Mwhahaha. The Book Grocer rubs her hands together greedily as she contemplates the week ahead. Festival season kicks off this week, and its offerings may be summarised with one word: excellent. Tuesday: VS Naipaul fans will want to head to Daunt Books tonight to hear Patrick French and AN Wilson discuss French’s recent biography of the Nobel Prize-winning author, The World Is What It Is, heralded as a “magnificent achievement” (7pm, £5). Also on:......

What do an ex-Python, Martha Stewart, and a woman in the running for first female poet laureate all have in common? Come on now, use your deductive reasoning skills. They all somehow feature in this week’s Book Grocer, of course! Monday: Novelist David Benioff has a few recognisable names on his CV – he’s both collaborated with Spike Lee and written the screenplay for The Kite Runner. Tonight Benioff is at Foyles to discuss......

Diaries out, bibliophiles. Festival season is almost upon us. No, not the festival season that will have you rolling around in mud or throwing your pants at the stage (well, you could throw your pants at the stage, and we’d certainly provide moral support for that endeavour). We’re talking literary festival season – Christmas in July for the book geeks among us. Let’s start with the little guy first. London Lit Plus launched just......

Happy Bloomsday, friends. If on this, the 104th anniversary of Leopold Bloom’s epic wanderings around Dublin, our column is even less coherent than usual, don’t blame us and our second-rate attempts to mimic the master. On the other hand, maybe you should. Do we contradict ourselves? Very well then, we contradict ourselves. Come, mess. Bloomsday: Alright, so perhaps you have no idea what we’re babbling on about because (GASP!) you’ve cracked the cover of......

Olympic enthusiasts, not only will this book make a pleasant change from following news on Beijing medal hopes, London's dubious Olympic legacy and building sites but it will restore your faith in Olympic spirit and the capacity of countries to fall out over officials' decisions. Oh yes, then as now, the Olympics caused international controversy. Bringing the Games to London with just 2 years preparation, is presented as a feat of derring-do by one......

The British Library isn't always so good at promoting their free exhibition space, but they do tend to lay on something special for those who happen to wander in. Make a point of doing so for this summer's exhibit, The Ramayana: Love and Valour in India's Great Epic, which takes the narrative potential of the museum show and runs with it. Walking through the exhibit is an experience in storytelling -- is, in fact,......

Pardon. The book grocer got some sun this weekend. We find that there’s an inverse relationship between our hours of sun exposure and our ability to talk books. Do you think the connection between weather and literary prowess could explain Britain’s many achievements in this field? Just wondering... Monday: The Bedford Park Festival kicked off a few days ago, and we’re liking its literary offerings. Tonight brings us Wilde at Heart, a two-act play......

Britain's first super prison will probably be in London. Fancy a musical? Well hurry up, Cabaret has now posted closing notices following Spamalot & Gone With The Wind 8 years down the line, the London Eye has rotated it's 30 millionth visitor. We did Latin at University. It's amazing, but Boris, really? Are you absolutely sure it's the solution? And Rose Tremain has won the Orange Broadband Prize For Fiction. Photo taken from Envoy's......

He’s back! Since we first heard the news that Paddington Bear would, after a 30-year sabbatical, shake off the dust of our bookshelves and embark on some fresh adventures, it’s been all we could do to contain our excitement – though stuffing ourselves with marmalade sandwiches certainly has helped. The wait is over. Paddington – or P.Bear, as we like to call him – is back in bookstores this week for his twelfth outing,......

June’s here, and we’re feeling a bit slack. But although the summer blockbusters have rolled into town to lessen the load on our addled brains, literary London keeps on cranking out the heavyweights. Lightweight summer reading? Not here, not yet. Tuesday: You might have inferred that we love London. We do, we really do. Which places us in the company of many a great poet: Wordsworth, Blake, Lawrence. Poems by these and plenty of......

A happy Bank Holiday Monday to you, friends! Can’t bring yourselves to leave the flat and venture out in this stormy weather? Neither can we. But really, we appreciate whatever excuse we can use to dip into the ever-growing pile of books on our bedside table. A look at the week ahead in literary London: Tuesday: Booker-shortlisted author Tim Winton will at the Australian High Commission for the launch of his latest novel, Breath,......

The fifth edition of our favourite pocket sized publication, One Eye Grey, is here. If you went on the latest Londonist walk you'll be well aware of this as Chris Roberts was your genial guide and probably hawked it merrily in your direction. And more fool you if you didn't take him up on his ridiculously reasonably priced wares. For a mere two hundred and fifty pennies you could be reading stories from 'another......

Yet another reason our love runs deep for literary London: this happy little subculture is as diverse as the city itself. On offer this week is an eclectic mixture ranging from an Asian literature festival, to a panel discussion of the utility of creative writing courses, to a talk with a well-known American memoirist. As always, the difficulty is in choosing which events we just can’t bear to miss. Monday: Blame last week’s summer-like......

London's history has been told many, many times. Such is the volume of literature on the subject, it can't be long before someone writes a history of all the history books available. So we were curious what Historic London by Stephen Inwood might add to the mix. And yes, at first glance, this looks like another scholarly account of our city's 2000 year adventure, weighing in at some 400 pages with additional photographic plates.......

Tra la, it’s May, the lusty month of May – and we, apparently, feel like singing. Is it the gorgeous weather? The lovely literary events in our diary? Our trips up and down the too-hot-to-trot Northern Line? The Pimm’s coursing through our veins? (No, surely not that.) Need to ramp up your own book lust for the week? Then have a gander at our groceries: Wednesday: Your choice of poetry events today: As part......

