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/.

The Abingdon Oxfam Shop has become more and more an Aladdin’s Cave in recent weeks with interesting items crammed in every nook and cranny. Last Saturday there was a group of books about Abingdon, many of them out of print. I was fortunate to get Historic Streets of Abingdon by Agnes C. Baker for £9.99. The original price in 1957 was One Shilling and Sixpence.

On Ebay this evening there was a lovely print of Abingdon Bridge – just one page taken from a book called “The Royal River – The Thames from source to the sea”, printed by Cassell and company Ltd and dated 1885. The book has been broken up to sell at £11.30 a page. The text alongside appears a bit mixed up … “Opposite the church at the side of the Market Place is the Market Cross, designed by Inigo Jones, erected in 1667, and far too extensively restored in 1853.“

Alison Mercer read extracts from her second novel ‘After I Left You’ at Mostly Books this evening. This was the fifth book event for Mostly Books this summer, and all have been blessed with good weather.

Alison lives in Abingdon with husband, poet Ian Pindar, and two children. She always wanted to be a writer, and showed us her earliest novel, handwritten as a child, alongside her first published novel ‘Stop the Clock’ which came out two years ago.

Find out much more about the books at Alison’s website, and find these or many other good holiday reads at Mostly Books.