November 27, 2021
by Team Riverside
Frank Herbert – Dune
Piranesi – Susanna Clarke
Harper Lee – To Kill A Mockingbird
Jessica Harrison eds – The Penguin Book of Christmas Stories
Brit Bennett – The Vanishing Half
Sosuke Natsukawa – The Cat Who Saved Books
Sarah Moss – The Fell
Noor Murad, Yotam Ottolenghi – Ottolenghi Test Kitchen: Shelf Love
Elena Ferrante – The Lying Life of Adults
John Le Carre – Silverview
Sally Rooney – Beautiful World, Where Are You?
Roma Agrawal and Katie Hickey – How Was That Built?
Merlin Sheldrake – Entangled Life
Amor Towles – The Lincoln Highway
Matt Haig – The Midnight Library
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November 21, 2021
by Team Riverside
Riku Onda – The Aosawa Murders
Elizabeth Strout – Oh William!
John Banville – Snow
Taylor Jenkins Reid – The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
Roma Agrawal and Katie Hickey – How Was That Built?
Noor Murad and Yotam Ottolenghi – Ottolenghi Test Kitchen: Shelf Love
Harper Lee – To Kill A Mockingbird
Stanley Tucci – Taste: My Life Through Food
John Le Carre – Silverview
Frank Herbert – Dune
Nora Ephron – Heartburn
Rutger Bregman – Humankind: A Hopeful History
Susanna Clarke – Piranesi
Charlie Macksey – The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse
Caroline Criado Perez – Invisible Women
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November 20, 2021
by Team Riverside
Hardback, Picador, £14.99, out now
A wildly tense but very thoughtful novel set during the lockdown of autumn 2020.
Kate, the single mother of teenage son Matt, is ordered to remain at home. After several days, she feels that she cannot stand it for another minute. Fell walking near her home is how she usually manages her mental health, and so she decides that a short walk has become essential. She leaves home without telling her son or anyone else, although she is seen by her next door neighbour Alice who is shielding and unable to leave her house. She plans to be quick but time passes and she does not come home. Should her son call the police or rescue services? What if she is arrested and charged, and cannot afford to pay the fine? Alice faces the same dilemma, and Alice’s adult children (who have strong views about telling her what to do but seem not very helpful in practice) urge her to tell the police that Kate has illegally left the house.
Kate’s thinking will resonate with many: “She forgets everything these days, stands to reason that when you deprive people of external stimulus their brains slow down, almost a survival strategy, who could bear to be running on all cylinders and locked in like this, you’d go mad, poison yourself with your own fumes”. While walking, she falls in an isolated spot, and cannot get home. Dark falls.
The Fell is a very quick read but covers so many important human things. What are our duties to each other in extreme situations? How much can we prioritise our needs over those of others?
In addition to the voices of Kate, Matt and Alice, we hear from Rob the mountain rescue guide who is sent to find her. Rob faces his own challenges: forced to leave his daughter to attend the rescue, she is unhappy and disappointed and is sure to let him know it. Between these four perspectives, Moss delivers sensitive and relatable thoughts about how lockdowns and individual stay-at-home orders have played out in real life. These lives touch and overlap and human connections happen.
I did not think I would ever want to read a pandemic novel during a pandemic: there is quite enough of all that going on in my real life without it spilling over into my leisure reading. But The Fell is the best type of fiction. It is compelling on its own terms, as I was desperate to find out what happened, but also useful in unpicking what the crisis means about us, as individuals, as communities, and as a society. This is exactly what Moss is brilliant at, especially in Summerwater and Ghost Wall (see https://riversidebookshop.co.uk/2019/09/08/ghost-wall-by-sarah-moss/). The Fell is helping me to process what’s going on, and work out what I think about it.
Review by Bethan
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November 16, 2021
by Team Riverside
Paperback, &Other Stories, £11.99, out now
As a child, Ruby stops speaking. Her loving family don’t understand, but keep loving her anyway. Her sister is tough and caring, her mother is sometimes ill and sometimes not, and the suburban neighbours are in and out, as are the Aunties and Biji (Ruby’s grandmother).
