Novel Sheffield

The vibe at the Intermezzo late night open & read-a-thon between 5 - 8pm TONIGHT!

Feel free to preorder your book now, just follow the link 💙♟️

let me know in the comments if you’re swinging by 👇

New fave customer, big boy Finley 💘

Okay, so the pumpkin spice was left out of our order again 🫠 so we’re launching batch girl autum!

I’ve bought another thermos and we’re pouring bubbly cups of batch 💚

(Note: sorry to jump on the micro trend. In reality, we’re not very brat, our vibe is more sylvanian families. We love single digit bedtime, reading & drinking batch coffee)

Big love to *tyoushouldcareabout and for having us on board for the Make It Make Sense preorder incentive! We’re absolutely basking in the independentbookshop love 🥰📚 Major thanks to the Herculean effort from Miriam for packing orders with me like a champ and Joe for being our trusty courier. And to everyone patiently queuing behind me in the post office—thanks for not rolling your eyes too hard at the pile of parcels! 😅

It’s incredible how a small gesture from and has made such a huge difference to our brand new biz, & thank you everyone who preordered. It means a lot.

💘

1 WEEK TO GO…

Pre-order Sally Rooney’s latest novel, Intermezzo 💙♟️

We’re going to do a special late night opening on Tuesday 24th Sept, from 5 - 8pm. Pop by, grab your copy and feel free to make a start on your book. We’ve got candles and warm toned lamps and our coffee machine will be fired up. 🥰

Or if you’d rather collect at another point/have us post it to you, that’s cool too.

It’s chilly out. We keep dressing inappropriately for the season, maybe we’re in denial about summer being over.

We’ve been thinking it may be time to take the much beloved peach iced tea off and switch up our menu, but every other café has clearly beaten us to the PSL syrups and I’m having to hold off on launching our autumnal drinks for another week. I am desperately sorry to anyone who is disappointed by this news, and promise to have better foresight next year when planning my orders.

Do I carry on making peach iced tea until then? Are iced lattes still happening beyond mid September? I feel like we’re in that episode of Peep Show where Jez & Mark get stuck in the entryway of their flat, the netherzone, where the summer drinks make no sense but equally, the PSLs are beyond our grasp. I technically could order the syrup from Amazon to give the people what they want, but you know I can’t do that 🥲

In the meantime, we have lots of nice warm non-PSL drinks for you to enjoy. If I’m honest, I’ve never even had a PSL, but have been introduced to the chai hot chocolate this week and I feel like my life has changed forever.

I hope you can forgive this rookie error ❤️ we’ll rectify this ASAP and update you on this sitch 🫡

INTEREST CHECK:

I had a very limited amount of Novel tees made for our crowdfunder backers, and stupidly only ordered the exact quantity needed to fulfil the rewards.

They’re £28, are printed on high quality cotton t-shirts and support the incredible work done by 👏

Would you be interested if we did another run of them?

We’re open! We’ve done a massive restock! are back from their holiday 🥮❤️

Anyone else cringing/despairing at last night’s presidential debate? If, like me, you are trying to make sense of the current political hellscape are interested in the history of the culture wars, you may want to check this book out!

The Playbook is a daring account of a culture war over the place of theatre in American democracy in the 1930s, one that anticipates our current divide, by the acclaimed Shakespeare scholar James Shapiro.

“1935. Franklin D. Roosevelt is under pressure to combat the skyrocketing levels of unemployment in post-war America. He announces a sweeping range of revolutionary initiatives, known collectively as the New Deal. Among these initiatives is a landmark programme designed to bring innovative, experimental theatre to the American masses.

The Federal Theatre Project staged critically acclaimed and wildly popular productions across America - including Orson Welles’ directorial debut, a landmark early modern dance programme, and shows that sought to tell the truth about racism, poverty and the rising tides of fascism.

1938. An opportunistic Texas congressman, head of the newly formed House Un-American Committee, targets the Federal Theatre Project, enflaming rising tension about communism and creating a new political playbook based on sensationalism, misinformation and fear - a playbook that has proved instrumental in today’s Culture Wars.

