​Autumn has arrived, and here at the bookshop we have embraced it with open arms! The summer has been long and hot, the fan has been working overtime, and we’re ready for a little cooler air, some light autumn showers (the grass here in Suffolk is begging for it actually) and to cosy up with a cuppa and a good book. 

So, I thought I’d walk you through some of the seasonal shifts happening here at the shop as we settle into the colder, cosier months ahead.
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The biggest change is, of course, our fabulous new window display. We’ve got some autumnal leaves cascading down the windows and Suzie has picked out some great eye-catching orange themed covers to window-shop as you walk by. We certainly look fashionably set for the season and we’re stocked up inside to match…
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​As a proud stockist of Peter Grogan Ceramics, we’re thrilled to have some beautiful autumnal colours on display and available to purchase. A personal favourite of mine is this vibrant rustic orange, matching the leaves outside and bringing those rich, earthy autumn tones indoors. We’ve also got some beautifully intricate patterned ceramics inspired by the Suffolk countryside – perfect for a souvenir of the area or an early Christmas present (if you’re feeling particularly organised this year).
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​It is, of course, cosy crime season and the bookshop is incredibly well-stocked for the occasion! Our ‘Crime and Thrillers’ section is one of the most popular and extensive sections in our little shop and is constantly evolving with new stock (as new as it gets in a second-hand bookshop that is). If you’re after recommendations, we’d absolutely suggest some Golden Age crime – particularly those written by E C R Lorac, George Belllairs, or Christianna Brand is also great. Any Agatha Christie fans looking for their next read might enjoy Ngaio Marsh or the Lord Peter Wimsey novels by Dorothy L Sayers, or if contemporary police crime is more your speed, we’ve got an extensive collection of both Elly Griffiths and Anne Cleeves which we think will hit the spot. Alternatively, if you’re feeling particularly cosy, we’ve got some amateur sleuths in books by Julia Chapman, Rev. Richard Coles and Richard Osman which are always a popular choice for the season.
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We’ve also got some fab autumnal favourites for younger readers, including the Harry Potter series, many of Enid Blyton’s classics and the Framlingham-based Christmas tale Polly Cotton Investigates, by none other than the owner of this bookshop under the pseudonym Phil Vincent.

We are, as always, happy to order in anything we don’t have on the shelves – drop us an email, give us a ring or just pop into the shop and we’ll be very happy to help!

We’d love to hear your thoughts on your autumnal favourites for when the evenings are darker and you whip out the hot chocolate – leave us a comment, write us a reply or come and talk to us in the shop if you fancy.

Happy reading!

Hannah Grogan 
September 2026

​How do we define the Western literary canon? It seems to be the sort of elusive concept that everyone generally knows what it is, and what belongs to it, yet there’s no solid definition. Many critics have tried of course, and even created lists of canonical texts, yet the contested or controversial nature of their arguments makes me hesitate to draw on any one of them for a simple definition. 
 
With this in mind, the general consensus amongst critics, bloggers and readers is that the canon consists of the ‘classics’; texts that are considered culturally significant and worth preserving in Western history and tradition. Other keywords that popped up in my reading were original, essential, timeless, influential, enduring, and the universally agreed upon ‘greats’. The idea of the canon as an academic tool also came up, used to determine which texts are worth teaching to younger generations. Interestingly, the word ‘canon’ itself is derived from the ancient Greek word for ‘rod’ or ‘standard’, which feels particularly relevant; canonical texts being those that we take as standard in literary studies: the benchmark to which other authors must aspire to, and the standard that we, as readers, compare them to. Some authors that come to mind are Orwell, Tolstoy, Austen – you get the picture.
 
The logical follow up question, to me, is: what is its purpose? Why do we have one at all? While I’m sure defenders of the canon could think of many, these seem to be the main three that have stood out to me:
 
Firstly, very simplistically, as a reading guide. The sheer volume of literature produced over centuries makes it impossible to read everything; the canon presents a list that, at the very least, is generally agreed upon to be worth reading and have something to offer. 
 
