Borders Southampton opens it's doors on December 1st and this blog will follow the ups and downs of opening and running the largest bookstore on the South Coast. The management team is made up of Matt, the General Manager, Trish, the Operations & HR Manager, and me - I'm Dom and I'm the Sales Manager. Alongside us are 4 Supervisors: Becca, Kiran, Rob and Rose. Hopefully you'll get to hear from all of us at some point. As well as talking about what's happening in the store and in Southampton, we'll also try and give a taste of what we're reading, listening to, and watching - and hopefully you'll recommend books, etc. for us to try! Anyway...

A couple of weeks ago the management team were sent to stores around the country for their 'specialist' training. The sales team (me, Becca and Rose) spent the week just down the coast in Borders Brighton. One of the best things about these training weeks is the simple joy of being back in a store (especially after weeks of surviving on a laptop and a bag full of paperwork!), made even better as it's the build-up to Christmas.

Christmas in a book store is great, the sheer volume of new titles making the job of selling even more fun than normal - big name novels, TV chefs, bizarre humour titles, celebrity biographies. And of course, everyone is out promoting their book, hoping to stand out of crowd.Borders Brighton experienced both sides of the promotional coin that week. On the Saturday, Big Brother winner Pete Bennett launched his new book Pete: My Story . Events Supervisor is one of the most interesting jobs in a Borders store, and Rob at Brighton is one of the best. But it's not everyday that you have to have daily security meetings and give quotes to Heat magazine. Rob handled the whole thing with supreme calmness. On the other hand, Michael Dobbs dropped in unannounced on Friday lunchtime. Dobbs is best known for his book (and TV drama) House of Cards , as well as series of novels about Winston Churchill. He was passing through Brighton and came in to Borders to sign stock of his new book First Lady , an exciting return to Westminster that's bound to be in many stockings this Christmas.

Dom's Week

Reading - The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
Heavyweight reading (for me!). The Leopard is a classic of Italian literature, nineteenth-century Sicily on the brink of revolution, splendour and squalor.

Listening - Small Change by Tom Waits
So This Is Great Britain by The Holloways
Back In The D.H.S.S. by Half Man Half Biscuit
Classic Waits, the poetry of dark streets, the broken-hearted and underground lives; The Holloways are one of the hottest bands in the UK at the moment, calypso-tinged Britpop from London; and a revisit to a band of my youth - HMHB are much-ignored these days and deserve a lot more credit for their catchy tunes and biting humour.

Watching - Glimpsed some TV on Sunday: Saw Roma thrash Catania 7-0 (while my boys, Fiorentina could only scrape a 1-1 draw away to Ascoli) and watched this week's Heston Blumenthal show - fascinating as always, despite it being about the perfect steak and me being a veggie! Might have to think about getting the recipe book that accompanies the series.