From one of the world’s great storytellers, Playbook is an invigorating re-enactment of a terrifyingly prescient moment in 20th-century American cultural history, the dimensions of which echo through every democracy today.”

New in from 🖤 this amazing independent Northern publisher has treated us this summer with more new releases than we can keep up with! 🥲

A Scarab Where The Heart Should Be by Marieke Bigg (author of Waiting for Ted) is out tomorrow!

Which one sounds up your street?

🚨book club alert🚨

Hey hey! It’s less than a week until our first book club event in our new shop ✨ I seriously need to crack on with the reading 🫠

If you missed out on tickets last month, I’ll be posting about our Oct & Nov clubs at the end of September. Signing up to our mailing list on our website is the best way to stay in the loop with book club related news. (Link in our bio)

❤️

Have you spotted Novel in the latest edition of ? We’d like to thank Ruby for the lovely write up and for bringing us copy for the shop 🥰 I’ve popped it by our window seating for anyone wanting to find out what’s happening across Sheffield this fall.

Photos by 📸❤️

Creation Lake, the latest novel by Rachel Kushner is now in stock. A work of high art, high comedy, and irresistible pleasure. If you loved The Mars Room, this should be on your radar!

‘Sadie Smith – a 34-year-old American undercover agent of ruthless tactics, bold opinions and clean beauty – is sent by her mysterious but powerful employers to a remote corner of France. Her mission: to infiltrate a commune of radical eco-activists led by the charismatic svengali Bruno Lacombe.

Sadie casts her cynical eye over this region of ancient farms and sleepy villages, and at first finds Bruno’s idealism laughable – he lives in a Neanderthal cave and believes the path to enlightenment is a return to primitivism. But just as Sadie is certain she’s the seductress and puppet master of those she surveils, Bruno Lacombe is seducing her with his ingenious counter-histories, his artful laments, his own tragic story.’

Joe went back to work this week 💔 his school goes back a week earlier than everyone else. The wonderful Alex ( ) offered to help me out this week, she also teaches maths and loves books, a combination people often find surprising!

She even fetched us a Crumb sandwich for lunch 🥪 🤤

I asked her to create a stack if books she’d recommend to shoppers, and these were her ‘favourite books of all time’:

Crying in H Mart - Michelle Zauner

KAZUO ISHIGURO NEVER LET ME GO

Claire Keegan - Small Things Like These

I Who Have Never Known Men - Jacqueline Harpman

WON - PYUNG SOHN - ALMOND

Thanks Alex ❤️❤️❤️

Neeew! ❤️📕

📸 took these shots the day before our launch weekend 😍

We’ve officially been open for one whole month 🥳 I wake up each morning in disbelief that we pulled this off and that this is my actual job!!

We’ve loved seeing all the new and familiar faces pop by 💕

REMINDER: we’re closed tomorrow (Monday 26th), but will be back at it again on Thursday with books, bakes and brews.

Have a wonderful bank hol x

Joe was feeling a little worse for wear after his pub crawl round Kelham Island yesterday, so I got to enjoy the company of the lovely today ❤️ you may have met Mary at a book club, we got to know one another when we first started Novel and have met up most school hols for a coffee, teaching chats and putting the world to rights. ❤️

I asked her to pick some of her favourite reads to share with you, and this is what she’s suggested ✨

📚 Orbital by Samantha Harvey
📚 Territory of Light Yuko Tsushima
📚 Figuring by Maria Popova
📚 When we cease to understand the world by Benjamín Labatut

Seriously appreciate you 💕

Crookes Summer Fair is tomorrow 🥳 we’re part of the ice cream trail and have donated a Novel gift voucher as a prize in one of the competitions ✨

It’d be a great day to visit S10, check out .collective for more info about what’s on offer 💕

💗💗💗💗

Chatted about the wonderful Novel Sheffield new bookshop in Crookes over on Substack.

3 min read
https://endlesslovecreative.substack.com/p/finding-a-dream-space

New non-fiction 📚✨

Heads up! We’re going to be closed on Monday 26th August

It’s the last day of Joe’s summer holiday, so we’ve made the call to enjoy a teeny bit of R&R before he returns to school. We hope you understand 💕

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