
We have a brilliant range of cards, gifts and wrap for all your Mother’s Day needs this year. Suzanne’s cheerful window display has us all smiling too.
If you need any book recommendations, just come and ask!
The Riverside Bookshop blog
We have a brilliant range of cards, gifts and wrap for all your Mother’s Day needs this year. Suzanne’s cheerful window display has us all smiling too.
If you need any book recommendations, just come and ask!
Margaret Atwood – Burning Questions
Lucy Caldwell – These Days
Marlon James – Moon Witch Spider King
Charlotte Mendelson – The Exhibitionist
Graham Robb – France: an Adventure History
Julia Samuel – Every Family Has a Story
Nikesh Shukla – Your Story Matters
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
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?
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!
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!
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).
Our Summer Reading Promotion is now on in store, get 4 books for the price of 3 (with the cheapest book free). We have titles available across Children’s, Fiction and Non-Fiction, see our full list of titles for purchase in the 4 for 3 promotion below:
Fiction
Burnt Sugar by Avni Doshi
Girl Woman Other by Bernadine Evaristo
Troy by Stephen Fry
Invisible Girl by Lisa Jewell
The Thursday Murder Club by Richard Osman
Islands of Mercy by Rose Tremain
I Am An Island by Tamsin Calidas
V For Victory by Lisa Evans
The Great Fortune by Olivia Manning
Rodham by Curtis Sittenfeld
10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World by Elif Shafak
Us Three by Ruth Jones
Actress by Anne Enright
V2 by Robert Harris
All Adults Here by Emma Straub
Summer by Ali Smith
Non-Fiction
The Body Keeps The Score by Bessel van der Kolk
Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker
The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read by Phillippa Perry
Agent Sonia by Ben Macintyre
Difficult Women by Helen Lewis
Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez
Untamed by Glennon Doyle
Diary of a Young Naturalist by Dara McAnulty
The Moth and the Mountain by Ed Caesar
Sicily ’43 by James Holland
Childrens
The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse by Charles Mackesy
The Unadoptables by Hana Tooke
Worst Holiday Ever by Charlie Higson
Rowley Jefferson’s Awesome Friendly Adventure by Jeff Kinney
The Puffin Keeper by Michael Morpurgo
Kay’s Anatomy by Adam Kay
Hamish Hamilton, Hardback, £12.99, out now
Assembly by Natasha Brown is more than deserving of the glowing reviews it has already received. It’s a slight volume, the plot unfolds over a series of fleeting but intense vignettes and each is crafted to perfection, not a single word is wasted. At times it feels reminiscent of prose poetry or maybe a sparse drama. The narrator is quiet and controlled but burns with quiet anger, acutely aware of the injustices that plague her. She is a black British woman who has found significant success in the corporate world but seemingly at significant psychological and physical cost to herself. She is often a vessel for other characters racist hang-ups, one colleague vents to her about his hatred of diversity initiatives, another calls her office phone to tell her her hair is ‘wild’ and her skin is ‘exotic’. She has a jovial posh boyfriend, who like her attended Oxford and the action unfolds as she anticipates attending his parents lavish anniversary party.
Recently a reviewer compared Assembly to Mrs. Dalloway, but I thought of Brandon Taylor whose novel Real Life has similarly exquisite prose and a protagonist who is out of place in their surroundings and also of The Great Gatsby, although while Natasha Brown’s protagonist is, like Nick Carraway, among the rich and powerful, she is not impressed. When I got to the last page I was sorry to finish Assembly I thoroughly recommend it.
Review by Phoebe
We are delighted to have a bunch of lovely new Art Angels cards in store. Some offer great views of London, and others focus on the natural world. We particularly like these two local scenes.
Get them before they are gone!
We’re very happy to have Luan Goldie’s new book Homecoming in stock – and thanks to Luan for dropping by to sign the paperback of her Nightingale Point!
We were delighted to welcome Ben Aaronovitch to Riverside to sign copies of his new book, False Value. Come and get them while they’re hot…
Ben generously signed copies of his back catalogue too, so fans can upgrade their collection.
Toni Adeyemi – Children of Virtue and Vengeance
Alain de Botton (editor) – School of Life
John le Carré – Agent Running in the Field
Jung Chang – Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister
Richard Dawkins – Outgrowing God
Carol Ann Duffy – Frost Fair
Emily Gravett – Meerkat Christmas
Frances Hardinge – Deeplight
Simon Jenkins – A Short History of London
Jay Rayner – My Last Supper
Lemn Sissay – My Name is Why
Nigel Slater – Greenfeast: Autumn, Winter
Zadie Smith – Grand Union
Rick Stein – Rick Stein’s Secret France
We are looking for a PART TIME Bookseller to join our team permanently.
Bookselling experience is preferred and recent retail experience is essential.
As a key part of our small, friendly and enthusiastic team, you will provide excellent customer service and help keep our well curated stock interesting. Come and join London Bridge’s independent bookshop.
