Bicycles or Books ?

Bicycles or Books? How to choose? Can I have both, please? Cake and eat?

When the Bikes or Books question comes to your door (as it has just now), remember that books have time. Books are patient. Some of our books have waited for a hundred years for the right reader, to pick it up and start a conversation on its pages.

Books come to life in a dialogue with a reader, whereas bikes, if all goes well, can turn into a big party with many other bikes. We had one in Los Angeles recently, where Ciclavia brought 100.000 people out on the street. Big, big bicycle party indeed. The sight of so many bikes together is invigorating,  perhaps even a transcendent experience. If a big bike party comes your way, time is of the essence. Books wait, bike rides do not wait.

Reach Fair Ride 7th May 2012

So join us for a fun day out on the bike, a leisurely ride of 10 miles, suitable for children, grandparents, and everybody else. Reach Fair is a great event. Enjoy the company of other cyclists, and enjoy the absence of cars as we ride away from traffic. The Mayor of Cambridge will accompany us, and the Duke and Duchess have also been invited.

Invitation to Duke and Duchess of Cambridge 

Reach Fair Ride 7th May 2012 is organised by the Cambridge Cycling Campaign.
More information on the Campaign website
Share this with your friends on facebook and see who else will join
Twitter # Reachride

Of course, Plurabelle Books will be closed on the day. Our cycling books will wait.

Fashion Show and Retro Ride

Together with the Cambridge Raincoat Company we are hosting the Fashion Show and Retro Ride this weekend, Sunday the 1st of April, 2pm – 6pm.

Sunny spring day at Plurabelle. Foto: Catarina Clifford

20 stalls to exhibit Vintage, Retro, Recycled & Independent fashion, followed by

The Retro Ride!

2:00pm  Cycle Chic: Vintage & Independent Fashion Show at Plurabelle in the beautiful Rattee & Kett gardens (Directions here)

3.30pm   The Retro Ride (Tweed Ride) - a social ride around the historic sights of Cambridge. Starts at Plurabelle

4.30pm   Afternoon Tea in the Marquee at Plurabelle Books.


Books, Tea and High Tea (Scones Sandwiches) courtesy of Plurabelle Books

For more details see facebook page !

We will have displays by Jemporium Vintage, Revelare, Autumn Attic, Tina Sondhi, Pur Alpaca Designs, Cheeky Rose, Margaret Knight, Clare Harriette Downey,  Jane Horwood, This is Cambridge, Jenny Orange Knitting Kits, Nicky Shepard, Le Gros Franck, RevtroVert, Crispin at Pop Cycles, Chrissie’s Chocs, Muriel, Birchenough’s Home-made Cakes, Adam’s Oak, and more

Bring the whole family, friends and visitor. Bring a bell for the ride, a silk tie for the shirt, a few nice leather shoes for the pedals.

Calling Turkey: Research Project to Increase Book Sales to Turkish Libraries

If your book-parcel weighs more than 730 grammes (0.73 Kg), then we shall send it in a blue M-Bag with such a label

Big news at Plurabelle as our new marketing strategy begins to take shape. Our aim is still the same: to increase the number of Turkish customers who visit and purchase books from Plurabelle. Turkey’s economy is flourishing, there is a well established network of universities. Our scholarly books could surely contribute to the Turkish Library system. But why have there been so few Turkish customers visiting Plurabelle during the last couple of years? We have sold 70,000 books in the last 10 years, but only a handful of these went to Turkey. Are we doing something wrong? Is there something we are missing?

This is why I, Julia, have joined this project: to investigate. I have a degree in English and I am now studying for an MA in Publishing at Anglia Ruskin University. I have joined with Michael Cahn from Plurabelle to find out if there is something we can do to increase our sales to Turkish libraries. I will try to develop relationships with librarians and make them aware of what we offer. This is a great opportunity to develop a new customer base and share the joy of Plurabelle Books in a whole new market! For me, it is also a research project which will be supervised and which will count towards my degree.

The first stage of my research project is an initial telephone survey of Turkish librarians. We have a short questionnaire designed to investigate the mystery of the missing orders from Turkey. Are there problems with the postal service? Is currency exchange a problem? Are customs procedures an issue? Do you use a consolidating service?

