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itsclydebitches · 6 years ago

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Lovely Good Omens fandom! Many of you have asked for/mentioned having a text version of the Yelp reviews, which if I were a better person I would have remembered to include in the first place. Better late than never? So here’s a version below and I also threw this up on AO3 so there are options. For the record, I’m not at all trained in transcribing visual media, so if anyone wants to add to/edit/do whatever to this post, especially to make it more accessible, you have carte blanche to do so 👍

Also I typed this up in a hurry so, as always, apologies for any typos.

Tagging: @lethargicdolphin, @marithlizard, @pearwaldorf

A.Z. Fell and Co. Antiquarian and Unusual Books

Recommended Reviews

Lindsay F.

London, United Kingdom

71 friends

3000 reviews

9874 photos

So I slipped into this place because I spotted my ex across the street and would have rather chugged a cocktail of bleach, lighter fluid, and a condensed solution of all my middle school years then talk to that asshole. Owner was on me the second I walked through the door and I thought he was gonna be one of those ‘Either buy something or get out’ types. Nah. I spilled the story, said I really wasn’t looking to purchase anything, and he LIT UP like nobody’s business. He gave me tea and promised I’d never run into my ex again. Which is a super sketchy promise on its own and also should have been hilarious coming from a guy a century behind in style.

...Kinda believed him though.

Marina G.

London, United Kingdom

0 friends

33 reviews

48 photos

Pretty sure this guy wants a library, not a bookshop. I mean, he’s nice and all when you first come in, but trying to actually buy a book? Good fucking luck. He’s too busy to see you right now (for the record he’s super bad at pretending to be busy). Or claims that this book has already been put on reserve (then why wasn’t it in the reserve pile...?). Or the price suddenly jumped an obscene amount. Or he just straight up hems and haws until you get fed up and leave. I watched him pull a novel straight out of a woman’s hands once when she claimed that price was no object and she wouldn’t be leaving the store until she’d purchased it. You’d think she was trying to kidnap one of the guy’s kids!

So yeah. Feel like popping in to browse, maybe take pictures for your research, all while making quiet conversation with someone who quite frankly knows his stuff? This is the place for you. Want to actually buy something? Go elsewhere. Pretty sure Fell doesn’t even own a cash register. At least I’ve never seen one.

He wants a library and I’d honestly tell him as much if he didn’t scare me just a little bit...

Aaron S.

New York, NY

68 friends

212 reviews

337 photos

I stayed here for three days once. Found a bathroom off the romance section and a chair hidden away in the back. Way comfier than my mattress at home. Mostly played iPhone games and kept real quiet at night. Experiment ended when I popped out for breakfast and didn’t make it back before a random 10:00am closing. Don’t think the owner ever realized what was up.

Hana S.

London, United Kingdom

112 friends

115 reviews

208 photos

I really love this place. I’ve been coming here since I moved to London, about twelve years ago, and it’s one of the most soothing bookstores I’ve ever had the pleasure of visiting. Yeah, you hear talk of weird things going on at Fell’s, but really? We could all do with a bit more quirky in our lives. And Fell provides that in spades: Annual plants that never seem to wither, let alone die. The smell of incense mixing with cocoa. Strange books tucked horizontally into the shelves, feeling like they have a touch of magic to them. Nonsensical conversations taking place in dark corners (I’m talking candid chats about the apocalypse and whether angels could actually bless all the rains down in Africa. I swear Fell and his boyfriend are the religion Mythbusters or something.) I’m going to sound like a total nerd here for a moment, but it feels like some sort of liminal space. You know when you were a kid and you were just desperate to receive your Hogwarts letter? Or find your own wardrobe to Narnia? That’s what walking into Fell’s feels like. Like you’ve finally found that portal and can stay as long as you like, provided you don’t try to take anything back with you into the ‘real’ world. Hell, maybe that’s why he won’t let anyone buy his books.

Robert T.

Union City, CA

4 friends

26 reviews

3 photos

There’s a snake?? In this shop?? A reALLY MASSIVE SNAKE????? What are y’all doing talkin’ about your meet cutes and shit someone call pest control!

Malini D.

London, United Kingdom

0 friends

48 reviews

99 photos

I’m not gonna pretend I have anything to say about whether this is a good bookstore or not, but if you ever want knitting help you should definitely stop by. Mr. Fell knows an absurd amount about crafts for a guy who looks like my grandpa and he’s now replaced Youtube as my go-to for alleviating “Omg please fix this how the hell did I manage to reverse the pattern??” panic. For the record, I didn’t just wander up to a random bookseller one day and demand that he help me salvage the ruins of my first sweater. I’d taken a seat inside to wait out a storm, had my messy sleeve stuffed into my purse, and he’d offered the help. Bit of a bastard about things like gauge and color--not everyone wants to wear tartan, dude--but you get used to that. He means well. Said I should come back to show him the finished piece, which I did. Things just kind of spiraled from there. He’s an absolute treasure trove of knowledge once you get him talking and a muffin to boot. If he were twenty years younger and in any way straight I would have asked him out in a heartbeat. As it is I’m considering setting him up with Grandpa.

