Life's stories are always prone to disruption and digression, thwarting the neat storybook narrative we love so much.

Join us in welcoming Boff Whalley, musician, author, and one of the founding members of the anarcho-punk band Chumbawamba and Commoners Choir, for a conversation about BUT: Life Isn't Like That, Is It?, his new collection of stuttering, wayward, disjointed, and ridiculous stories of real life. This hybrid event will be taking place both in-person at our bookshop and as a livestream!

Almost all of our stories follow the same basic pattern: beginning, middle, end: exposition, action, and climax. It’s a neat and tidy way of telling a story. But life’s not like that, is it? It doesn’t obey the rules. Life’s stories—like the stories told here in BUT, personal and impersonal, historical and contemporary—are punctuated by disruption, derailment, and digression. That's why this book is called BUT. Because the but is there to disrupt the easy normality of the way we tell our stories.

Boff Whalley is an English musician and writer. Formerly the lead guitarist for the anarcho-punk and folk band Chumbawamba, he is now a playwright and the founder of Commoners Choir. BUT is Boff's 5th book. boffwhalley.com