This sensitive short novel is a very quick read but you’ll want to linger over the language. For fans of her poetry collections Small Hands and Dear Big Gods, Arshi’s fresh and illuminating prose will be no surprise. The chapter titles make you feel like you’re reading a collection of prose poems (I particularly liked De-Catastrophisation (for beginners)) and the story flows easily and well. It’s not a hard book to read but it’s a hard book to put down. I read it in a single sitting.
The racism that Ruby and her family face runs throughout the book. Despite dealing with traumatic things, Arshi’s sharp turns of phrase are often funny: “But I don’t believe my father is an elephant; he is most like a canary. His main role in our family is to detect early signs of disturbance and then to flap his wings and warble a little. Of course, usually no one takes notice, or if they notice it’s too late, but that isn’t, strictly speaking, the canary’s fault”.
The cover art is exquisite and echoes the importance of the garden to Ruby’s mother. I could stare at it all day.
Somebody Loves You sings. Read it and listen.
Review by Bethan
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November 15, 2021
by Team Riverside
Paperback, Penguin, £10.99, out now
Ice, snow, owls: sold.
Naturalist and PhD student Slaght goes to Primorye in remotest Russia in 2006 to research and protect the world’s largest owl, the Blakiston’s fish owl (see excellent pictures in Helen Macdonald’s rave review, here – https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jul/22/owls-of-the-eastern-ice-by-jonathan-c-slaght-review-an-extraordinary-quest). Slaght describes it: “Backlit by the hazy gray of a winter sky, it seemed almost too big and too comical to be a real bird, as if someone had hastily glued fistfuls of feathers to a yearling bear, then propped the dazed beast in the tree.”
This is an account of work at the sharp edge of conservation and research. Slaght is working at a time when local economies are changing rapidly. Logging and free market ventures are expanding into areas of remote and limited fish owl habitat, and it becomes imperative that conservationists work out what the threats are, and what opportunities exist to protect the owl.
This is travel writing as much as nature writing. Slaght conveys how quickly the ancient forest and surrounding environment can change, from conditions that are beautiful and wild to extreme and life-threatening. There are rivers and pools warmed by radon, Amur tigers hunting, hermits and wilderness. Endurance is required to get through the hardships he and his colleagues face in finding, tagging and relocating the owls over several years.
Literally toxic masculinity features, as hunters and others working in the area sometimes engage in extreme drinking to forge trust with strangers like Slaght, who not only is an outsider but also an American and an ornithologist. Several times he’s part of a party that must not break up until the vodka bottle is empty, and sometimes the ‘vodka’ is ethanol. But he gets to work alongside committed lifelong conservationists and assistants, and finds that people will often help him and his colleagues when they need it most.
The owls are known locally as “the owls who ask for a fur coat”. In Russian when a pair sing to each other, it sounds like each is saying “I want a fur coat”. Owls of the Eastern Ice is a truly engrossing and transporting book.
Review by Bethan
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November 13, 2021
by Team Riverside
Roma Agrawal and Katie Hickey – How Was That Built?
Damon Galgut – The Promise
Riku Onda – The Aosawa Murders
Taylor Jenkins Reid – The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
Susanna Clarke – Piranesi
Frank Herbert – Dune
Brit Bennett – The Vanishing Half
Tom Chivers – London Clay
Florence Given – Women Don’t Owe You Pretty
Stanley Tucci – Taste: My Life Through Food
Sosuke Natsukawa – The Cat Who Saved Books
Tim Marshall – The Power of Geography
Various Authors – A Scandinavian Christmas: Festive Tales For a Nordic Noel
Nigel Slater – A Cook’s Book
George Orwell – 1984
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November 6, 2021
by Team Riverside
Riku Onda – The Aosawa Murders
Stanley Tucci – Taste: My Life Through Food
Frank Herbert – Dune
Taylor Jenkins Reid – The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
Sathnam Sangera – Empireland
Elizabeth Strout – Oh William!
Caroline Criado Perez – Invisible Women
Damon Galgut – The Promise
Shon Faye – The Transgender Issue
John Le Carre – Silverview
Bernadine Evaristo – Girl, Woman, Other
Richard Osman – The Thursday Murder Club
Bob Mortimer – And Away…
Roma Agrawal and Katie Hickey – How Was That Built?
Abdulrazak Gurnah – Afterlives
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October 30, 2021
by Team Riverside
Frank Herbert – Dune
Roma Agrawal and Katie Hickey – How Was That Built?
