Quirky books, curious minds, author-led.
The ex libris was once a stern Victorian warning shot across the bows of any borrower. Now it is enjoying a quiet, design-led revival — complete with cats in spectacles. Here is how to spot, commission or make your own British bookplate without accidentally declaring war on your friends.
There is a special British agony reserved for the novel you are not enjoying and cannot quite put down. This is a wholehearted argument for closing the cover at page 47, walking away, and never mentioning it again — except at dinner parties, where it makes excellent material.
Colour-coded spines and Instagram-ready shelves have had their moment. A home library arranged by instinct, memory and the odd act of stubbornness is a far truer portrait of a reader — and considerably more fun to dust.
Author-narrated audiobooks promise intimacy, authenticity and a voice that knows the book from the inside. They can also produce 11 hours of accidental panto. Here is what happens when novelists step behind the microphone — and what indie publishers should do about it.
It is November 2026 and the Christmas panic is already brewing. For the reader who owns every book, here are nine oddball picks organised by reading personality — indie-press treasures, author-recommended curiosities and a few books that simply refuse to behave.
Most readers skip the dedication. At Von Krummp we linger there, because the half-page before chapter one is often the most honest thing an author writes. Here are seven dedication types — from cryptic initials to long-suffering editors — and what they quietly reveal.
Every bookshop is a small theatre, and the customers are the cast. Here is an affectionate taxonomy of seven British browser species, from the Just Browsing lurker to the stock-check optimist—plus what to do when one asks for a novel they saw on a podcast in 2021.
A charity-shop paperback is rarely just a paperback. It is a bus ticket, a birthday dedication, a stranger’s argument with a paragraph and, occasionally, a gravy stain with literary ambitions. This is a field guide to the accidental archive we leave between the covers.
Polished marketing copy slides off the memory like rain off a coat. The overstuffed, over-promising, faintly deranged blurb sticks — and small presses produce the best of them. A defence of the messy back cover, plus an exercise in rewriting a classic in three glorious sentences.
Small presses, small print runs, and a route that ends near a fire. Our curated 2026 crawl through twelve independent UK publishers pairs each one with a book worth buying direct and a pub worth sitting in while you read it. Bring a tote bag and a modest budget.
Every novel starts somewhere — and it is rarely where the author claims. We asked six UK writers to nominate the strange object that lit the fuse under their latest book, with results involving a brass thimble, a mislabelled cassette and a weather vane with a grudge. Plus: a short, practical sidebar on how to cultivate curiosity before it curdles into scrolling.
Set texts, unfinished chapters and the quiet guilt of the unread — there is a better way to gather round books. Here is our entirely practical, faintly opinionated guide to a monthly reading night with no deadlines, no assigned titles and absolutely no apologising, complete with themes, icebreakers, venue ideas and a Von Krummp starter list.