Secondly, and possibly the most logical reason for defending the canon, is for cultural teaching and preservation. Sometimes books are canonical not because of their inherent literary qualities, but because of what they tell us about the culture and experiences of the periods in which they were written. They become cultural artefacts, detailing historical moments, social values, political movements, even linguistic developments, portrayed through the literature we preserve through granting them canonical status.
 
Thirdly, as an educational framework. Faced with centuries of literature, schools must decide which texts are the most valuable to teach to their students. The canon offers a framework for making those decisions, highlighting works considered culturally significant, influential or foundational to literary study.
 
Now, the problem for me in this seemingly straightforward perception of the canon is that the very existence of a canon opens up far more questions than it answers. Primarily, if the canon is a reading guide, who decided these texts were the ones worth recommending? If it exists as a form of preserving cultural history, who decided which select parts of Western culture are worth preserving? What experiences, historical moments, social commentaries, the very perspectives from which they are written are worth taking forward? Similarly, which texts are influential enough to teach in schools? By what criteria do we judge them and who does the judging? And if the answer is that canonical texts have simply been declared the most timeless, influential, important books we possess as a society, what exactly do these words mean and who judges them as such? Can these qualities be judged objectively at all? 
 
This line of questioning got me thinking about something I read in Grayson Perry’s book, Playing the Gallery. He talks about beauty, and how we perceive and judge beauty, particularly Proust’s idea that ‘we only see beauty when we’re looking through an ornate gold frame’.
 
What he means, as Perry discusses, is that our idea of what is beautiful is often socially conditioned. Things do not necessarily possess an inherent quality that makes them beautiful, but rather become perceived as beautiful through exposure, reinforcement and cultural agreement. We see the gold frame and assume what sits within it must be worthy of our respect and admiration.
 
And perhaps literature works much in the same way.
 
How much of ‘great’ literature do we consider great, simply because it has been presented to us as great? We very rarely encounter a canonical text out of context: we approach canonical texts as canonical texts, and with the reputation and influence that comes with this rather than every really experiencing it on its own terms. The more something is praised, discussed and taught, the more established it becomes, the more its reputation precedes anyone’s individual opinion of the writing itself. The canonical status becomes the gold frame we see before we see the painting. 
 
This ideology also has a clever way of reinforcing itself. Let’s say that particular books survive because people continue to read them, teach them, rewrite, re-enact, republish and recommend them, and once a text has survived this process for a while, that survival itself becomes evidence of its greatness. The ‘timeless’ nature of canonical books therefore becomes somewhat self-perpetuating; we preserve books that we decide are worth preserving, then used their preservation as proof that they’re worth continuing to preserve. 
 
Just to be clear, I’m not saying canonical writers are underserving of being recognised; Shakespeare’s reputation can’t be explained away simply by generations of people being told he is brilliant. But my question remains: do we recognise and respect the canon because these books are objectively great, or do these books feel objectively great because we’ve spent generations recognising and respecting them?
 
For me, this is where the canon becomes problematic. Reading is an entirely subjective experience. A novel that changes one person’s life could be sentimental drivel to another. Yet the canon presents itself as objective. It establishes a hierarchy of texts, elevating some works as more valuable, more important and worthy of elevation than others. Harold Bloom, for example, asserts that Shakespeare “sets the standard and limits of literature” – but how did we establish this standard? 
 
And this is where my difficulty with the canon lies. If literature is experienced subjectively, can there ever really be a universal standard? 
 
And the best thing to do looking forward, I think, is to stay curious, stay critical and keep questioning the canon. Taking the canon as an absolute verdict seems to me a very restrictive and, honestly, lazy way to think about reading. If you think Dickens deserves his canonical status, that’s great, but why? Is it the gold frame around his novels or is it his compelling writing style and social commentary? Are there any authors never mentioned in discussion of the canon but you think they should be? Diversifying and modernising the canon is a hot topic in the humanities, but are we questioning the need for a canon at all?
 
