ARTY BEES BOOKS NEWSLETTER

04 January 2004

Well hello there y’all, yes, it’s a new year (2004, doesn’t that sound so sci-fi?) and newsletter time too and what excitingness we have to share with you!

First of all I simply must tell you about our party! (No visitors allowed except on important party business! — other nerds’ll know what I mean.) October 6th was the date of a good ol’ knees-up because golly gee there were an awful lot of things to celebrate! 15 years since the beginning of the Bees Empire (we’re positioned at either end of Courtenay Place now and the plan is that we’ll spread and eventually meet in the middle), 10 years of the delightful management skills of Matt and Robynne, a belated opening party for the brand spanking new Bizy Bee’s, and last but certainly not least the advent of Bob’s 80th year on this earth!
So as you can see, we had to do something to commemorate all these amazing things, and one big party was far more sensible than lots of little ones. So out went the invitations to family, friends and customers that have hung around so long they have become friends, and on the night of October the 6th everyone crammed themselves into Bizy Bee’s to partake of wine, rather delicious little tit-bits and be regaled with highlights form Bob’s long and illustrious life. It was exciting, it was fun, there was drama, there were tears — hell, it was even touching. Kind of like watching Lord of the Rings (including the length, maybe…)

Speaking of LOTR, Monday December the 1st marked another momentous occasion as the entire population of Wellington took annual leave and surged into the streets to watch (and hopefully touch, maybe even manhandle) the stars of our favourite film.
It was a very quiet day for both our stores, but a great leap for humankind as Wellington hosted the premiere of Return of the King. Excitement levels were high (Did anyone see the girls holding the ‘De-Bloom Me Orlando’ banner? Yikes!) and those with sharp eyes may have spotted some of our staff members amongst the crowd in full medieval regalia.

Now to descend from the epic to the more everyday — but still pretty jolly exciting, I promise. The new science fiction has hit the ground running and continues to be successful, and now the new detective titles are arriving to join the party. Yes, after all our promises, the detectives are finally here! Our new stuff includes authors such as J. D. Robb, Robert van Gulik, Sharyn McCrumb, Tony Hillerman, and many others! It’s very cool! If you are at all into detective fiction, come and check them out — you won’t be disappointed.

Continuing with book stuff, we are starting to catalogue our antiquarian titles and are aiming to have them online before March, so keep an eye out for those if you are anything like John Rhys-Davies and like to rifle through the cabinets (I’m sorry Mr. Rhys-Davies for throwing your name about so shamelessly, please forgive me. It’s just so exciting!).

As for the staff, Pippa continues to endure our rather odd company, and, I’m afraid to say, seems to be fitting in rather well. Our condolences. Also, we have gained, or should I say absorbed, yet another employee. It’s getting difficult to keep track around here… Anyway, we are mildly shocked to report that this new person is a boy, not quite sure how that happened, but we’ll say welcome on board anyway to Joe, who can be seen here on Saturday mornings (poor sod…).

And I think that’s about it for this month. Hope you all had a good New Year and you continue to read books. See ya next time!

Moo

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September 2003
August 2003
June 2003
April 2003
February 2003
November 2002