So if you receive a call in the next few weeks, asking intrusive questions about buying second hand books in a foreign country - it will be me, Julia, calling from among the shelves of Plurabelle.

Julia is calling

If you do have some answers to our questions, and you do not want to wait for my call, you could earn yourself credit by contacting us on: 0044 1223 415671 / SKYPE Plurabelle. We would be VERY happy to hear from you, and will honour your call with a credit of £20 to spend on books from the Plurabelle collection.

When calling, ask for either me (Julia) or Michael, but please do allow for the fact that we do not speak Turkish (Michael is a fluent German speaker), and that we are 2 hours behind you. An email will be just as valuable for us, and will earn you the same credit, but we would love to talk to our potential clients on the phone. You can also take our quick survey here.

We look forward to speaking with you!

Richard Murphy: The Courageous State

Richard Murphy is a widely published anti-poverty campaigner and tax expert. His blog taxresearch.org.uk is probably the most influential economics blog in the UK.

Please join us at 6pm on Tuesday 29 November 2011for an evening with Richard Murphy, author of 

The Courageous State.

His new book argues that neoliberal economics has led to weak governments who assert the supremacy of the market. This has created cowardly states: states that shun responsibility and leadership. Worse, the weak politicians who preside over such states encourage the use of tax revenue for the benefit of the private sector: Is there a way out of the "democracy" of capital which creates poverty with a click of a banker's mouse ?  

That's the question Richard addresses and in doing so he raises one of the most urgent issues for today - What is the alternative that Occupy Wall Street, Occupy London and others should be demanding? He argues there is an alternative - and that it's all wrapped up in the contested notion of The Courageous State

Richard Murphy is  a chartered accountant and economist at Tax Research UK. He has been called an "anti-poverty campaigner and tax expert". He was voted the seventh most influential left wing thinker in 2010/11 in a Left Foot Forward poll, making him the highest ranked UK based economist on the list. His blog taxresearch.org.uk is probably the most influential economics blog in the UK.

Plurabelle is books you don't need in a place you cannot find. Our premises are well hidden on the old Rattee & Kett site, next to Hills Road Sixth Form College.  Plurabelle Books (Grey Barn, Michael Young Centre, Purbeck Rd, Cambridge CB2 8QL) has an extensive stock of more than 50,000 academic books in all subject areas. The discussion with Richard Murphy will take place in our browsing bookshop where great deals can be had for little money. We also have an extensive list of books on economic subjects, many currently offered at reduced prices

Snacks and drinks provided by searchingfinance.com,  a new publishing venture set up by Ashwin Rattan. Ashwin will offer Richard Murphy's book at a specially reduced price of £ 11.- Searching Finance is currently soliciting proposals for new publishing ventures, and he looks forward to meeting authors and researchers.  

Please join us and enjoy the magic atmosphere of old books to join in a discussion which could hardly be more timely and more urgent today. 

RSVP: books@plurabelle.co.uk or on facebook

Cyclists are invited to complete membership forms for the Cambridge Cycling Campaign 

Standing Room Only

Thanks to the Cambridge Literary Review, our little bookshop has started to grow the very first roots (root hairs, apical meristem) in the delicate humus which is the local poetry scene. We had a full house last Saturday, counting 40 plus guests and leaving standing room only. The size of the audience kept us warm, literally, on a cold and windy evening. And quite a few were rolling their own - It was sad news to me that the old stupidity of smoking was again de rigeur among our poets.

John James started the evening with a intensely spiced word-bath, interested and joyfully surprised at the continuous flow of significance that his kaleidoscope of words would set free - making me, for one, eager to see the words we heard. I just caught one Joyce quotations, "silence, exile, and cunning" - many more will probably come forward when we see his work on the page.

Dell Olson read against the whisper of the ginger nuts her little boy was eating in the background, and perhaps she read also against a practice which marvels at the poetic magic of created meanings and images. She seems to take the reader on a tour of deconstructed language, such when verbs seem to go missing, and the effects are surely marvelous and taste like insight.