As Grayson Perry wrote, “the art world needs more people to keep asking it questions, and thinking about those questions helps the enjoyment and understanding of art.”
 
Happy reading!

​Hannah Grogan
​ August 2026

What are your guilty pleasure books? The books that you know are terrible, but can’t put down? Anything you’ve read five times over but would disclaim your love for it with “I know it’s bad but…”
 
The ‘guilty pleasure’ seems to me a curious way to describes our relationship with certain books, and I think it’s worth unpacking a little more seriously. 
 
So, what is a guilty pleasure? 
 
Cambridge dictionary describes the term as “something you enjoy that you feel slightly embarrassed about or think you should not do, because most people do not think it is good.” 
 
If we think in literal terms, “guilty”, to me, implies doing something wrong - with a general sense of culpability for said wrongdoing - while “pleasure” connotes enjoyment, happiness and satisfaction. “Guilty pleasure”, then, seems a somewhat paradoxical term associating a negative action with a positive feeling.
 
Like many things, guilty pleasures are a socially constructed concept derived from how we and other people view and speak about them. When I spoke to a few of my friends and family about their guilty pleasure books, the most common phrases fell something along these lines: 
 
“I know it’s terrible but…”
“Don’t judge me but…”
“It’s so bad it’s good”. 
 
Their responses indicate that we speak about guilty pleasures in a way that’s distancing ourselves from the material, particularly our literary taste. We almost defend ourselves from the implied allegation that we actually think such a book is worthy of reading, reassuring people that we do, in fact, know better and that Twilight isn’t as prestigious a read as War and Peace. Paradoxically, maybe it’s a way to exemplify our good taste, saying “I may read this rubbish, but the fact that I know it’s rubbish proves that I actually do have good taste.” By saying a specific book, author or genre is ‘bad’, we’re signalling that we actually do have a much more refined collection of classics on our living room bookshelves and this particular book is an exception from our otherwise exemplary taste.
 
This, of course, is vastly different from the way we talk about books we’d consider more respectable. These conversations seem, to me, to vary from accomplishment – “I finished Dosteovsky!” - to obligation - “I really should read more classics” - but we rarely feel the need to distance our own taste from the novel or author we’re reading in the same way we’d talk about our guilty pleasure books.
 
A clear distinction emerges in the ways we describe our relationship with literature: some reading is proudly presented as time well spent, while other reading is admitted to almost apologetically. So why do we consider some categories of reading a better use of our time than others?
 
I think, at some point, we’ve created a segregation between productive and unproductive reading. Some books are seen as beneficial, and some are not. Reading more ‘respectable’ books is seen as a more valuable use of time because we feel like it educates us, broadens our perspectives, makes us think critically, intellectually challenges us or, simply, makes us feel more ‘well read’. Reading has become a method of self-improvement, and any books that do not contribute to this in a purposeful sense are considered timewasters, or an unproductive afternoon. And while these are all perfectly valid, and important, reasons to read, it makes me wonder where does enjoyment fit in?
 
There’s a critic named Arielle Zibrak who talks about guilty pleasure reading as “baths for the mind”. In her analogy, she talks about how we interpret the ‘point’ of doing something. As she describes, we take a bath because the point of a bath is the bath. There is no aspect of self-improvement, an end goal or an expectation to emerge from a bath more knowledgeable about bathing; it is simply an enjoyable experience, and the enjoyment is the point. 
 
What I like about her analogy is the permission it gives us to rethink our idea of what makes reading valuable. A bath may not teach us anything profound, but we don’t consider it an embarrassment, or an evening wasted. Similarly, if a supposedly ‘trashy’ novel is a source of emotional comfort or makes us laugh, even fleetingly, would we really consider it a complete waste of time? Perhaps the point of reading, in some circumstances, is the enjoyment we get from it. 
 
