bookshoplaura

This is my first weekend not being a bookshop employee which means this is my first weekend (bar holidays or the one in 5 I would usually get off) where I am not listening to a cacophony of squeaky puppets and squealing children. The thing is that when you work in retail (as I have done for many years) weekends just become that busy shopping time and for the most part you don't spend your week counting down to them unless you have something special planned in the evenings. Weekends off for me were such a novel treat that I would insist we do something for them as you can see from my little collage above. There was great excitement when a Saturday loomed and I wasn't working. I would spend much time thinking what we could do to ensure that the weekend off was not wasted. Well now it's changed. I finished in my old job Tuesday and started my new one Thursday and then suddenly It was 4pm and I was free until Monday. Obviously I am not complaining and perhaps in ti...

Last night I went to see a new play called Hooked in Central arts. My boyfriend had gotten us tickets so I knew nothing about the play itself other than it was supposed to be good which really is all I'd want to know. We had seen one other play in Central and that had been really good so it would be fair to say my expectations were set fairly high and I wasn't disappointed. If I were to give you a basic synopsis of the play it would be that it is a story about a husband and wife living a small town in the South east, not quite happily married but ticking a long until a stranger moves into town and disrupts their quiet lives. Technically that would all be correct but it would doing the play an injustice as there so much more to the story. There were only three characters on stage Tom, Mary ( the married couple) and Lydia (the stranger) but at times it felt like there was more as Mary's best friend referred to as 'hairy hole' by her husband and Tom (unbeknownst ...

Nothing like a dramatic change to keep me blogging repeatedly on the same topic but you'll have to bear with me as its been an emotional day. Today was my very last day ever working the bookshop. So from now on while my blog name will stay the same and my book reviews will continue I wont really be bookshoplaura anymore and it feels pretty strange. There is something strangely comforting about a job where you know exactly what you are doing because it feels good to be an authority on something and now my head is filled with a lot of useless knowledge about children's books and I don't really know what to do with it. I can tell you the plot of almost every picture book we stock because I have read them all. I can tell you off the top of my head if we have a book if given the name or the cover image. I know precisely where everything is because I put it there and while I am voluntarily giving the children's section away (because it was my choice to move my career on)...

I have had many jobs in my lifetime, it is like I have been a Jack (or Laura in this case) of many trades and a master of none) but now the time has come for me to move on and actually get on a career track. I believe that's something other adults already have in hand. I guess it being the eve of my last ever day in the Bookcentre has made me rather reflective. My first ever job was in Dunnes stores and it was only for one summer. I had no experience to speak of but an uncle of mine was a manager and so I got in using good old fashioned nepotism and also lying about the fact that I intended to do a course come September. I wont say I learned a passion for retail while there but I did have the quiet satisfaction of earning my own money and then spending all of my own money. I also learned how much people love to throw clothes around in shops and that if you accidentally ping yourself in the eye with a close hanger that it hurts like hell and makes you look crazy because one e...

Tonight as part of the Imagine arts festival myself and my boyfriend went to see a spoken word event in Phil Grimes pub. Three poets were performing Lewis Kenny, Alvy Carragher and Colm Keegan. It was the one occasion that I went to an event and didn't hang around long enough to fill out a form so give me a moment to express my enthusiasm here. It's no secret that I am already a lover of poetry. Now I don't go around reading great stacks of it. I prefer instead to read collections and be surprised by what I find and which words speak to me. At one point in college I had some of my favourite poems typed and stuck to my walls. If I remember correctly everyone thought it was a bit weird but I loved being able to read them again and again and tried to share them with friends in the hope that they would  see as I do. In some ways I can't help that poetry has the ability to express things in a way that ordinary words cannot. I even wrote poetry for a few years but it woul...

The girl on the train- Paula Hawkins I know I am not the first to jump on the bandwagon and I'd love to be different and pick something else as my book of the week but then I would be lying because this is without a doubt the best book I've read this year never mind this week. That probably doesn't sound all that impressive until you take into account the fact that I read several books a week. The girl on the train is about a woman, Rachel, who catches the same train to London every day. On this journey the train stops at the same signal every time, allowing Rachel to catch a glimpse of the same couple and over time she starts to feel as though she knows them and make up stories about their lives. Then one day she witnesses something shocking that changes everything and suddenly she has the opportunity to step into their lives and become more than just the girl on the train.  It has been compared to Gillian Flynn's Gone girl and within a few pages it is easy to ...