Tiffany L.

London, United Kingdom

132 friends

312 reviews

34 photos

I’m not really a book person myself but I followed my wife in with our seventh-month old and was kinda embarrassed when he started making a fuss. Normally I’m full Badass Mom mode while in public--I’ve got a kid to feed, change, sooth, and you all can damn well deal with it--but this place was so quiet Liam seemed extra loud in comparison. I was about to take him back out when a man appeared out of nowhere. The owner I guess, based on how some of these other reviews describe him. Older gentleman with clothes out of some period piece. Anyway, he scoops Liam into his arms like he was born for it and started bouncing. Our fussy, temperamental, drama queen Liam settled in an instant and my wife got to browse to her heart’s content. I don’t know how he did it, but that man is an absolute angel. Full stars for that moment alone.

Gillian L.

The Hague, The Netherlands

283 friends

256 reviews

60 photos

Anyone know if the old Bentley parked out front is for sale?

Update: It’s really, really, really not

Billy H.

Austen, TX

40 friends

2073 reviews

774 photos

QUEER BOOKS QUEER BOOKS QUEER BOOKS QUEER BOOKS QUEER BOOKS QUEER BOOKS QUEER BOOKS QUEER BOOKS QUEER BOOKS QUEER BOOKS QUEER BOOKS QUEER BOOKS SO MANY QUEER BOOKS!!!

Gabriela G.

London, United Kingdom

3 friends

22 reviews

1 photos

Run by this delightfully frumpy guy who sometimes hands out biscuits from a sewing tin like my gran used to. He asked me if I was looking for anything in particular and I told him my name was Jared, I was 19, but sadly I’d never learned how to read. I have NEVER seen a man more confused in my life. 10/10 would meme him again.

Colie A.

Enola, PA

201 friends

2778 reviews

10382 photos

I’m setting the record straight here since there are a bunch of reviews claiming it’s just London folklore: there is a snake at A.Z. Fell’s. Must be an exotic pet he usually keeps upstairs because I’ve only ever seen it twice. Is it big? Yes. Scary? Fuck yes, but I’ve never seen it do anything more than give a warning hiss at this drunk who wandered in and started yelling. (Are snakes good guard dogs? This one is.) The other time he was just chilling on top of one of the shelves. Snoozing, I guess. I asked Mr. Fell if I could pet him and he said maybe after he woke up, but then I had to get to class and all.

Afraid of snakes? Steer clear. Otherwise I’d really recommend popping in and seeing if he’s around. Idk, maybe I’m just a snake fan but he looks super sweet and chill. Life is short. Boop the snake snoot.

Jeremy W.

London, United Kingdom

86 friends

409 reviews

12 photos

I live down the street from A.Z. Fell’s and let me tell you, this place is spooky as fuck. All sorts of weird lights and noises coming from it. At all times of the day and night too. Either this bowtie wearing bookworm has one crazy sex life or the place is haunted. Jury’s out on which.

Heather Ki.

London, United Kingdom

0 friends

3852 reviews

1 photos

This shop smells. Not that old book smell either, oh no, but like something is molding. I took my little Johnny in here to try and get him interested in something other than those damned video games and I walk into what smells like a whole cloud of toxic mold! My boy has a weak constitution as it is and if he comes down with anything I will be pressing charges, you mark my words.

Jo. W.

London, United Kingdom

32 friends

410 reviews

61 photos

Hey, does anyone want to talk about the fact that this place burned down last month? As in, completely up in flames, I saw it happen, nothing but a smoking husk afterwards? Does no one else remember this??

Tiggi N.

London, United Kingdom

32 friends

33 reviews

24 photos

Has anyone read this guy’s opening hours? I included a photo above: “I open the shop on most days about 9:30AM perhaps 10:AM. While occasionally I have opened the shop as early as 8, I have been known not to open until 1.” Absolutely insane. This guy’s a madman and I love him. If anyone actually manages to get into this place please let me know because I need to shake Fell’s hand.

Mackenzie J.

City Centre, Manchester, United Kingdom

807 friends

2592 reviews

13218 photos

I told my girlfriend this shop’s got a snake named Anthony and she didn’t believe me. Going back for proof next week.

Update: got the snake selfie!!!!!!!!

Penny O.

Chicago, IL

87 friends

557 reviews

16 photos

Caught the owner snogging some hot twink behind the cookbooks. Well done, my dude.