The former bookseller among our poets, Ian Patterson, would represent still another style of poetic practice. Sixty Windows, based on the text of novels where the word "window" occurs on page 60, is not only a commentary on some notion of poetic imagination, but also came closest to re-constitute our audience differently - through humour, and not through the quiet seriousness schooled in academic seminars, - something that is very hard to shed in a place like Cambridge. As a bookseller I tend to frown when I sell another book of humorous poetry: It seems shallow and cheap. But from the point of view of a reading, the laughter of the audience would be a worthwhile goal to pursue. Is this a challenge? Poets, if you can make us laugh, I'll get the old ashtrays out again, and you won't have to smoke out in the cold any more!

Thanks again to Lydia and Boris, to James, Dell and Ian, - we had a great evening!

More images from the event on facebook.

Eat That Book

On the eve of the Cambridge conference entitled "Eating Words: Text, Image, Food", a few hardy forks assembled at our warehouse to conduct Plurabelle Edible Book 1. Designed as an improvised mixture between a seminar and a performance, the event attracted about a dozen attendees who spoke about their secret "book to mouth" desires, admitted to past bibliophagic engagements, ate a book, and watched others eating one. The typographic appetizers proved popular, Roasted Bookwheat was perhaps a bit dry, and the Bookbay Mix a bit too salty, said some. The books, however, were just right.

Plurabelle has been on the forefront of bibliophagy for a long time. As a cook may combine nutmeg and tomato sauce, balsamico and double cream, asparagus and strawberries, so we invite our website visitors to browse ourstock by freely combining subject terms on our kitchen page. We have issued "Eat more books" stickers, we have a whole gallery of how to prepare a book for consumption. We also look after our little pet crocodile in one of our shelves which says the same:

In short, the combination of our interest in the culinary enjoyment of books, and the conference entitled "Eating Words: Text, Image, Food" produced a perfect opportunity. This was the moment to leave behind the level of metaphorical signification and to get down to it. We started with Bookwheat (gluten free, of course)...

Bookwheat

and so to printed matter pure and simple

what a meal!

yummy, that was good

nice!

But what does this all mean? For a long time, literary critics subscribed to the notion (aka hermeneutic ideology) of the unlimited reach of understanding, emblematically depicted in the nail-eating ostrich.

The ostrich consumes a nail to show the ability of the understanding  (spiritus) to
conquer even the most difficult material (Einaudi)

Just as the ostrich can digest nails, so the scholar of writing can make sense of the strangest book. Interpretation would never reach a limit. Perhaps Plurabelle Edible Book 1 is a parody of this founding metaphor of the discipline which continues to give us steady supply of English Majors (including this very bookseller), engaging the limits of understanding in a less then interpretative manner. Are we enacting a love-hate relationship with books, which a analyst would interpret for us, or was the event last week a way to glimpse over the walls of the interpretative attitude, into the promised land of "Stop Making Sense"?

For this reason, the true hero of the evening was the homovorous book, a highest level of the carnivorous plants

The Homovorous (man-eating) Book. Design, concept and artwork by Laura Nuttall (© 2011)

This philosophical object (Thanks Laura!) reminds us of the limits of the digestive paradigm of spiritus durissma coquit. Grammatically speaking, bibliophagy is transitive: If you devour a book, you soon enough find yourself consumed by the book. The reciprocal nature of subject and object in the process of engaging with writing offers plenty of .. food for thought. 

Adriana Sorts it Out

Adriana came to Cambridge to improve her English. Her English is actually very good, it just suffers from the famous final "e" which Italian speakers love to attach to an English-e word-e. A dog is a dogge, a book is a booke, and even my bike would become a bike-e. Somehow the bookseller sensed an opportunity to hide (nascondere) his own errors in Italian, and generally take advantage of a very pleasant presence.

It so happens that some books needed to be re-shelved, shelves needed to be re-sized, dusted, moments of organisational doubt were on the horizon. Books needed to be looked at, queried if they won't ever leave the premises and pay their rent. This kind of work is best done in two. One sits on the computer screen, the other stands at the shelf, and so we tried to improve the pronunciation of our Italian guest by making her shout out titles across the warehouse.

And in between, photos were taken.

Thanks, Adriana. Call again! Did your job restoring artworks work out?