Henrietta Knight, a retired racehorse trainer, will be signing her latest book The Jumping Game on Saturday 14th April 2018, at Mostly Books in Abingdon.

Later on in the day the Grand National will be run, and so I have looked at the 40 runners with an Abingdon Prism and chosen …

REGAL ENCORE – 28/1 – With the return of a cinema in Abingdon run by the Regal Evesham. The previous Abingdon cinema having been called Regal, this looks the most Abingdon horse to me.

Also ran …

GAS LINE BOY – 33/1 – The road closure in Bath Street while they put in a new Gas Line. Boy is that taking a long time!

VIEUX LION ROUGE – 28/1 – Translation in English is Old Red Lion, an old pub in the village of Drayton, only a mile from Abingdon.

Mostly Books have announced the winner of their Dr Seuss bingo competition. The display featuring Dr Seuss was put there to celebrate the 60th anniversary of The Cat in the Hat – published on 12th March 1957.

The first ever book by Dr Seuss was published in 1931, and contained schoolboy bloopers, jokes, and humour. It was illustrated by Theodor Seuss Geisel (Dr. Seuss) and written under the pseudonym Alexander Abingdon. It can still be found compiled in the Pocket Book of Boners. The updated word for ‘boner’ is ‘blooper’.

Mark Thornton from Mostly Books gave a talk called ‘What Reading Makes of Us – The Power of Stories to Shape Our Realities’ to the sixth formers at Abingdon School last year.

Annabel persuaded him to write it up into essay form for Shiny New Books – the literary magazine website she co-edits with several book-blogging friends.

It begins ‘This is my tenth year of being an independent bookseller – the equivalent of thirty years in any other business I reckon. Over time, casual conversations with friends, family and random strangers outside the shop have morphed from the questions like “You’ve started an independent bookshop, are you mad?” to “How on Earth do you survive against Amazon?”.’

The link to Mark’s full piece is here: http://shinynewbooks.co.uk/bookbuzz08/what-reading-makes-of-us-the-power-of-stories-to-shape-our-realities-an-essay/.