After two and a half years of spending slightly more time in a bookshop than I would have as a customer ( that might be an exaggeration) I am heading into my last four days there. In some ways it feels like not enough and I feel like I am rushing out there, there are things I want to organise, changes I'd like to make, books I've to read. But in others it feels like far too many as my desire to be looking after books has somewhat waned in the aftermath of handing in my notice. Yes, I know I am a complex woman.  It doesn't really feel real, even though I have taken to crying out in a dramatic voice that this is the last time I'll count a till (second last actually) or the last time I'll place an order but then I go back to work and it feels utterly implausible  that come Wednesday morning I wont be standing in the shop trying to come up with something worth mentioning in the morning meeting. Although I think in news for Children's books, my departure will s...

If you are new to the party (and by party I mean blog) then allow me to introduce myself. I am bookshoplaura (according to twitter and my blog) a term I coined while working in a bookshop. I am known mostly for my voracious appetite for reading, reluctance for Crossfit and inability to have a full conversation without at least one sarcastic comment. For the last two years I have been looking after the Children's department of a bookstore. A venture that initially seemed quite exciting and then less so over time. There were certainly aspects I enjoyed but my time there has run it's course and I am moving on to other things. I had the opportunity to dress up many times for Children's parties in  the shop and that was immense amount of fun, the only notable exception being the Christmas I was given an elf costume, to wear for a few hours, that seemed to be lacking pants. I did not enjoy walking around in a shirt that barely covered my bum and green tights. I also got ...

I wanted to write a blog post about how I don't like major changes but I didn't have an image to illustrate that so instead I put together a scenic collage of day out myself and Stephen had in Dunhill. it might not really make sense but at least it's pretty. Someone I know recently told me there were similarities between me and their new kitten and no its  not that the kitten is overly sarcastic or writes a blog but that would surely be impressive. The kitten doesn't like new things, is fussy with food and is full of surprises and I was surprised by accurate that was. Now I am not stuck to my routine or anything but I do like things a certain way and sometimes changes even ones that are ultimately good do scare me.  I think sometimes being scared can be a good thing provided all your instincts aren't screaming that you're making a terrible decision. I am happy within my comfort zones and I guess sometimes that makes me inclined to plod along. There is grea...

The Rosie Project by Graeme Simsion The Rosie project is one of those books that I have picked up numerous times and debated reading but for some reason or another it has never made it home to my bookshelf. On some level I felt that I might enjoy it but the cover wasn't completely appealing to me and I think that put me off a little. Then two people recommended it to me in the one week and I decided I would have to find out for myself what it was like, I was not disappointed.  The plot centres around Don Tillman, a rigid and socially awkward middle aged geneticist  who is keen to meet a woman but has much difficulty getting them to stay beyond the first date. He devises the wife project to fix this, essentially asking potential dates to fill out a questionnaire so that he can rule out the unsuitable ones from the get go. Then he meets Rosie who is the complete opposite of everything he is looking for and she throws his life into disorder.  This could have been jus...

I was an innocent child, in fact I stayed innocent well into my early teens. I remember being part of youth club at 13 and having guys my age ask me to come down Bulmers lane for a shift. Ah yes Clonmel was a glamorous town in my teenage years and the most popular spot to kiss a guy was in a very public lane way  ( okay so there wasn't much foot traffic but cars drove down it so it wasn't exactly private) and I really couldn't understand why they were so keen to do that, I had no interest until puberty hit. I can't speak for my entire generation as that would be presumptuous so I will speak only for myself when saying I feel like I was happy enough to be young until I hit about 14 and then I couldn't wait to grow up. But then thinking back I was 14 when I had my first drink and I would have been lagging behind my friends in this respect, many had been drinking from age 12. Perhaps its just looking back makes everything a bit hazy and I was the only one not sp...

So here I am at the grand old age of 32 ( but looking 25 if you ask my house mate and she's studying psychology so she's pretty smart) and last night was the very first time in my adult life that I had gone for dinner with my mum and my sister. I live less than an hours drive from them and I'm home (Clonmel) once a week so really there's no reason we shouldn't have done this before. Actually that's not true, there's a very good reason and that reason would be me. For as long as I can remember I was a fussy eater. I liked very few things and I was extremely particular about how I ate them. The black and white photo is me eating jam, it was for an ad I did as a kid and they let me eat the whole jar so it's safe to say that jam made it on to the list but a whole host of other foods didn't. I was incredibly awkward and drove my parents to distraction trying to think of ways to get me to eat and maybe expand my diet a little. I would go to great lengt...