Various Authors – A Scandinavian Christmas: Festive Tales For a Nordic Noel
Riku Onda – The Aosawa Murders
John Preston – Fall: The Mystery of Robert Maxwell
Jonathon Franzen – Crossroads
Lea Ypi – Free: Coming of Age at the End of History
Sally Rooney – Beautiful World, Where Are You?
Rutger Bregman – Humankind
Sosuke Natsukawa – The Cat Who Saved Books
Rachel Morrisroe, Steven Lenton – How To Grow a Unicorn
Stephanie Garnier – How to Live Like Your Cat
Ralph Ellison – Invisible Man
John Steinbeck – The Vigilante
Shon Faye – The Transgender Issue
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October 29, 2021
by Team Riverside
Hardback, HarperCollins, £20, out now
This is a delightful, mildly spooky picture book from the author of Lost and Found.
There are supposed to be ghosts in our host’s large old house, but she has never seen them – can you? With the help of tracing paper inserts and atmospheric photos, we can not only find the ghosts but also see the hijinks that they get up to.
It is a brilliant idea, and a timeless book. It goes for funny rather than scary, and the ghosts are quite endearing. You find yourself thinking that living in a haunted house might be quite jolly.
We have signed copies in store. Happy Halloween!
Review by Bethan
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October 23, 2021
by Team Riverside
John le Carre – Silverview
Roma Agrawal and Katie Hickey – How Was That Built?
Stanley Tucci – Taste: My Life Through Food
Sally Rooney – Beautiful World, Where Are You?
Elizabeth Strout – Oh William!
Caroline Criado Perez – Invisible Women
Elena Ferrante – The Lying Life of Adults
Colm Toibin – The Magician
Bernadine Evaristo – Girl, Woman, Other
Suzanna Clarke – Piranesi
Rumaan Alam – Leave The World Behind
Yotam Ottolenghi, Noor Murad – Ottolenghi Test Kitchen: Shelf Love
Riku Onda – The Aosawa Murders
Florence Given – Women Don’t Owe You Pretty
Shirley Jackson – The Haunting of Hill House
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October 18, 2021
by Team Riverside
Hardback, Penguin Fig Tree, £20, out now
You must be careful when reading this book. You might end up with a shopping list that suddenly includes good vodka, Valtellina cheese, and bushels of fresh tomatoes. I read it on a Sunday afternoon, snacking enjoyably throughout, and had a deeply relaxing time.
Tucci is just as funny, smart and interesting in Taste as he is on his excellent TV show Searching for Italy (https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/stanley-tucci-searching-for-italy-restaurants/index.html). He gives an enjoyable account of moments in his life through food, including hilarious dialogue with his family, right the way through to a surprisingly relatable account of being stuck indoors in London with his kids during the first lockdown. Aged about six, watching a food show on television, his mother tells him that the presenter is cooking a duck. He says “A duck?!!!… From a pond?” His mother says “I guess so. I don’t know”.
Dotted throughout are hungry-making recipes. Achievable cocktails accompany grand epics like the timpano (as seen in the movie Big Night), which turns out to have been a source of both joy and stress in the Tucci household over a run of Christmases. Jay Rayner has a smashing time cooking it with Stanley Tucci though (see https://www.theguardian.com/food/2021/oct/17/the-day-i-cooked-timpano-with-stanley-tucci-jay-rayner).
Fans of Big Night and Julie and Julia will find cheerful behind the scenes gossip here. Tucci namedrops with abandon, which is the only possible way to do it with style. Ryan Reynolds, Meryl Streep, Colin Firth, Marcello Mastroianni and endless friends from the world of food pop up. Taste is both thoughtful and sweary, one of my favourite combinations.
I agree that battered family cookware can be heirlooms, as Tucci notes. There are often things that we associate strongly with the important cooks in our lives. A friend’s mum always made toffee in the same tin: it had hammer marks where years of toffee bashing had occurred. These things are precious.
Tucci’s account of his cancer, which leads him to have terrible trouble with food and eating during his treatment and recovery, is moving and important. That food for him is about connecting with others is clear throughout the book, and his deprivation of this key aspect of life during his illness hurts. His joy at surviving and being able to get back to eating with the people he loves leaps off the page.
