Jen Campbell and Marie Phillips visit Stockholm

On Thursday, September 10th and Friday, September 11th the English Bookshop in Stockholm hosted two visiting authors, Jen Campbell, author of the hilarious Weird Things Customers Say in Bookshops and Marie Phillips, author of The Table of Less Valued Knights. Stockholm Writers Group member Karen Hagersten reached out to the bookshop and organized a wonderful evening for the group, and hopefully the authors.

For Jen’s talk, the bookshop was packed! Some folks were even sitting on the floor. But it was all worth it. I mean, who wouldn’t enjoy a glass of wine, a great interview, and a chance to not only get a book signed, but also to chat for a moment with the authors? After Jen’s talk, we took both ladies out to dinner and a number of us returned the following morning for the breakfast talk with Marie Phillips. (Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to make it to the breakfast talk. I’m bummed, too, because Marie was so funny and I really wanted to hear more about her book. The way she described it at dinner was–and I’m paraphrasing here–‘You know how King Arthur had the round table knights? This book is about the other knights–the ones who didn’t make it to the round table.’ My kind of book.)

I did manage to pick up a copy of The Bookshop Shop, a book celebrating bookshops across the world, by Jen Campbell. This book resonates deeply with me because while at University, I worked at the bookstore–Waldenbooks, which was later turned into one of those gigantic Borders complete with a train set running through the store–and while those are chain bookstores (and now defunct), the bookshop, any bookshop, holds a special place in my heart. I highly recommend the book. I started reading it on the train and almost missed my stop! Always a great sign =).