It's coming up to two years since I started this blog as a creativity exercise and I don't know if I ever expected people to read it. One the hardest things about writing a blog is deciding what to actually write and I don't mean subject matter because I am sure you have worked out by now that my head is only full of words that are begging to come out. What I mean by this is sometimes I am not sure how much information I can actually give. On one level I want to be honest in my writing and not presenting myself as someone other than me but at the same time I need to keep in mind that actual people that know might read what I post and this is not a diary.  It really is a learning curve. I find it completely cathartic to just blog out my day even if it's been a truly awful one. Sometimes its good to catalogue all your disasters so you can share it like a funny anecdote and I even find myself thinking while something is going disastrously wrong that at least I can get ...

I have decided to get through January without alcohol and it seems I am not the only one, in fact this phenomenon is so popular it is referred to as a dry January. The thing is I don't drink much any more so its that much of a sacrifice, its actually a bit like giving up a chocolate bar you're not that fond of for lent. Now it probably says more about how I have been socialising of late that I haven't missed it one bit but I haven't been out since New Years eve and I am not likely to be out partying much for the rest of the month, as much as you can party with mineral water as an accompaniment so it wont exactly be a strain. I think living with someone who is ten years younger than me (even if I have only been living with her for a few days now)and opening a cupboard I supposed she'd put food in just to find half empty bottles of wine, has made me think back to my own student days and I don't have ruminate too long before telling you this health kick would...

Its true, I really don't like confrontation and I can say this with complete confidence because really who is a better authority on me than me. I have always shied away from confrontation, going along with things so as not to be difficult and biting my lip so that I don't have to feel that awful prickly feeling I get before a confrontation of any kind. I am not sure why I am so bad at it but I do know from the sick feeling I get just thinking about it that I haven't gotten any better with age. Last night I was supposed to go to Clonmel for a Crossfit class but when I went down to load up my car I discovered that my neighbour in the spot beside me ( who frequently parks like a drunk who is in a hurry) had only the tip of her car in the space and the rest of it was angled towards mine so I was trapped. Now a more skilled driver probably could have manoeuvred their car out of there anyway but unfortunately I didn't have one to hand, there was only me and my inaccurat...

My pick for book of the week this week is a quirky book called love in small letters. This week it was altogether more of a challenge because my reading pile was packed with interesting literary fiction titles and once I get into a good book I can't stop going but my overall favourite was definitely this one. The plot centres on Samuel, a teacher that lives a pretty secluded life until one day a cat turns up on his doorstep and by taking it in he finds his whole world changing. The cat coming into his life leads to him making new friends, reigniting his childhood love and having some unusual encounters that cause him to re-examine his perspective of the world. The book was translated from Spanish which gives it a sort of quirky feel and I feel (even though I don't have enough Spanish to read the original text) that it is a good translation and has done the story justice. Sometimes when a writer is translated, the story can have an odd clunky feel and there's almost some...

Tonight my new flatmate moves in and I am feeling somewhat apprehensive about the prospect of living with someone new. My old flatmate has moved in with his girlfriend and I was a little annoyed about the change given how well my current living arrangement suited me. By this I mean that he wasn't home very much but he still paid half the bills so it was pretty much like living alone only much much cheaper. I have lived by myself before and I will admit that I quite liked the experience. The apartment itself was not great in that it was too dark and damp and absolutely freezing in the winter but all of that I aside I enjoyed it thoroughly. I liked leaving my cup by the sink and coming home to find only that. I liked shutting myself in there after work and not having to see other people again until I chose to do so, allowing me to read or blog or just relax in peace and quiet. I enjoyed mornings just pottering about, not having to worry about making small talk with anyone. If I h...

I have loved books for as long as I can remember. I actually can't get enough of them. I find even acquaintances seem well aware of this fact and share bookish things with me online. I was the child who always had a book in hand and read at a ferocious rate, the one scoping out other peoples bookshelves. I remember years ago we used to have a family gathering for cousins, aunts and uncles at Christmas and I would look forward to this because I could sneak to my cousins room and read my way through back issues of magazines I wasn't allowed have. In a way this has probably led to me being a stickler for grammar but I am also fairly articulate and meticulous in my writing. The biggest thing it has brought to me however is a passion as an adult for books. The only thing was I have trouble affording my book habit and while I would occasionally splurge on a new book because I got so excited upon seeing it in a shop, I would mostly scour second hand bookshops, charity shops and an...