Life as a Bookseller Archives - Page 2 of 5

What we’re reading, watching, and listening to

by Damla Every so often we want to share what we're currently reading, watching, and/or listening to. We hope you'll enjoy our choices! Iris Reading: Currently reading The Last Gifts of the Universe by August Riley. It’s a sci-fi book about two siblings and their cat (called Pumpkin!), [...]

Damla2026-08-22T22:29:06+02:00Tags: ABC Staff, Damla, Else, Iris, Mike, Read/Watch/Listen, Renata, Simone, Sophie, Sywert, Yannis|

Jitse: 25 years @ the ABC

by Iris While all ABC staff obviously looks very youthful and spry, some of us have actually been around for quite a while. Our Jitse is celebrating 25 years at ABC this year. A massive milestone! Read on to find out more about his highlights from the past 2.5 decades. [...]

Iris2026-08-17T22:55:52+02:00Tags: ABC Staff, interviews, Jitse, life as a bookseller|

Bookseller life: Leidschendam edition

by Iris Our Leidschendam store in the Westfield Mall of the Netherlands opened its doors in 2021. It was pandemic times, and the many extra rules and regulations didn't make for the smoothest of starts. But four years later we're still here, and it's well past time to bring you along [...]

Iris2026-08-20T15:28:09+02:00Tags: ABC History, ABC Leidschendam, behind the scenes, Iris, life as a bookseller|

What we’re reading, watching, and listening to

by Sophie Every so often we want to share what we're currently reading, watching, and/or listening to. We hope you'll enjoy our choices! Tiemen: Reading: I'm currently reading part 4 of The Dungeon Crawler Carl series to my wife. Every evening I read about half an hour of DCC before [...]

Sophie2026-08-22T22:29:13+02:00Tags: ABC Staff, Bella, Damla, Else, Iris, Jilles, Jurgen, Klaartje, Lynn, Read/Watch/Listen, Renata, Sigrid, Sophie, Steven, Tiemen|

Book Review: Source Code – My Beginnings

Source Code is not about Microsoft or the Gates Foundation or the future of technology. It’s the human, personal story of how Bill Gates became who he is today: his childhood, his early passions and pursuits. It’s the story of his principled grandmother and ambitious parents, his first deep friendships [...]

Damla2026-08-17T22:20:59+02:00Tags: Autobiography, Bill Gates, Book review, Book Reviews, life as a bookseller, Lynn, memoir, Non-Fiction, Source Code|

Space is Gay* (*LGBTQIA+) – part 2

by Else If you haven't read part 1 yet, you can do so here. Enjoy! And remember: Space Is Gay*. *LGBTQIA+ Some Desperate Glory by Emily Tesh This book won the Hugo Awards last year, which seems to be mostly forgotten because of all the controversy surrounding that edition [...]

Lilia2026-08-19T19:58:47+02:00Tags: Arkady Martine, Elizabeth May, Else, Emily Hamilton, Emily Tesh, L.R. Lam, LGBTQIA+, Martha Wells, Mary Robinette Kowal, Science Fiction, Simon Jimenez, Space is Gay, Space Opera, Tamsyn Muir|

Expecting a chill in publishing: Why it matters

by Lynn As booksellers, we are sometimes asked by customers to add or withdraw certain titles from our assortment due to hot social or political issues. Our browsers have even been known to turn some books face-backwards (including those on Trump, Musk, the Middle East and Korea). Someone even recently suggested [...]

Lynn Kaplanian2026-08-19T18:25:51+02:00Tags: Current Affairs, independent publishers, Lynn, publishing|

Book review: The Reformatory

The Reformatory by Tananarive Due Winner of the 2024 World Fantasy Award for Best Novel and Winner of the 2024 Shirley Jackson Award for Novel. A gripping, page-turning novel set in Jim Crow Florida that follows Robert Stephens Jr. as he’s sent to a segregated reform school that is a [...]

Lilia2026-08-17T21:49:49+02:00Tags: Book review, Book Reviews, Else, Horror, Prize winners, Tananarive Due|

ABC in the Wild: FACTS 2025 (Spring edition)

by Else Two weeks after Heroes Made in Asia we traveled to another convention to set up our pop-up bookstore: this time in the lovely Ghent at FACTS, Belgium’s largest Comic Con. This means a group of four very nerdy booksellers (Tiemen, Sywert, Jonna and myself) made a road trip from [...]

Sophie2026-08-19T17:36:39+02:00Tags: ABC Events, ABC in the Wild, Else, FACTS, FACTS 2025, Jonna, Sywert, Tiemen|

ABC Interview: Mike

We played the Q&A game with the ABC staff, and asked all sorts of bookish questions. As a new colleague, Mike didn’t have the chance to take part in our Q&A game last year. He was very interested in doing it anyway, so we asked him the same bookish questions and [...]

Lilia2026-08-19T14:34:35+02:00Tags: ABC Staff, ABC Staff interviews, Fantasy, Fiction, History, interviews, Keith Lowe, Marcus Pfister, Meghan Hunter, Mike, Patrick Rothfuss, Picture Books, Plays, Self-Help, Sheldon Kopp, William Shakespeare|

I agree to the tracking cookies

I agree to the third party tracking embeds