Sophie Archives

ABC Wishlists – and how to share them

By Sophie. Gift season is fast approaching, and you, as a registered bookworm, probably have quite a to-be-read (TBR) list. But how to communicate your coveted books to your loved ones in a subtle and gentle way? By sending your ABC Wishlists directly to them of course! (Subtlety is overrated.) Now, [...]

Sophie2024-11-19T22:49:01+01:00Tags: ABC wishlists, gift season, gifts, sharing your wishlist, Sophie|

Orbital wins the Booker Prize

By Sophie. Congratulations to Samantha Harvey, who won this year's Booker Prize for Orbital! Chair of the this year's judging panel, Edmund de Waal, had this to say about the book: "[...] Sometimes you encounter a book and cannot work out how this miraculous event has happened. As judges we were determined [...]

Sophie2024-11-13T11:20:03+01:00Tags: Book Reviews, Booker Prize, Bookish News, Fiction, orbital, Prizewinning Books, Samantha Harvey, Sophie|

Bookbits for 5 November 2024

By Sophie. A special day today: it's my daughter's birthday! (If you thought I was going to talk about the U.S. Elections, see below.) - First up: ABC's co-director Martijn was a guest on the Bookshop Podcast! Listen here to hear what he has to say about working in the best [...]

Sophie2024-11-05T05:59:40+01:00Tags: artificial intelligence, Awards, Bookbits, Essays, fandom, Fiction, Interviews, lists, Martijn, Podcasts, Politics, Science Fiction, Sophie, speculative fiction, US elections|

ABC Interview: Sophie

We decided to play the Q&A game with the ABC staff, and asked all sorts of bookish questions. In the coming weeks we will be posting their (sometimes cheeky!) answers here on the blog, so you can learn a little more about us. Enjoy! This time around we talk to Sophie, [...]

Lilia2024-10-16T20:15:07+02:00Tags: ABC, ABC interview, Ann Leckie, Discworld, Fantasy, Feminism, General Fiction, Literary Criticism, Maggie O'Farrell, Radch Empire, Roland Barthes, Roos van Rijswijk, Sandra Gilbert, Science Fiction, Sophie, Sports, Susan Gubar, Terry Prachett, Ursula K. Le Guin|

Blind Book Dates

By Sophie. One of the more popular things we sell, across all three ABCs, are our Blind Book Dates, or BBDs, as we call them. (Technically they should of course be called "Blind Date with a Book", but why use that when you can use a TLA, right?) A BBD is a [...]

Sophie2024-10-26T17:30:17+02:00Tags: ABC Amsterdam, ABC Leidschendam, ABC The Hague, BBD, Blind Book Date, Crime Fiction, Fantasy, Fiction, Horror, Romance, Science Fiction, Sophie, YA fiction|

Bookbits for 2 October 2024

By Sophie. AAAaaand the Bookbits are back, after my vacation last month. ^^ - Let's start off with a great interview by Booker Prize shortlisted Rachel Kushner which immediately made me want to read Creation Lake. - If you like to discover new writing talent, check out these 10 Promising New [...]

Sophie2024-10-02T08:44:07+02:00Tags: audio books, Awards, book marks, Bookbits, Booker Prize, Bookish News, Interviews, lists, national book awards, New Releases, new writers, Sophie, Travel|

Life as a Bookseller: Amsterdam Book Event

By Sophie. One of the perks of being a bookseller is that sometimes you get invited to things like the Amsterdam Book Event, hosted by Van Ditmar Books. This year Bruna and Tiemen from the Amsterdam team and Naomi, Júlia, and myself from the The Hague/Leidschendam team were the lucky ones. [...]

Sophie2024-09-27T08:24:07+02:00Tags: A Day in the Life of a Bookseller, amsterdam book event, bloomsbury, Bruna, faber & the independent alliance, goodie bags, hachette, harper collins, Júlia, Naomi, New Releases, pan macmillan, penguin random house, simon & schuster, Sophie, thames & hudson, Tiemen, van ditmar|

A Double Take on “Invisible Women”

Today we present one of the titles we mentioned last week: Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Perez. Colleagues Sophie and Damla have read it and can't recommend it enough. Damla How did we manage to build a world where we ignore half the [...]

Lilia2024-08-25T12:37:40+02:00Tags: Book Reviews, Caroline Criado Perez, Damla, Feminist Writing, Social Science, Sophie|

Bookbits for 7 August 2024

Writtten by Sophie. I am currently in Olympics heaven! They are always the highlight of every 4th summer for me. Hope you are enjoying all the amazing feats of sportmanship as well! And a note: no Bookbits next month, as I'll be on vacation. Longlists! The Booker Dozen has been announced, [...]

Sophie2024-08-07T14:12:21+02:00Tags: Awards, Bob, book covers, book design, book lists, Bookbits, Bookish News, Interviews, Iris W., James Baldwin, Romance, Sophie, Sywert|

Reading Along with the 2023 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize Shortlist

Written by Sophie. Ursula K. Le Guin, 2016, picture by William Anthony. If you've ever seen my Staff Choice list, or any of my recent Top 5s, you'll know I'm a huge Ursula K. Le Guin stan. There's just something about her fantasy and her social science fiction stories [...]

Sophie2024-08-05T17:10:10+02:00Tags: 9-12 years, Akil Kumarasamy, Christiane M. Andrews, Fantasy, Nicola Griffith, Novellas, Prize winners, R. B. Lemberg, Readalong, Rebecca Campbell, Science Fiction, Short Stories, shortlist, Sophie, Ursula K. Le Guin, Yuri Herrera, Yvette Lisa Ndlowu, Zain Khalid|

I agree to the tracking cookies

I agree to the third party tracking embeds