I suspect that many people will buy this lovely thing for other people this Christmas. Do this by all means, but read it sneakily yourself first. It’s like being on a sunny food holiday with a generous and entertaining friend. We have signed copies!
Review by Bethan
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October 18, 2021
by Team Riverside
Bernardine Evaristo – Manifesto
Elizabeth Strout – Oh William!
Amor Towles – Lincoln Highway
Karina Lickorish Quinn – The Dust Never Settles
Yotam Ottolenghi and Noor Murad – Ottolenghi Test Kitchen Shelf Love
Stanley Tucci – Taste
Maggie Shipstead – Great Circle
Oliver Jeffers – There’s a Ghost in this House
Matt Haig – A Mouse Called Miika
Richard Powers – Bewilderment
Colm Tóibín – The Magician
Roddy Doyle – Life Without Children
Ruth Ozeki – The Book of Form and Emptiness
Richard Osman – The Man Who Died Twice
Sarah Hall – Burntcoat
Leïla Slimani – The Country of Others
Catherine Madden and Anthony Elliott – Folds
Roma Agrawal and Katie Hickey – How Was That Built?
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October 15, 2021
by Team Riverside
Riku Onda – The Aosawa Murders
Yotam Ottolenghi, Noor Murad – Ottolenghi Test Kitchen: Shelf Love
Caroline Criado Perez – Invisible Women
Richard Osman – The Man Who Died Twice
Sally Rooney – Beautiful World, Where Are You?
Bob Mortimer – And Away…
Marion Billet – Busy London
Sosuke Natsukawa – The Cat Who Saved Books
Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche – Notes on Greif
Suzanna Clarke – Piranesi
Frank Herbert – Dune
Florence Given – Women Don’t Owe You Pretty
Judith Kerr – Mog the Forgetful Cat
Jeremy Paxman – Black Gold
Jonathon Franzen – Crossroads
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October 13, 2021
by Team Riverside
Hardback, Particular Books, £20, out now
This new graphic novel and memoir charts historian Rebecca Hall’s search for women rebel slave leaders in archives in the UK and US. It is gripping, moving, and compelling.
Formerly a social justice lawyer, Hall’s work starts in New York in 1999, and Hugo Martínez’s illustrations show the slaving past literally reflected in the city as Hall walks through it. It’s a brilliant way of showing how the past is inescapable in the present. The graphic novel format lends itself to this so well, literally illustrating the similarities in some behaviour and surroundings between then and now. A smartly dressed white man barges into Hall without seeing her, and in a window reflection a white man in a tricorn hat pushes past another Black woman.
There are newly found stories of women-led revolts here, showing that her exhaustive work has paid off, and they are told with deep humanity.
As with Saidiya Hartman’s work on transforming and disrupting the archive, Hall does the work of interrogating why archives are as they are (anyone who loved Wayward Lives and Lose Your Mother will find this essential reading – see https://riversidebookshop.co.uk/2020/09/23/wayward-lives-beautiful-experiments-by-saidiya-hartman/). The realisation that current racism and sexism have some of their roots in slavery is manifest. The historian as human is very present – “This work I’m doing is hard, and it hurts.”
Wake gives a vivid account of the difficulty of finding people in official archives when their voices are not recorded, being considered of no importance, or when their only seeming presence is as property. She is also explicit about the UK archives which barred her from access, and those which felt they held nothing about slavery.
Hall describes herself as being haunted by slavery. This really is a haunting book, necessarily violent and painful, showing that hard and committed work by historians can be revolutionary.
Review by Bethan
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October 12, 2021
by Team Riverside
Hardback, Allen Lane, £20, out now
I did not expect to laugh out loud while reading a proper scholarly history of the index. But I did, several times. And I now know that the little pointing hand in the margin is a manicule: ☞ (see also https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/manicules).
I did not realise that an index might be more than a handy tool. In the course of Duncan’s account, we find out than an index can be so many other things. For example, a means of revenge, a strange addition to fiction, or a way to satirise an author. We get information on the first things organised by alphabet, the first page numbers, and all kinds of natty anecdotes. One of my favourite bits is 19th century historian J. Horace Round’s extensive diss-fest index entry on his nemesis Professor Edward Freeman, which includes “his ‘certain’ history”, “misconstrues his Latin”, “his failure” and “his special weakness” (p. 14-15).
