Blackwell Bugle - 2023 Summer Selection

With the arrival of summer also comes a proliferation of summer reading guides. These guides generally contain hundreds of book recommendations focusing on new releases, often untested by readers.

Before I was a bookseller, I found these guides helpful, but also that that often added stress to my reading life and ever expanding TBR (to-be-read) list. 

So in an effort to relieve you of any such pressure we’ve kept a strict limit of two dozen book recommendations, along with a few puzzles, games and nifty stationery items.

Either I or someone else at Mrs Blackwell’s Village Bookshop read and loved each of these books during the course of the year. They’re not all brand-new releases; in fact most aren't, and they’re endorsed purely by our love for them.

For this reason, it’s a little like a pick-and-mix lolly bag from the dairy of your childhood but we hope you’ll tolerate a Lego Fact book alongside Ann Patchett, some unique nature writing and a series of Kiwi cookbooks originally published in the 1970s.

We hope this summer brings you some happy and fulfilling reading hours; however many or few that number looks like to you, you’ll savour every one of them!

- Mrs Blackwell