#good omens #ineffable husbands #air conditioning #good omens fic

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helptowriteabook1-blog · 5 years ago

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How To Write A Book

Very simple. It starts with understanding the market. A scary business Writing books is a scary business, but the scariest bits of the entire game is this: it's very easy to make a complete mess of the entire project before you get written your first word. You can misjudge the market. You can foul up your plot. You can have a hopelessly insufficient knowledge of your characters, or the world in which they find themselves. If you get these things badly wrong in the outset, you're headed straight for a giant mess. So planning matters. At the same time, any form of creative composing needs a kind of fluidity. It's just not possible to plan a thing out completely. For one thing, it's hard to help squash all your inventiveness into the three month period you've allotted. For another, the process of writing might reveal more to you about your characters and your story, and you need to give yourself room to answer these insights. The seat of your trousers There is no one single way to approach these issues. I know one publisher who wrote so many notes when it came to researching her first novel that the notes ended up increasingly being longer than the book itself. I also know an excellent author (one of whose books was a great deal promoted on TV and which sold a huge number of copies as a result) who takes precisely the antipode approach. she likes to research a period, get interested in some aspect of it, then she just starts to jot down. she barely knows her character and knows nothing of the story; she just throws the door available and waits to see what will come along. There are a number of other commercially successful authors who work in a similar way. Which means that there are different routes you can take, but most new writers who take one of these more extreme territory will have cause to regret it. If you are an extreme note-taker, then ask yourself honestly whether your book must have more research or whether you are simply procrastinating. It may well be that you are afraid of starting, which is a correctly understandable fear and one to be cured in one way and one way only: by getting stuck in. Since Kinglsey Amis famously put it, 'The art of writing is the art of applying the seat to your trousers to the seat of one's chair'. There's a little more to it than that maybe, but it's still Session One, the only lesson that tolerates no exceptions. Equally, if you're attracted to the vigour and boldness in the 'just get started' approach, ask yourself if you are not, in fact , afraid of the disciplines of planning, if you are not necessarily afraid of them because they're precisely what you most need. It's possible that, without planning anything out, you certainly will write a wonderful novel, appear on TV and sell a zillion copies - but statistically conversing, you are vastly more likely to end up with an unsaleable manuscripts, most of whose flaws were entirely predictable from the get go. Chasing Kay Scarpetta Let's assume, then, that you're sold on the idea of planning things out to some (non-obsessive) span. Where should you start? You start, inevitably, in the place you hope to finish: in a bookshop. A bookshop isn't simply a repository of all the world's greatest fiction and non-fiction; it's a marketplace and a catwalk too. You might want to learn to read wisely, commercially. Let's say, for example , that you intend to write crime fiction. Perhaps you happen to have a delicate spot for the British crime fiction of the 'Golden Age'. You love Agatha Christie, Dorothy L Sayers, Margery Allingham, Bulldog Drummond, the 'Saint' and all the rest of it. So you want to do something similar. Something which includes a modern setting, of course, but nevertheless a novel that brews up the same attractive blend of comfortable living, provided social values, amateur sleuths, decent but bumbling policemen, and a good old splash of upper class experiencing. So you do. You write that book. It boasts strong characters, warm prose and a deft, when contrived, plot. (The contrivances are part of the feel. ) You may well achieve a manuscript that appropriately accomplishes its goals. And it will never sell. Perhaps, in truth, if the book was good enough, you might find a second collection publisher to take it off you for a very small advance. You might even, with a little luck, lure a giant publisher into launching the book at the cosy crime market, where you can perhaps aim to sell 5 and 10, 000 paperbacks tops, and little hope of cracking any overseas market. But you'll never earn a living from writing and indeed, because agents know the way the dice are likely to fall, you'll have the greatest difficulty in gaining even this success, because it won't be worth most agents' while to help you there. Why? Because you're authoring for the market as it was seventy years ago, not as it is today. The modern crime writer has to respond to that Dashiell Hammett / Raymond Chandler revolution of the 1940s. They have to deal with an audience that has learned forensics from Patricia Cornwell, seen society from the viewpoint of a Michael Collins, encountered feminism from Sara Paretsky, learned place from Ian Rankin, studied mood and light with the Scandinavians, and that expects books, enjoy Hollywood, to deliver thrills as well as mysteries. You can't even model your work after current bestsellers. Take the forensically driven novels of Patricia Cornwell as an example. She's still an active writer, and her work still regularly tops bestseller lists on both sides of the Atlantic. But if you write like her, your booklet won't sell. That seems crazy at one level. She's a smash-hit, number one, multi-millionaire bestseller. If you happen to write like her, how can you not do well? At another level, though - the level of commercial reality, in truth - it makes perfect sense. If people want to read Patricia Cornwell, they will read Patricia Cornwell. Next her exhilarating decision to put forensics at the heart of the crime novel, others have followed suit, notably Kathy Reichs and the CSI TV series. There is now a huge forensically-led crime literature, dominated by the names which