You would need to be available to start in late November/early December, to work weekend shifts, and to work flexible weekday shifts as needed.
To apply, please send your CV and a covering letter to Suzanne Dean, by email or post or by hand, by Monday 11th November. If you’d like more information, please phone or drop into the shop. Call 020 7378 1824 or email info@riversidebookshop.co.uk.
Our next event will be to celebrate the launch of Unladylike: A Grrl’s Guide to Wrestling by Heather Bandenburg, on 18th July.
Unladylike like follows the story of one unlikely woman wrestler and celebrates the relationship between feminism and wrestling. Read an extract here.
Heather will answer questions and sign your books.
This event is free but we have limited space so get your tickets now.
Pictures by Eleanor Wyld from our amazing night in collaboration with The Grapevine Zine to celebrate the launch of Saltwater, the debut novel by Jessica Andrews.
The event was sold out and very busy with readings from Jessica, Zeba Talkhani, Megan Nolan, Yara Rodrigues Fowler, Lucy Freedman and Catherine Madden.
Excellent limited edition Lord of the Rings notebooks from Moleskine are now in stock.
The large size features an illustration of 13th January 3019 – ‘The Company reaches West-gate of Moria at nightfall’.
The small gold size notebook cover shows 23rd September 3018 – ‘Frodo leaves Bag End’.
The small grey size one shows 2nd March 3019 – ‘The Ents march on Isengard’.
All editions come with a Cirth Alphabet insert.
Get your lists made, your poetry written, your work done: “It’s the job that’s never started as takes longest to finish.”
For the Harry Potter fan with their own spells to write, these gorgeous Moleskine Limited Edition notebooks are now in store.
Choose from the Marauders’ Map or Wingardium Leviosa.
“Words are, in my not so humble opinion, our most inexhaustible source of magic, capable of both inflicting injury and remedying it”.
Supplement with The Art of Harry Potter – Mini Book of Graphic Design if you are in the zone!
Gorgeous new signed copies in…
Michelle Paver – Wakenhyrst
Robert Macfarlane – Underland
Marlon James – Black Leopard Red Wolf
Max Porter – Lanny
Elizabeth Macneal – The Doll Factory
Craig Melvin – The Belle Hotel
The bookshop is putting on an event in collaboration with The Grapevine Zine to celebrate the launch of Saltwater, the debut novel by Jessica Andrews.
Jess will read from Saltwater and there will be other readings from:
Zeba Talkhani, Megan Nolan, Yara Rodrigues Fowler, Lucy Freedman and Catherine Madden.
The event is free but ticketed as there is limited space in our shop.
Get your tickets here.
Hardback, Faber and Faber, £20, out now
What more is there is there to say about Joy Division? It’s a fair question, given the memoirs of Bernard Sumner, Peter Hook and Deborah Curtis, the band-biographies by Paul Morley, Lindsay Reade and Mick Middles, all those books on Factory Records and its various alumni… It’s a name that must crop up in print as much as that of any band of the 20th century.
Well, never mind all that because it turns out there’s quite a lot more; and surely no greater person to say it – or rather, compile lots and lots of interviews of other people saying it – than John Savage, preeminent punk chronicler and author of England’s Dreaming, probably the best book about punk ever written. Here are three decade’s worth of interviews with not just the major players, but anyone who ever passed the band in the street (or so it feels like), all neatly intercut to create a simultaneously encyclopaedic and free-flowing narrative of their life and times.
Of particular interest to the Joy Division and New Order fanatic are the comments of the elusive Stephen Morris, the only surviving member of the original group not to have published a memoir (although not to worry, it’s coming out next month) and a man generally painted as a bit impenetrable in both of his erstwhile bandmates’ tomes. Reading that the inspiration for his uniquely sparse drumming began with imagining if “[Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band drummer] John French [had] lived in Germany for a long time and listened to a lot of krautrock” was enlightening, as are his thoughts on recording the band’s monumental duo of albums with famously difficult producing wunderkind Martin Hannett.
Hidden depths are also revealed in Rob Gretton, indomitable manager of the group. Although he gets a lot of ink in the other books, here we get excerpts from the journals he religiously kept showing his attitudes towards, amongst other things, nascent Joy Division classics (“Transmission – very good – maybe screams too much?”). There’s also a telling anecdote related by former New Manchester Review journalist Bob Dickinson in which the young reporter, on assignment to interview the band, has to deal with Gretton bursting in mid-interview with a pile of proto-electro and hip-hip records imported from America. These, he urges the group, are the kind of rhythms they should be adopting: “synthesised drumming, dance-floor.”