I am a fan of a good index. They can drive you nuts if they are absent or shoddy. Why would anyone make a travel book without at least a location index? Am I supposed to memorise the location of every café that makes the best bath buns or Black Forest gateaux? One of the most enjoyable I’ve seen recently is the one for Rob Halford’s Confess, in which the Judas Priest frontman’s life is summarised under the entry for Halford, Rob. But this leads to another topic covered in the History, namely the suggestion that students might cheat (gasp) by reading only the index instead of the actual book. Another favourite is in Donald Knuth’s The Art of Computer Programming (volume 3 from 1973). He references “royalties, use of”, and this refers to the purchase of his dream pipe organ (see https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/organ.html).
Index, A History of the has been added to my list of relaxing and entertaining non-fiction that I have found helpful during the pandemic. During the first lockdown, I realised that the most engaging reading I was doing was well written non-fiction on topics about which I knew nothing (lots of scope here, obviously). Top hits for me were Born to Kvetch, Gathering Moss, and Entangled Life.
Make time to work your way through this book’s own index. It is enormous fun and had me cackling. This is what I’ll be getting for my bookish people for Christmas this year.
Review by Bethan
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October 9, 2021
by Team Riverside
Sally Rooney – Beautiful World, Where Are You
Richard Osman – The Man Who Died Twice
Karina Lickorish Quinn – The Dust Never Settles
Sosuke Natsukawa – The Cat Who Saved Books
Caroline Criado Perez – Invisible Women
Shon Faye – The Transgender Issue
Roma Agrawal and Katie Hickey – How Was That Built?
Merlin Sheldrake – Entangled Life
Riku Onda – The Aosawa Murders
Pat Barker – The Women of Troy
Stanley Tucci – Taste: My Life Through Food
William Boyd – Trio
Richard Osman – The Thursday Murder Club
Brit Bennett – The Vanishing Half
Bob Mortimer – And Away…
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October 6, 2021
by Team Riverside
Paperback, Daunt Books, £9.99, out now
Filthy Animals is the new collection of short stories from Booker Prize shortlisted writer Brandon Taylor, fans of his characteristically vivid prose and razor-sharp observations will not be disappointed by this stunning collection.
Taylor has a gift for portraying social discomfort in excruciating detail and this is perhaps best on display in the first story in the collection ‘Potluck’. Lionel, a character recovering from a suicide attempt becomes caught up in the world of Charles and Sophie, both dancers involved in an open relationship. Their encounters are ambiguous but powerful, affectionate but also distant and strange. In stories such as ‘Mass’ there is often an emphasis on the characters physicality, many of them are training to be professional dancers and there is an acute, Degas-like focus on their muscular bodies as a site for potential greatness and also a possible site of disaster. There is a kind of slipperiness throughout the book, many of the interactions between characters turn rapidly from friendly to hostile and back again. But love is always present, after so much anxiety and fraught relationships, the tenderness of ‘Anne of Cleves’ caught me off guard, it’s a beautifully realised story about a relationship blossoming between two women.
The stunning, cinematic quality of Taylor’s prose never fails, each story has a complete world within it, even when the characters fail to communicate verbally, the atmosphere is palpable. I recommend this book especially for fans of Lucia Berlin.
Review by Phoebe
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October 2, 2021
by Team Riverside
Sally Rooney – Beautiful World, Where Are You
Roma Agrawal and Katie Hickey – How Was That Built?
Shon Faye – The Transgender Issue
Caroline Criado Perez – Invisible Women
Richard Osman – The Man Who Died Twice
Tom Chivers – London Clay
Maggie O’Farrell – Hamnet
Suzannah Clarke – Piranesi
Frank Herbert – Dune
Riku Onda – The Aosawa Murders
Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche – Notes on Grief
Brit Bennett – The Vanishing Half
Colson Whitehead – Harlem Shuffle
Bob Mortimer – And Away…
Marion Billet – Busy London
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September 24, 2021
by Team Riverside
Sally Rooney – Beautiful World, Where Are You
Suzannah Clarke – Piranesi
Richard Osman – The Man Who Died Twice
Brit Bennett – The Vanishing Half
Caroline Criado Perez – Invisible Women
Bernadine Evaristo – Girl, Woman, Other
Frank Herbert – Dune
John Cooper Clarke – I Wanna Be Yours
Monique Roffey – The Mermaid of Black Conch
Riku Onda – The Aosawa Murders
Colm Toibin – The Magician
Nadifa Mohamed – The Fortune Men
Sally Rooney – Normal People
Eoin McLaughlin – The Hug
Kazuo Ishiguro – Klara and The Sun
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September 19, 2021
by Team Riverside
We were so delighted to welcome the author and illustrator to install a lovely window display for the new children’s book How Was That Built? by Roma Agrawal and Katie Hickey.