It makes me wonder if our definition of productivity is narrower than it should be. We readily accept knowledge, education and intellectual development as valuable outcomes of reading, so why would we not include pleasure on this list? I’d argue that most of us would probably agree that happiness and enjoyment are, in part, a sign of a life well-lived. So why are books labelled ‘guilty pleasures’ simply for bring us enjoyment? Shouldn’t making us happy count as something worthwhile for a book to do? 
 
To clarify, none of this is to suggest that all books are of equal literary quality; literary criticism exists for a reason, and some books can be derivative, badly written, poorly structured etc., while keeping us hooked. However, I don’t think we should dismiss reading for enjoyment as an unproductive use of time. Perhaps literary value comes in different forms, and books with frivolity and drama that make us desperate to turn to the next page are just as important in keeping the art of the novel alive as those bursting with complicated language and cultural nuance. Particularly as it’s the National Year of Reading, maybe 2026 is the year to ditch the literary snobbery, stop labelling novels as ‘guilty pleasures’ and read whatever makes us want to keep reading.
 
Happy Reading!
 
Hannah Grogan
​July 2026

Hannah Grogan - owner Chris's daughter - is now assisting in the shop and with the newly renamed Substack Newsletter/blog 'Secondhand Bookmarks'. We would love it if you could read and subscribe HERE. As you can see from her previous post about the Bechdel Test, she is an English graduate with a keen eye on the cultural impact of books and bookshops. Thanks in advance! The world of bookselling is tough at the moment and we're working hard to make sure we have all the books you'll ever need...

Just to prove that Framlingham Bookshop is a proper family affair, we now have recent graduate Hannah Grogan behind the desk. Assisting Chris and Suzie, she is also going to write for the blog. Here is her first, fascinating post about how women are written in film and literature.

When settling down for the evening and choosing a film, my mum and I often find ourselves craving something similar; “something with some good female characters in it”, or as my mum would say, “a bit of female psychology”. While many films have an abundance of female characters, even as the protagonists, it so often feels like something is missing and finding a film that ticks this box is always harder than it sounds. So, what is missing? Why aren’t these characters hitting the spot?
 
It is only recently that I have come across the Bechdel Test. While first imagined as something of a joke or social commentary in Alison Bechdel’s 1980s comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For, it has gained serious traction through the 2000s and found its way into mainstream film criticism. The beauty of this test, in my opinion, is its simplicity. It requires us to ask three questions: 
 
Are there two named female characters? 
Do they talk to each other?
Do they discuss something other than a man?
 
Easy peasy. Or so you’d think. I certainly did. However, upon reflecting upon some of my all-time favourites, I was surprised at how many did not reach these simple requirements.
 
Now it’s in my head, the pattern is hard to ignore. The issue isn’t the lack of female representation in itself, but how they are represented. These characters appear as wives, mothers, daughters, objects of desire, support systems, moral compasses, an ‘avenge her death’ plot line or a reward to be won after saving the world. They propel all sorts of complex storylines, yet their narrative function is perpetually shaped in relation to the men they orbit.  
 
Working in a bookshop, I suppose its natural that I’ve started to think about the Bechdel Test in literature too. It surprised me how often that same slightly unsatisfied feeling came down to this simple, usually unnoticed absence. Just as with films, many novels offer plenty of female characters, and more frequently named than in films, yet something is missing. Asking the questions of -  are they talking to each other, and what are they given narrative space to talk about? - has begun to run in my head alongside the act of reading. A lens through which to read, notice and respond. 
 
Personally, I don’t think the Bechdel Test is asking if the author is a feminist or intending to make an accusation. Indeed, I believe that nearly all the books and films that fail the test are doing so completely subconsciously and that’s exactly the point. Failing to meet these requirements isn’t deliberate, but instinctive. A reminder of how often women are imagined, by default, in relation to men.
 
