that are coming out these days. Of course, it also means a lot more reading – and writing – for me, which may explain the absence of emails lately , sorry about that.
We had a sprinkling of off-site events and a couple of book signings around Christmas time last year but as of this week we are really getting back into the swing of things for the first real time since early 2020. You can find more information later in the newsletter on each of these but we will be hosting several authors in the coming weeks for book signings including Erica Spindler, Catharine Savage Brosman, and R.J.Lee and we have even more in the works in the coming months.
Our off-site events are really picking up again (finally) as well. In February we provided on-site book sales at The Natchez Literary and Cinema Festival. Then in March we took part in The Baton Rouge Spring Garden Show arriving with everything in tow to pop-up a bookshop on site supplying a wide variety of Gardening and outdoor titles for the attendees to shop. We will kick off April with an on-site bookshop at the Inaugural John James Audubon Symposium on April 2. The next weekend we will have dual events at The New Roads Market at the Mill and The Festival des Fleur in Lafayette, and later in the month we will once again provide a garden book booth at The Louisiana Federation of Garden Clubs annual convention. And between all of those dates the bookshop is open and we are hosting planning meetings as we prepare for the June 3-5, 2022 return of The Walker Percy Weekend !
So , as you see we have a lot going on . We are so happy to have the opportunity to welcome you back to events with our bookshop, and we hope to see you at an event soon. Until then don’t forget to follow along on social media, I have lots of great new books to tell you about !