We have signed copies and we are so delighted with our window!
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September 18, 2021
by Team Riverside
Paperback, Raintree and Curious Frog, £6.99, out now
Sasha has an enviable treehouse and a bunch of activities that she’s ready to do at high speed. She even has lists of books she’s read – including a personal best reading time of 20 seconds! This is all excellent fun, but when a sloth bonks down on the treehouse roof, she learns that slow can be fun too.
This very appealing children’s picture book shows a lovely day being had while also providing a useful way in to mindfulness (or just to slowing down and paying good attention). The illustrations themselves provide a great reward for attending: vibrant and cheerful, and little details that repay seeing rather than just looking.
There is a helpful focus on the natural world (and not just sloths), showing that mindfulness and its rewards are possible everywhere. Offering quiet and stillness as positive ways to enjoy the smell of flowers or the sound of birdsong, rather than just as corrections to what adults consider ‘too much’ noise or activity, is also welcome.
Who would not want to learn mindfulness from a sloth?
Review by Bethan
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September 12, 2021
by Team Riverside
Hardback, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, £20.00, out now
Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were executed in the United States for treason in 1953. A married couple, and the parents of two young children, their case became a cause célèbre as a miscarriage of justice, a cultural reference point, and a symbol of US domestic attitudes during the Cold War. Amid all of this, the human story of Ethel Rosenberg has been lost, and this is what Anne Sebba’s engrossing biography corrects.
With access to new information from Ethel’s sons and others who knew her, as well as scrupulous archive research, Sebba meticulously reconstructs the life of this ordinary and extraordinary woman. We find out about her upbringing in a New York Jewish family facing hard times. We are left with the impression of an intelligent, talented and hardworking woman from a difficult family background, who was determined to make her way in life – in education, in singing, as a trade unionist, and as a wife and mother.
The book offers a vivid account of how some Americans came to communism in the 1930s, and how ordinary people started spying for the Soviet Union. Sebba unpicks what Ethel Rosenberg did and didn’t know about the leaking of atomic secrets to the Soviet Union, and gives a detailed analysis of her trial. She conveys the swirl of McCarthyism and anti-communist fever, and the impact of ingrained anti-Semitism.
Sebba spares us nothing, so it can be a tough read at times, but it is so worthwhile. It is no wonder that the biography has been praised by Claire Tomalin, Simon Sebag Montefiore and Philippe Sands, among others. Among the moments of light in the frequently grim story that Ethel’s two young children live through, are the moments of solidarity and care shown to them from unexpected quarters (including at one point W. E. B. Du Bois). Outstanding.
Review by Bethan
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September 9, 2021
by Team Riverside
Sally Rooney – Beautiful World, Where Are You
Riku Onda – The Aosawa Murders
Pat Barker – The Women of Troy
Kazuo Ishiguro – Klara and The Sun
Brit Bennett – The Vanishing Half
Emily St. John Mandel – The Glass Hotel
Caitlin Moran – More Than a Woman
Fran Lebowitz – The Fran Lebowitz Reader
Bernadine Evaristo – Girl, Woman, Other
Rutger Bregman – Humankind
Clare Chambers – Small Pleasures
Charlie Macksey – The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse
Merlin Sheldrake – Entangled Life
Sebastian Faulks – Snow Country
Elena Ferrante – The Lying Life of Adults
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September 7, 2021
by Team Riverside
… are going fast!
Come down to nab yours today.
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September 7, 2021
by Team Riverside
Hardback, Canongate, £14.99, out now
I have just had my first swim in a year and a half. It was a completely joyous experience, and I was reminded how important swimming is for me. Many memories of places and people are bound up with it.
