The Riverside Bookshop blog
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!
Here at Riverside we’re pleased to see that The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie at the Donmar is getting good reviews – and particularly that its characterisation of the troublingly fascism-sympathetic Brodie cleaves to Spark’s original vision – because a few of us are massive fans of the late Scottish author (and total genius).
So it’s as good a time as any to say that we’ve got in a raft of her best works – some in absolutely gorgeous new editions from Polygon – from her complete short story collection to some deep cuts more than worthy of your time.
There’s early chiller The Ballad of Peckham Rye, in which a devilish stranger turns the titular district upside-down, showcasing Spark’s fully-formed blend of blitheness and villainy. It’s a twisting delight, shocking and beguiling, with the wicked purpose of a Grimm’s fairy tale.
Comic gem A Far Cry From Kensington is a blast, a coiled spring of absurd characters, mysterious goings on, blackmail and backstabbing, the upper-class ne’er-do-wells of Agatha Christie meeting the upper-class ne’er-do-wells of Oscar Wilde. The narrator Mrs Hawkins’ misadventures in publishing, as her honesty brings the ire of influential writer Hector Bartlett, are as nutty as her ruminations are sometimes thought-provoking.
Then there’s unsung masterwork Memento Mori, which we’ve got in a beautiful new Virago and a Polygon edition. It’s a piercingly funny, at times very moving examination of the ignominy of old age; and, it being Spark, it’s all wrapped in a delicious blend of mystery and deception. Easily as good as Ms Jean Brodie.
And that’s really just the tip of the iceberg – we’re carrying a multitude more, all of which prove that this brilliant novelist could go head-to-head with Highsmith when it comes to bleakness, Greene when it comes to conspiracy and Wodehouse when it comes to wit. Every story will stick in your mind long after you’ve finished it, and that’s a Riverside guarantee.
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
Hardback, Unbound, £14.99, out now
A really interesting conceit here, and well executed; Ruth and Martin’s Album Club is a compendium of record reviews – the twist being that each one is being judged by a celebrity who is hearing it for the first time. For those who agree with Frank Zappa’s famous maxim that writing about music is like “dancing about architecture” and like their reportage on the subject to come with just a bit extra, look no further.
It’s reminiscent of the 33/3 series of books, in which writers delve into the minutiae of a beloved LP of their choosing, but this has an enjoyable casualness to it which makes each entry a joy. Every album has a prologue written about it by the incredibly well-informed Martin Fitzgerald, and these are pleasingly illuminating. He’s got a loose prose style that feels punchy and good-humoured, the compere before the main event – which consists of folks like J.K. Rowling, Ian Rankin, Chris Addison and Bonnie Greer laying out their pre-and-post-conceptions of a classic album they’re hearing for the first time.
This format allows for little windows into the lives of our writers (Martin’s question, put to all participants, of why the hell they haven’t listened to what they’ll be reviewing before turns up some curious answers) just as much as it does fresh perspectives on timeless records. It’s particularly invigorating to hear contributors admitting to not enjoying the kind of hallowed LPs that no one is ever allowed to confess a dislike of, and while I’d disagree with every iota of Times journalist Danny Finkelstein’s distinctly unimpressed review of The Velvet Underground and Nico, it feels delightfully subversive to see it being described in print as merely “OK”.
You also get to hear what Tim Farron thinks about N.W.A, which is information you didn’t know you needed, but most assuredly do. Perfect Christmas fodder for the musically-minded if you’re efficient enough to be looking for presents this early.
Review by Tom
We have some lovely new signed copies including several by a rather famous actor… get them while they’re hot!
Tom Hanks – Uncommon Type
Alan Bennett – Keep On Keeping On
Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris – The Lost Words
Armistead Maupin – Logical Family
Matt Haig – Father Christmas and Me and The Girl Who Saved Christmas
Natasha and Lauren O’Hara – Hortense and the Shadow
Selling fast right now!
We have some lovely new signed copies, get them while they’re hot!
Robert Harris – Munich
Maggie O’Farrell – I am, I am, I am
Robert Webb – How not to be a Boy
John O’Farrell – Things Can Only Get Worse
Adam Kay – This is Going to Hurt
Frances Hardinge – A Skinful of Shadows
Nigella Lawson – At My Table
Max Howard – Higher Calling
Selling fast right now!
Paperback, Paekakariki Press, £10, out now
This lovely letterpressed book features many local sights and spots which will be familiar to our customers.
Local author Michael Shann has captured the sensory joy of Borough Market perfectly: “to weave through the waft of grilling beef/paella, mulled wine and cheese/to take it all in and still to keep moving/past the gawp of a monkfish”. How excellent to have the Market on the page just when it needs our support and appreciation the most – http://boroughmarket.org.uk/articles/borough-market-bounces-back.
Lovely too to see the Redcross Garden immortalised here – we are fans of this tiny beautiful Bankside space (http://www.bost.org.uk/open-places/red-cross-garden/).
This pocket sized special edition would make a lovely gift for anyone with links to London Bridge or Southwark, and a great memento of a visit. The beautiful illustrations by Kirsten Schmidt make it extra special.