"By the end of the 20th Century," reckons Chris Stephens, Head of Displays at Tate Modern, in his Introduction, "London could claim to have become the world capital of art...signalled by the opening of Tate Modern." Well, he would say that, wouldn't he? But he's got a point. As well as the Tate, the past 15 years have seen the rise of the 'Young British Artists', a blossoming of public sculpture, and street art......

The Long Good Friday. That's if you can judge these things on the index of Movie London by Tony Reeves. This updated tome from Titan Books lists the Hoskins flick 21 times, with John Wayne's Brannigan a close second on 20 entries. The locations of over 500 films are revealed in this smart volume of filmic London - from obscure Ealing comedies to the biggest blockbusters. Do you know which bit of Kensington featured......

There's nothing shabby about Derelict London, a thoughtful compendium of unloved and forgotten buildings, the necrotic ulcers in London's hidden underbelly. Photos from the author, some taken in locations where we wouldn't want to risk an expensive SLR, are backed up with illuminating research and tip-offs from fans of his web site. The book opens with a sorry tale. A ramshackle Victorian cottage in East Dulwich is in limbo - it is Grade II......

Is it just your imagination, or is Londonist going all literary on you for the second time today? No, it’s true: we’re just that geeky. But if the Bard’s birthday bash doesn’t have you all hot and bothered this week (speaketh it softly, or surrender thine literati creds), here are a few alternatives to keep you otherwise engaged. Tuesday: If you haven’t booked already, there are still a few seats left to hear Isabel......

And not by us, for a change. Get London Reading, a glittery literary website, has put together a Google map of over 400 London-based books - both novels and non-fiction, from Brick Lane to London Orbital. As a gimmick, it doesn't always work. Where, for example, do you put a general reference piece like Ed Glinert's London Compendium? On the streets of Northolt, apparently. But on the whole, it's a fun way of visualising......

Rain, rain, go away…flirtatious spring-like temperatures and halcyon moments of direct sunlight belie this week’s forecast for April showers. At least that leaves plenty of time to soak up indoor activities on the cheap before we jet our wellies and get on with the picnic season. Monday: One of our favourite tucked-away speakeasy-esque bars is holding a book club tonight with the theme Dark Heroes. This ain’t no run-of-the-mill Richard & Judy-style book club:......

Any true London lover will, by now, have found the Victorian London web site. This virtual portemanteau of 19th Century source material is compiled by Lee Jackson, whom Londonist interviewed a few years back. We caught up with him again in the Princess Louise pub - a place more Victorian than Joseph Bazalgette's friendly mutton chops. Lee's new novel, The Mesmerist's Apprentice (we're picturing Alan Sugar with hypnotic circles radiatating from his eyes), sees......

A basket full of groceries tempts the book-loving Londoner this week, so let's cut to the chase: Monday: Lots going on this evening. Tickets are still available for a heavyweight foreign affairs chinwag at the Southbank Centre. Longtime Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk, award-winning reporter Christina Lamb and novelist (and occasional Martin Amis basher) Ronan Bennett discuss contemporary reportage and non-fiction at the opening event of the Centre's Writing From The Frontline series. Tickets......

Dispensing with the (attempts at) witty chitchat this week and diving right in... Monday: Still time to get tickets for the Last Tuesday Society’s Hendrick’s Cocktail Party tonight. And should you wonder what tenuous connection we’re trying to make between gin and literature (we won’t play the Snoop Dogg Gin and Juice card just yet), hang on there! It’s not so tenuous. On tap at tonight’s party, along with an abundance of Hendrick’s, is......

Cadbury creme eggs! Don’t you just love ’em? Ha ha, the book grocer sure does! Advance apologies if this week’s serving is full of even more exclamations than usual – we just might be hyped up on milk chocolatey goodness right now. Eventually we’ll crash, feel a bit ill, and begin to suspect that the beady little eyes on those choco bunnies are watching our every move. If the same happens to you (or......

We began this week with a great big gaping void: the very excellent London Word Festival has come to an end (though you can watch highlights here), and our nearly 40-day-long combination chocolate and carbon dioxide fast has left us, well, a bit snippy (we’ll certainly be biting the heads off those cloyingly cute Lindt bunnies come this weekend). In short, we didn’t have great expectations for the week. Yet, after taking a look......

There are just too many good events around town this week for us to narrow our picks for certain nights. Thus we present you with multiple options and leave that difficult choice to you. In the meantime, we’ll be brushing up on our science fiction in an effort to figure out how to move quickly from event to event. The solution? Teleporting. Clearly. Monday: writLoud returns to RADA tonight. We like this event, as......

March already? How did that happen? The perils of having our head buried in a book so much of the time, no doubt. If we must emerge this week from our cosy little book-enclosed chrysalis, it’ll likely be to head to the following events. Monday: The RSL-sponsored TS Eliot Memorial meeting brings together award-winning poets Alice Oswald and Kathleen Jamie for an evening of readings from their work. Both have been lauded for the......

Will we please shut up about these books already? Yes, we will. But not before telling you one last time just how much we enjoyed Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris and how much we look forward to reading Apples by Richard Milward and Submarine by Joe Dunthorne. Our enthusiasm was reaffirmed Thursday evening at Bardens Boudoir, where Milward, Dunthorne, and Ferris each read from their debut novels, as part of......

Blogophobia: an irrational fear, intolerance of, or aversion to the blogosphere. Martin Amis has been accused of far worse, but after hearing him talk at RADA yesterday evening, this was the only accusation we felt it safe to lodge against him. The offending remark came early in the evening when, during his reading from the recently published The Second Plane, Amis effectively dissed Londonist and its ilk as “semi-literate windbags of the blogosphere”. Gauntlet,......