created it. If, more than two decades after Kay Scarpetta first emerged, you are seeking to chase an identical crowd, then you're twenty years out of date. Instead, you need to learn the market. You need to feel out its leading edge. You certainly essential info the big names in the market you want to write for. In crime fiction, for example , no writer can afford to never read Patricia Cornwell, because she's created such a large chunk of the contemporary crime vocabulary. But that is the historical part of your research. The current part is this: you need to buy and read debut novels issued as a result of major publishers in the last two or three years. You need to pay very particular attention to the novels that have done abnormally well (won prizes, been acclaimed, sold lots of copies), because these are the novels that publishers independently will use as their lodestars. The recency of the novels matters acutely, because you that guarantees contemporaneity. The reality that they are debut novels (or perhaps second novels) also matters, because it proves that the work is being produced for the qualities of the work itself, not because of the author's name, fame, or past achievements. That a serious publisher has its name on the book also matters, because it's likely to indicate that a good n amount of money has been paid for it. It's a probable indication that the market considered that book by that author to remain 'hot'. Needless to say, it's not enough to read these books. You also have to know what to do with them. Pigeon English, a first innovative by Stephen Kelman, recently sold for a high six-figure sum, following an astonishing auction contested simply by 12 different publishers. The book has been sold to publishers in the US, the UK, Brazil, Canada, China, People from france, Italy, the Netherlands, Russia, Spain, and elsewhere. Books like this come along very seldom and its author was altogether unknown beforehand. Yet his book looks set to be a massive world-wide hit. If you are seeking to write with the similar territory, then you need to understand the ingredients of Kelman's success. You don't need to understand them, because you propose slavishly to replicate them, but you need to understand literature as being in a kind of long-running conversation with again. You need to understand what feels current, what feels settled, what feels disputed, what holes and voids and additionally gaps may be opening up. Needless to say, you need to understand this conversation as it applies to your particular genre, whatever that is, but virtually no genre exists in complete isolation from the rest (though sci-fi and fantasy gets closer than most). If you read narrowly, you're likely to miss an important part of the developing conversation. Reading the market well is an extraordinarily challenging art. It is also an extraordinarily important one. It's both the most elusive and the most vital skill this any writer can have. Remember that you're at a huge disadvantage in this area. Every agent and every publisher is actually in the market, buying, selling, talking, comparing. These people aren't mostly reading the books that are on the bookshelves today. They're reading the books that will be on the bookshelves in eighteen months' time. They know exactly what guides are most hotly contested at auction. They'll know which books almost didn't sell at all. They are going to know the advances and the sales stats. When a book does unusually well or flops unusually severely, the trade will grope towards a consensus understanding of the outcome and alter its buying habits consequently. Reading this, most writers will draw the only logical conclusion, and instantly seek out marriage with a literary solution or successful commissioning editor. That's a good strategy and one that I'd commend unreservedly. If, however , people suffer the misfortune of being happily married already, you'll simply need to rub along as best you can. Imagine reading a lot, reading widely, and staying current. Looking inward These strictures might sound as if they're dealing with something external, but they're not really. They're talking about you. Most books that fail at the very first hurdle : that of concept - are more than anything else failures of honesty. You need to approach your own ideas using radical honesty. Is your idea for a book really founded on a good idea, or do you simply have a personalized attachment to it? Are you attached to it simply because it was the first idea that came to you? In very many cases, it does not take latter. Clear-sighted honesty is desperately hard to come by. It's taken me five or ten years to get close in addition to I've plenty more to learn yet. But one powerful tip is this: you must cultivate a positive posture towards contemporary fiction. In my role as editorial consultant, I often hear new writers say, 'There's so much rubbish published these days, ' or words to that effect. No one who has ever spoken those key phrases has got within a mile of publication. Of course, not all new books are good. There has never been a short while in history when they were. But it's very rare indeed that books are published which are incompetent for their sort. Dan Brown writes bad prose, but his audience doesn't care, as long as the story cracks with. John Banville's narratives may sometimes seem to have stalled completely in a flow of beautiful sentences, nevertheless his readers don't come to him for shoot-outs and car chases. Both authors excel at what people do. If you treat contemporary fiction as an embarrassment and a let-down, you can't hear its conversation. You won't generate anything which seems timely or pertinent. You won't get published and don't deserve to. The cynical path to failure It's also worth being clear about one other thing. I am not advocating cynicism. No cynically prepared book has ever sold. At the Mills & Boon end of the market, perhaps, a few cynically penned books are acquired, though not often even then. You must write for the market, because if you don't the market is usually unlikely to want what you produce. But you must also write with passion and conviction. You must - we should call a spade a spade - write with love. This game is so hard, so filled with challenges, you don't stand a hope unless you do.

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