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Mwhahaha. The Book Grocer rubs her hands together greedily as she contemplates the week ahead. Festival season kicks off this week, and its offerings may be summarised with one word: excellent. Tuesday: VS Naipaul fans will want to head to Daunt Books tonight to hear …

What do an ex-Python, Martha Stewart, and a woman in the running for first female poet laureate all have in common? Come on now, use your deductive reasoning skills. They all somehow feature in this week’s Book Grocer, of course! Monday: Novelist David Benioff has …

Diaries out, bibliophiles. Festival season is almost upon us. No, not the festival season that will have you rolling around in mud or throwing your pants at the stage (well, you could throw your pants at the stage, and we’d certainly provide moral support for …

Happy Bloomsday, friends. If on this, the 104th anniversary of Leopold Bloom’s epic wanderings around Dublin, our column is even less coherent than usual, don’t blame us and our second-rate attempts to mimic the master. On the other hand, maybe you should. Do we contradict …

Pardon. The book grocer got some sun this weekend. We find that there’s an inverse relationship between our hours of sun exposure and our ability to talk books. Do you think the connection between weather and literary prowess could explain Britain’s many achievements in this …

Image courtesy of randydandy via the Londonist Flickr pool Right, so Gothamist isn’t returning our phone calls, and we can only assume that they’re not going to take us up on our Telectroscope dance challenge. Chickens. Dance-off or not, we wanted to check out the …

He’s back! Since we first heard the news that Paddington Bear would, after a 30-year sabbatical, shake off the dust of our bookshelves and embark on some fresh adventures, it’s been all we could do to contain our excitement – though stuffing ourselves with marmalade …

Flight fashion: it’s such a minefield of tricky choices to be navigated with the utmost care. You want comfort, as it’s unlikely to be found on the plane itself. You want something non-restricting should you be required to brawl. You want something that bespeaks a …

June’s here, and we’re feeling a bit slack. But although the summer blockbusters have rolled into town to lessen the load on our addled brains, literary London keeps on cranking out the heavyweights. Lightweight summer reading? Not here, not yet. Tuesday: You might have inferred …