History
Libra Aries Books was started on 25th October 2000 (when the Sun was in Libra, and the full Moon in Aries). Our first outing was as a stall on Leicester's Xmas Sunday market, with just a few dozen titles. From the start we specialised in subjects that interested us and we had some kinda knowledge of: we are pagan hippy tree huggers, so you get the idea.
By 2001, the stall was travelling to specialist fairs and conferences across the country. This is still a major strand of our business. In 2005, we had a stall at Cambridge's Strawberry fair - Britain's largest and longest running free festival; we travelled from Ludlow's Esoteric Book Fair to Colchester's Leaping Hare; from Abbots Bromley Horn Dance to the Anarchist Book Fair; from long lazy summer weekend camps in Mercia & Yorkshire to the cosy comfort of Romsey Town's Wild Thyme Vegan Café.
We opened a shop on Cambridge's famous Mill Road in August 2004, and dubbed it "Cambridge's Alternative Bookshop".
We have broadened our range as space and money have permitted, and we now stock a wide variety of books on subjects of alternative spirituality (from buddhism to occult), alternative ideas (from ancient mysteries to anarchy), alternative healing (from herbs to dolphins), and alternative action (from organic gardening to peace protest). We also stock craft items, quality greetings cards, tarot decks, and a range of crystals.
We attempt to source our stock directly from the publisher where possible, particularly with small independent publishers who have a hard time of it these days. When we do use distributors, we favour those that are small and independent as generally they have the most interesting titles.
2005 saw a full programme of events at the shop too. In March we launched our Sunday Tea Party series, which ran till August, and took the format of a talk or lecture, followed by informal discussion over a cuppa. We were privileged to host talks by a number of published authors - Nigel Pennick, Anna Franklin, Andy Worthington, Bob Trubshaw (publisher of The Folklore Society's Book of the Year), Gordon MacLellan, Prudence Jones - as well as local speakers.
As the tea parties came to an end, we initiated a series of Thursday Evening Activities, which ran till November. The series included workshops on bead-weaving, bookbinding, chanting mantras, runic yoga, ancient Egyptian aromatherapy, tarot cards, and the I Ching.
In November we revived the Sunday Tea Party format for A Month of Sundays, a series of 4 talks focussed on East Anglian folk traditions; our speakers included Val Thomas, Pete Jennings, and Colin & Karen Cater.
We also managed to squeeze in a book launch and a coupla signings.
Other stuff
We have a full catalogue of our stock online, with shopping basket facilities to order and pay over the net. For the home-page-less, we produce an annual full catalogue of 50 odd pages, with book reviews and author profiles written by us. Quarterly catalogue updates on paper are circulated to our mailing list. We live in Romsey Town and maintain close links with our local community. The shop has become a Free Information Network for Cambridge Pagan Circle, Cambridge Indy Media, Just Living Ethical Guide to Cambridge, The Bharat Bhavan India Cultural Centre, Strawberry Fair Green Area, Environmental Living In Cambridge, Cambridge Forum, Cambridge Vegan Society, Cambridge Friends of the Earth, plus a raft load of therapists, musicians, jugglers, fortune tellers, &c.
About us
As you may have gathered, we are both budding writers, we regularly contribute to local and specialist newsletters & magazines. Together & individually we have written, printed and distributed a number of pamphlets, magazines and booklets ourselves on many subjects over the years, we still do when arsked... Jean has also studied bookbinding, she occasionally rescues damaged books, and frequently conjures up blank notebooks as The Pixie Spellbindery. Tim was a computer nerd in a previous lifetime, and is responsible for a number of Free Software programs. He designed & maintains Libra Aries' infallible stock database, which is the basis of our virtual & physical catalogues. We have recently taken up knitting & crochet.