That’s a big deal, and it’s not, as far as I’m aware, been touched on that heavily in previous commentaries; even before New Order’s wholesale embrace of electronica, a big chunk of Joy Division’s appeal was its chilly, anti-rockist rhythm section, a flavour that was, in Dickinson’s words, “unearthly and not-quite-human”… That Gretton’s influence could have affected that (not to mention their later dance-heavy direction) was fascinating to me, and it’s the abundance of moments like these – small but eye-opening vignettes, as recounted by someone not previously given airtime in the Joy Division canon – that make this book special. Well worth a read even if you’ve heard it all before, there’s guaranteed to be some insightful nuggets for you in this utterly comprehensive work.
Review by Tom
We have some lovely signed copies in store!
The Library of Ice by Nancy Campbell
Another Planet by Tracey Thorn
Adèle by Leïla Slimani
Jimmy Page by Chris Salewicz
How to Ride a Bike by Sir Chris Hoy
We’re working on a new downstairs poetry display… and we’ve included quotes on belly bands so you can try before you buy and see why we like them all so much. The section will be ever-changing but at the moment it features Mona Arshi, Rachael Allen, Warsan Shire, Hannah Sullivan, Hera Lindsay Bird, Claudia Rankine, J.O. Morgan, A. K. Blakemore, Emily Berry and Richard Scott.
Get a head start on your Christmas shopping and snap up one of our excellent signed copies… when they’re gone, they’re gone!
Stephen Fry – Heroes
Max Hastings – Vietnam
Neil MacGregor – Living with the Gods
Geraint Thomas – The Tour According to G
Moeen Ali – Moeen
Neil Oliver – The Story of the British Isles in 100 Places
Matt Haig – Notes on a Nervous Planet
Tim Peake – Astronaut Selection Test Book
Peter Stafford-Bow – Brut Force
Sir Chris Hoy – How to Ride a Bike
Paperback, Granta, £8.99, out now
Not published until 2016, decades after Collins’ death, these short stories are dazzling rediscoveries. Set during the civil rights era, they explore this radical time with equal parts joy and heartbreak. I love the way her writing describes fully realised characters and the emotional connection between them. In ‘The Happy Family’ the narrator describes a younger man from the titular family, “Andrew had such an incredible presence that even I was often intimidated by him. He was one of those people whom you almost do not assign an age. He had the ability to focus himself on a moment, bring all his presence to bear and so charge the air that you were a bit shaken.”(p.78) When this man falls in love with a family friend, the description of it is beautiful, “I would give anything to see them again, loose limbed and free, coming into the apartment and heating it with a glow, an intensity so strong it made you tingle…” p.78-9)
I agree with Zadie Smith about this collection, she said “To be this good and yet to be ignored is shameful, but her rediscovery is a great piece of luck, for us.” (http://kathleencollins.org/advance-reviews-for-interracial-love/)
Review by Cat
We are very happy to be celebrating Bookshop Day here in London Bridge’s local independent! Many stickers and balloons are about and the bunting is up.
Come and say hello! You might find a book to change your life…
For all your book/chameleon storage needs, our stylish new bags will sort you out.
Made by the re-wrap co-operative, these cotton totes celebrate our 31 years as an independent bookshop.
Yours for only £5.99!
Paperback, Penguin Random House, £8.99, out now
Much has been made of the fact that this is Ali Smith’s “Brexit novel”, which in some ways is to do it a disservice. Because if, like me, the term “Brexit novel” makes you shudder internally and want to reach for the new Lee Childs instead, you’d be missing out on a fascinating entry which manages to look at our newly-divided Britain with a fresh eye.
The plot concerns the curious relationship between Elisabeth Demand, a precariously-employed “casual contract junior lecturer” visiting the town in which she grew up, and Daniel Gluck, her centenarian former neighbour who now lies dying in a hospice. But this is just the springboard from which Smith leads us through a whirlwind of dreams and memories, in tandem with her always-enjoyable day-to-day interactions deftly delivered with the usual eye for eccentricity.
And all this is of course set very much in the present, against the backdrop of the country’s historic decision to leave the EU. Working as she is in a medium where we’re used to clever allusions, parodies, fables and metaphors instead of approaching things head-on, there’s something almost illicitly exciting in the way she occasionally allows her asides about Brexit to be so on-the-nose, never shying away from directly addressing the matter at hand. This feels every inch a book written in the direct aftermath of the referendum, simultaneously angry, confused, ruminative, wounded and playful – which must be a very hard concoction to pull off as successfully as it is here.
At times it feels like Smith is examining this disorienting time in the same way that Gunter Grass so brilliantly tackled the incremental rise of Nazi Germany in The Tin Drum; by focusing alternately on scenes of domesticity, surreality and hard, painful truth.
And as in many of Smith’s novels, it’s somehow dreamlike yet relatable, like a glimpse inside a brain at once the same and totally different to your own. Written in the distinctly idiosyncratic prose – peppered with elastic quips, digressions through language and the occasional startling image – which has won her such a loyal fan-base, it’s no surprise that such a talented writer, wrestling with so seismic a period in our history, has turned out a piece of work as singular as this. Get it down you.
Review by Tom