Are you planning a “The Bard is My Bag” celebration in your bookshop? Following on from the industry-wide Books Are My Bag (BAMB) and ‘Civilised Saturday’ campaigns, The Booksellers Association are encouraging bookshops to celebrate with a humorous twist on the BAMB theme. Saturday 23rd April is therefore ‘Shakespeare Saturday’, which marks 400 years since the famous playwright’s death. Listed below are a few recommendations from the Indie Thinking team for Shakespeare-themed titles that can be included alongside the “The Bard is My Bag” totes, t-shirts, postcards and posters for Shakespeare Saturday displays. Find out more about Shakespeare Saturday here, and to order any of the titles listed below, simply contact your local HarperCollins representative.
Shakespeare
by Bill Bryson
24th March 2016
9780007197903
PB | RRP: £8.99
A new edition of bestselling author Bill Bryson’s compelling and concise biography of William Shakespeare, to mark the 400th anniversary of his death in 2016. Examining centuries of myths, half-truths and downright lies, Bill Bryson makes sense of the man behind the masterpieces. As he leads us through the crowded streets of Elizabethan England, he brings to life the places and characters that inspired Shakespeare’s work, with his trademark wit and accessibility. Along the way he delights in the inventiveness of Shakespeare’s language, which has given us so many of the indispensable words and phrases we use today.
Shakespeare in Swahililand
by Edward Lee-Wilson
10th March 2016
9780008146191
HB | RRP: £20.00
Published to commemorate 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death in April 2016, Shakespeare in Swahililand is radical, breath-taking book combines travel, history, biography and satire in an ode to Shakespeare. Wilson-Lee teaches Shakespeare at Cambridge but grew up in East Africa and his book explores Shakespeare’s global legacy like no other book before it. With its extraordinary sequence of stories and momentous travels from Zanzibar, through Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Ethiopia and Sudan, this literary adventure throws high culture and the wild together in celebration of Shakespeare’s legacy as a poet of the world.
Collins Little Book of Shakespeare
edited by John Mannion
10th March 2016
9780008175375
PB | RRP: £5.99
A carefully-selected collection of themed quotations to honour Shakespeare’s legacy to the world on the 400th anniversary of the death of the most famous writer of all time. Find out what Shakespeare said about love, sex, revenge, pleasure and work. No-one will ever say it better. Beautifully produced, Collins Little Book of Shakespeare is a treasure in itself and makes the perfect gift. Quotations are chosen for their relevance to the modern world. Contains a brief history of the life and times of the world’s greatest writer and a short glossary of Shakespearean terms.
How Shakespeare Changed Everything
by Stephen Marche
16th August 2012
9780061965548
PB | RRP: £9.99
Shakespeare is everywhere. Four hundred years after his death, Shakespeare permeates our everyday lives: from the words we speak to the teenage heartthrobs we worship to the political rhetoric spewed by the twenty-four-hour news cycle. In the pages of this wickedly clever little book, Esquire columnist Stephen Marche takes us on a delightful tour through the continuous stream of Shakespeare’s influence on the world stage. The gifted playwright who moves audiences to laughter and tears has also moved history. Do any other poets even begin to change our behavior or our environment?
Pop Sonnets
by Erik Didriksen
8th October 2015
9780008137199
HB | RRP: £9.99
Think modern pop music is missing a little poetry? Prefer rhyme schemes to the club scene? Wait for the volta more often than the drop? If so, Pop Sonnets is the anthology for you. From ABBA, The Beatles and Michael Jackson to Beyoncé, Miley Cyrus and Taylor Swift, this witty and wonderful mash-up collection has a sonnet for every pop fan in your life. Described by pop sensation ‘Weird Al Yakovic’ as ‘one of the very best collections of pop songs written in the style of William Shakespeare that I’ve read so far this year!’, Pop Sonnets offers a thoroughly Shakespearean twist to all of your favourite songs.
A Thousand Acres
by Jane Smiley
4th May 2004
9780006544821
PB | RRP: £8.99
Jane Smiley transposes the King Lear story to the modern day, and in so doing at once illuminates Shakespeare’s original and subtly transforms it. This astonishing novel won both of America’s highest literary awards, the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Critics’ Circle Award. Larry Cook’s farm is the largest in Zebulon County, Iowa, and a tribute to his hard work and single-mindedness. Proud and possessive, his sudden decision to retire and hand over the farm to his three daughters, is disarmingly uncharacteristic. Ginny and Rose, the two eldest, are startled yet eager to accept, but Caroline, the youngest daughter, has misgivings.
