Category: Latest News

This section is for all press releases and latest news that is not an event at Scarthin’s Book Shop.

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)…

  1. Cromford Revisited (Doreen Buxton & Christopher Charlton, £18)
  2. Buddhist Boot Camp (Timber Hawkeye, £7.99)
  3. Cromford Guide (Freda Bayles, £3.99)
  4. Already Dead (Stephen Booth, £17.99)
  5. The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot (Robert MacFarlane, £9.99)
  6. Lattice Labyrinth Tessellations (David Mitchell, £7.95)
  7. Dead and Buried (Stephen Booth, £6.99)
  8. Wolf Hall (Hilary Mantel, £9.99)
  9. Street Cat Named Bob (James Bowen, £7.99)
  10. The Fault in Our Stars (John Green, £7.99)
  11. Some Kind of Fairy Tale (Graham Joyce, £7.99)
  12. Field Barns of the Peak District (Sheila Hine, £16.95)
  13. The Reason I Jump (Naoki Higashida, £12.99)
  14. Bring Up the Bodies (Hilary Mantel, £9.99)
  15. Matlock and Matlock Bath Through Time (Alan Roberts, £14.99)
  16. Illustrated Life (Danny Gregory, £16.99)
  17. Art of Clean Up (Ursus Wehrli, £9.99)
  18. First Book of Nature (Nichola Davies, £14.99)
  19. BBC Proms Guide 2013 (£6.50)
  20. Print Workshop (Christine Schmidt, £14.99)
  21. George Orwell: English Rebel (Robert Colls, £25)
  22. Flight Behaviour (Barbara Kingsolver, £7.99)
  23. The Great Gatsby (F. Scott Fitzgerald, £6.99)
  24. Hundred-Year-Old-Man Who Climbed Out of a Window and Disappeared (Jonas Jonasson, £8.99)
  25. 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.

Robert Colls Book Signing

Robert Colls will be at Scarthin Books on Saturday 7th December from 8pm to talk about and sign copies of his new book, ‘George Orwell – English Rebel’.

Click Here for details

Professor Robert Colls will be at Scarthin Books, Cromford, Derbyshire, on December 7th, 8 to 10pm, to talk about his new book George Orwell – English Rebel (Oxford University Press). All are welcome.

Copies of George Orwell – English Rebel will be on sale on the night at the discounted price of £20.00 (list price £25.00), which Professor Colls will be happy to sign.

– See more at: http://www.scarthinbooks.com/event/robert-colls-talk-book-signing-george-orwell-english-rebel/#sthash.hDRNM4iH.dpuf

Professor Robert Colls will be at Scarthin Books, Cromford, Derbyshire, on December 7th, 8 to 10pm, to talk about his new book George Orwell – English Rebel (Oxford University Press). All are welcome.

Copies of George Orwell – English Rebel will be on sale on the night at the discounted price of £20.00 (list price £25.00), which Professor Colls will be happy to sign.

– See more at: http://www.scarthinbooks.com/event/robert-colls-talk-book-signing-george-orwell-english-rebel/#sthash.txHLIhBI.dpuf

Professor Robert Colls will be at Scarthin Books, Cromford, Derbyshire, on December 7th, 8 to 10pm, to talk about his new book George Orwell – English Rebel (Oxford University Press). All are welcome.

Copies of George Orwell – English Rebel will be on sale on the night at the discounted price of £20.00 (list price £25.00), which Professor Colls will be happy to sign.

– See more at: http://www.scarthinbooks.com/event/robert-colls-talk-book-signing-george-orwell-english-rebel/#sthash.txHLIhBI.dpuf

Bookseller & Optician’s Work Together

Scarthin Books teamed up with Lancaster & Thorpe Optician in Matlock during the October half-term holidays, when they held a ‘Book Day’ – a full day of children’s appointments which gave them the opportunity to help promote reading (and the physical book!) to local youngsters.  A huge thanks to Sue Black and the team for what proved to be a very successful day, as these photos show…

Images (c) Sue Black 2013

 

New Book About Cromford Published

Cromford Revisited – a stunning new book by Doreen Buxton and Christopher Charlton – has just been published and is available later this week from Scarthin Books, priced £18 (post free if ordered online).

This richly illustrated book examines some aspects of the development of Cromford and Scarthin from the mid eighteenth century.  It recognises, as it must, a village largely shaped by several generations of the Arkwright family but introduces a wider cast of local characters; the mill-building George Evans of Bonsall and Cromford; the neighbouring gentry, the Gels of Hopton; the financier Peter Nightingale of Lea and several generations of the Wheatcroft family who spread the name of Cromford nationwide along the country’s network of canals.  Also featured is a later resident, Charles White, the concealed hand behind the Lea Mills strike of 1911-12 and a colourful local politician who was to become West Derbyshire’s Member of Parliament.

In the austere conditions of the 1920s and 30s, with the Arkwright family gone and a squire’s paternalistic hand no longer directing affairs, the village learned to manage for itself.  Then in 1971 when the Arkwright Festival was held to celebrate the bicentenary of Richard Arkwright’s arrival in Cromford, it found itself in the spotlight of heritage celebrity, recognition which in 2001 led to its achieving a central position in the Derwent Valley Mills World Heritage Site.

ORDER ONLINE HERE

Recent Purchases

Our second hand intakes continue relentlessly – there’s no shortage of quality stock coming our way, and recent large purchases include the following:

– 300+ fishing books

– several hundred quality art books

– large collection of climbing and mountaineering books

– 200+ modern fiction (which even includes several Murakami novels, no doubt sold by the time you read this!)

plus several books on astronomyand books on the history of the far east (Singapore & Japan in WW2).

We have moved several sections around recently, so if you come in looking for architecture on the top floor, you’ll instead find topography – try looking in the Art Room, where collecting books have been removed and put where the topography used to be (near the cafe).  Books on interior design and also building/DIY have now migrated to the Art Room too.