This isn’t to say the test is perfect; it certainly has its limitations. Texts that pass can still reduce and objectify their female characters or exacerbate sexist ideas. If we see two named women conversing about the weather, it will technically pass despite a lack of character depth or agency. Similarly, some pieces of work may possess a complex and developed female character without meeting the requirements, especially in literature. Novels, particularly those written in the first person, can grant a deep and nuanced female perspective through internal monologue or interactive engagement with the reader while denying the characters meaningful exchanges with one another. Would we say this lacks representation? Where do we draw the line?
 
In my opinion, passing the test does not make a work necessarily progressive nor does failing it label it sexist. Rather than delivering a verdict on a single book or film, for me, it offers a way of paying attention - a lens through which to watch and read. It’s real value, I think, lies in the conversations it opens up, prompting us to notice who is given narrative visibility, and how this quietly shapes our perceptions and expectations.
 
We'd love to hear some of your favourite examples of books that pass or fail the Bechdel  Test. Some great books that do pass the test currently stocked in the bookshop are:
 
The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood   
White Teeth by Zadie Smith 
Union Street by Pat Barker
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott 
 
Happy reading!
Hannah Grogan January 2026

Peter Grogan Ceramics sells well in the summer holidays and Peter has recently added these cute book brooches into the line. They are great as gifts - just £3 each or two for £5 and there are many other designs to choose from. They also come as necklaces at £4. 

A teacher came in with her family this week and suggested he make lots for World Book Day or to sell as a gift for teachers at the end of term. Maybe she just wanted one herself, but it's a good idea. What do you think?

It was 'one of those days' in the bookshop yesterday. Tuesday is one of two market days here in Framlingham and local shops always hope that, in the summer, a few more visitors will come through the doors. And yesterday they did - and went out without buying anything.

So I took to Substack to ask some questions about what we sell, what might we sell and how to turn those who say 'lovely shop!' and 'I'm so pleased we still have physical bookshops' into customers who buy even one paperback.

So if you have a moment, do check out the post below and tell us your thoughts. Local shops here are surprised at how quiet it is in Framlingham for June. World events? Maybe.

Flaming June (or rather showery and cloudy June thus far here in Suffolk) has been designated National Crime Reading Month by the fabulous Crime Writers’ Association. For a whole month, and in collaboration with The Reading Agency, new books are promoted to those who already love the crime genre and for new readers, the whole world of crime writing is opened up with events in places such as bookshops, libraries, theatres and online. 

Crime is the world’s bestselling genre – in our shop too - and there really is something for everyone. In Framlingham Books, we see readers who love classics such as Agatha Christie and Dorothy L. Sayers, cosy crime, dark thrillers, popular TV detectives and spy thrillers. There are even detectives in sci-fi and fantasy novels and books for children. From Hercule Poirot to Jack Reacher, Miss Marple to Vera Stanhope, there is a detective for everyone.

At the end of the month, the Crime Writers’ Association hands out the coveted Daggers – awards to best crime writing of the year. 

You can find out more on the Crime Writers’ Association and NCRM websites, and in our shop where our window display highlights the range of writing encompassed by the genre.

So who are your favourite crime writers? Do you prefer hard-boiled, troubled detectives or those who solve mysteries over a cup of tea and their knitting? We’d love to hear your thoughts!

This post, about the type of books customers look for in secondhand bookshops, is still popular on Substack, even after five weeks. Take a look if you have a mo, and follow No Wriggling Out of Writing for more bookshop news and general writerly chat.

 On Substack, this post introduced readers to Framlingham Books and examined why secondhand, and new, bookshops are so important. We have real value in our local community which is heartening and we are grateful to all those who come in year round, even when it is colder inside than out, and buy a book.​

Read more HERE on the Substack site (which is full of bookish tales and wonderful writing.)