Lydia McGill has just started volunteering at Oxfam Books & Music, in Hythe, Hampshire. She agreed to share with us her impressions of her new role.
I have been volunteering at my local Oxfam bookshop for five weeks now, and my tenth afternoon there today started with a colleague pouring a pile of paperbacks in front of [...]

Back in May, I wrote about the value of a book being based on sentiment rather than price. “Time capsule-like, turning the pages evokes memories of the outer world (where you were and who you were with) or the inner world (who you were and why) of first and later readings. Maybe the words within [...]

Oxfam has teamed up with the National Association for the Teaching of English this autumn to promote Ox-Tales amongst its readers. 
Best selling author Marina Lewycka (A Short History of Tractors in Ukranian, Two Caravans and We Are All Made Of Glue) very kindly agreed to let NATE reprint her Ox-Tales: EARTH story, ‘The Importance of Having [...]

With thousands of volunteers and staff in Oxfam shops around the country, it’s no surprise that there are many multi-talented people working hard behind the scenes for us. And now, thanks to this blog, we can give some of these dedicated book lovers a chance to step out from behind the tills and the [...]

Andy Barnes is a volunteer at the Oxfam bookshop in Cotham Hill, Bristol. When not volunteering he’s still surrounded by books, working as a bookseller at Waterstone’s. He calls himself an obsessive reader with good reason – he’s on a mission to read at least one book by an author from every country in the [...]

Bookfest 2009 may well be over (and we’ve finished our end notes series at last!), but that doesn’t mean the end of Oxfam book events, promotions and literary celebrations.
There are more than 700 Oxfam shops around the country that stock books, and thousands of volunteers and staff dedicated to the book biz. Shops and [...]

We had a fantastic response to our favourite first lines competition, launched in July to celebrate a first of our own – Oxfam’s first book festival, Bookfest.
More than 160 people told us the first lines closest to their hearts and why. It was hard to pick a winner out of such great entries! We really [...]