Nina Mingya Powles’s essays, collected in Small Bodies of Water, were the perfect thing for me to read just after this memorable swim. She combines memoir with nature writing, weaving strands about family, identity and home through the work. Swimming features, as do sensory delights of food and travel. Her essay on cold water swimming, Ache, was one of my favourites. She is a generous writer, sharing experiences with us, even painful things like personal and shocking experiences of racism.
Born in Aotearoa New Zealand, spending time in China and now living in London, the author’s experiences and interests coalesce in her writing: “Mum collects mandarin peels and cut lemon skins and places them in the dish after cooking, so that as the oven cools, it gives off a bittersweet, hot-sugar scent. The rinds begin to dry out and curl in the warmth while the dog sleeps at our feet. Not far away, we can hear waves roaring in a southerly gale. Our skin smells of salt and oranges.” (p. 124)
A poet who won the Nan Shepherd prize for nature writing, Nina Mingya Powles writes as beautifully as you’d expect, and wears her thoughtfulness and reading lightly. References to some of Riverside’s favourite books kept popping up. Braiding Sweetgrass, Crying in H Mart, Mixed Race Superman, Wayward Lives and The Living Mountain all feature, and gave me the pleasurable feeling of having a very intelligent friend talking about things I had just read. Her discussion of old family objects and writings as a sort of enduring but complicated archive usefully echoes Maria Stepanova’s In Memory of Memory.
I know I will read this again, and I have already lined up two people to lend it to. It feels like a gift someone has given you, and that you want to share with others.
Review by Bethan
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September 6, 2021
by Team Riverside
Pat Barker – The Women of Troy
Bernardine Evaristo – Girl, Woman, Other
Brit Bennett – The Vanishing Half
Stephen Fry – Troy
Charlie Mackesy – The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse
Riku Onda – The Aosawa Murders
Bella Mackie – How to Kill Your Family
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie – Notes on Grief
Kazuo Ishiguro – Klara and the Sun
James Mayhew – Katie in London
Mary South – You Will Never Be Forgotten
Caitlyn Moran – More Than a Woman
Sayaka Morata – Earthlings
Merlin Sheldrake – Entangled Life
Matt Haig – The Midnight Library
Elena Ferrante – The Lying Life of Adults
Janice Hallett – The Appeal
Olivia Petter – Millennial Love
Elif Shafak – The Island of Missing Trees
Richard Osman – The Thursday Murder Club
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September 2, 2021
by Team Riverside
Pat Barker – The Women of Troy
Elif Shafak – The Island of Missing Trees
John Kampfner – Why the Germans Do It Better
Riku Onda – The Aosawa Murders
Pat Barker – The Silence of the Girls
Bernardine Evaristo – Girl, Woman, Other
Simon Lelic – The Search Party
Fran Lebowitz – The Fran Lebowitz Reader
Brit Bennett – The Vanishing Half
Rutger Bregman – Humankind
Delia Owens – Where the Crawdads Sing
Clare Chambers – Small Pleasures
Michelle Zauner – Crying in H Mart
Ottessa Moshfegh – Death in her Hands
Caroline Criado Perez – Invisible Women
Pen Vogler – Scoff
Bessel Van Der Kolk – The Body Keeps the Score
Judith Kerr – The Tiger Who Came to Tea
Philippa Perry – The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read
Dolly Alderton – Ghosts
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August 31, 2021
by Team Riverside
We were delighted to meet Gemma Reeves today when she came in to sign copies of her novel Victoria Park, which is now out in paperback.
Victoria Park has been a bestseller in Riverside for some weeks now. It was lovely to meet Gemma and we wish her all the best with the book!
Posted in Fiction, News, Nice things, Signed Copies |
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August 30, 2021
by Team Riverside
The very beautiful and well curated new Penguin Green Ideas series has just arrived. We are delighted with the inclusion of Robin Wall Kimmerer’s work, as she is a Riverside favourite ( see https://riversidebookshop.co.uk/2020/07/14/braiding-sweetgrass-indigenous-wisdom-scientific-knowledge-and-the-teachings-of-plants-by-robin-wall-kimmerer/).
Immediately added to our booksellers’ personal reading lists are Michael Pollan’s Food Rules (Phoebe) and Wangari Maathai’s The World We Once Lived In (Bethan).
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August 28, 2021
by Team Riverside
Dear friends, we will be open 11am to 5pm on Monday 30 August.
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The Riverside Way 