Review by Bethan
Going fast, here they are:
Philippe Sands – East West Street
Alexandra Shulman – Inside Vogue
Alan Johnson – The Long and Winding Road
Sebastian Barry – Days Without End
Yuval Noah Hariri – Homo Deus
Thomas Hocknell – Life Assistance Agency
We are delighted with our new mural by the excellent Matt Sewell – our top floor is now graced by four gorgeous goldfinches.
New mural!
Thanks to Matt, and good luck to him for his new book A Charm of Goldfinches and Other Collective Nouns (https://www.penguin.co.uk/authors/matt-sewell/1069476/).
Paperback, Contraband, £8.99, out now
This Booker-longlisted novel is the story of a 17 year old boy facing the death penalty for a triple murder committed in a remote village in the Scottish highlands. It is 1869, and Roderick Macrae is the son of a crofter who is living in a feudal society. His Bloody Project is presented like a true crime story, with an account by the killer of what happened and documents from other parties involved. The novel is introduced by the author, in his own name, suggesting that Roderick Macrae was a relative of his. You have to bring your brain to this collection of purported primary sources, and the main question you have to answer is not whether Macrae committed the crime, which he admits, but whether he was mad at the time. If it could be proved that he was insane, he might avoid the otherwise inevitable death penalty.
What has happened to Macrae that may have led to this point? Through his partial account we hear of brutality, unfairness, bereavement and extreme poverty. As a study in the abuse of power, and the impunity that goes with it, the book is excellent (to be more specific would be to risk spoilers). The language used by every character in the documents is evocative and convincing – for example, Macrae calls winter in the village the ‘black months’ and summer the ‘yellow months’.
His Bloody Project grips tighter and tighter as the pages run out. As we find out more about the murders and the killer, we inevitably think more about how we test whether a defendant was insane or not, an issue as present today as in 1869. Equally relevant now, is the question – when you are subject to the law but the law does not protect you when you need it, can the society you live in really be said to be based on the rule of law?
Review by Bethan
Paperback, Vintage, 7.99
Ashamed of not having read anything by Anne Bronte but only her sisters I recently began reading The Tenant of Wildfell Hall and was astonished (though perhaps should not have been) firstly by how psychologically convincing the characters are, and secondly by the strangely addictive quality the writing possesses; considering its length (it is nearly 600 pages in the recent, extremely beautiful Vintage editions illustrated by the gifted Sarah Gillespie) I was amazed at how quickly I was half, then three-quarters, then all of the way through it, and wishing it was not over and that I could read more.
The main reason to recommend The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, however, is that Anne Bronte has created a strongly – even radically – feminist heroine in Helen Huntingdon; one who shuns the institution of marriage when circumstances call for it (an act most nineteenth century novelists – especially early nineteenth century novelists like Anne – shied away from; as they shied away from depictions of male depravity that Anne is utterly fearless in recounting) despite paying a price that at some points seems impossibly high, refusing to be swayed from following a path her own integrity marks out for her. This strength of character is common to all the Bronte’s work, of course, but Anne’s portrayals of women are by far the most revolutionary and only recently beginning to attract the recognition they deserve. It is also worth noting that her male characters possess a far more convincing inner terrain than either Emily or Charlotte’s; Heathcliff may be iconic and overwhelming, but iconic and overwhelming characters are not usually noted for their plausibility, relatability or tendency to inspire empathy. All these aspects make it both extremely sad and surprising that Charlotte Bronte herself dismissed her younger sister’s literary efforts and had so little insight into just how progressive they were.
For all these reasons, I would encourage anyone whose interest in the Brontes has been sparked by the recent TV program or who is simply wishing to embark upon a worthy, provoking and highly enjoyable Victorian novel, to invest their time in The Tenant of Wildfell Hall; high-quality literature and effortlessly involving, it is the perfect marriage on many fronts.
Review by Emily
Hardback, Profile Books, £14.99, out now
If the belated but welcome Spring sunshine has you feeling newly mindful of our wildlife and hankering for all things natural then I couldn’t recommend anything better than Charles Foster’s latest book, Being a Beast ( – short of actually departing for the country and taking up residence in a badger set, that is; which Foster has helpfully done for us), which is a breath of fresh, heady – and slightly crazed – air. Foster, amongst many other things (he is a vet, philosopher, anthropologist, acupuncturist, academic, Oxford Fellow…the list apparently continues), is an ardent natural historian; he used to hunt animals for sport, he confesses, but is now intent on hunting them in an entirely different way: placing himself, as much as a human being can, in their skins in an attempt to know what it is like to ‘be’ them. To that end, and for prolonged periods, he lived in their physical environments, deprived of human comforts, reporting his intimate and thought-provoking experiences back to us. In Being a Beast he takes on the challenge of finding out what it is like to be a badger, an otter, a city fox, red deer and swift, combining neuroscience, psychology, natural history and memoir in a quest which takes him the length, breadth and depth of the British Isles.
As well as being a dauntless explorer (could you lie in a freezing highland stream for hours or sit in a river in Namibia watching leeches looping up your ankles en route to your groin?) Foster is also an erudite, witty, humble and entertaining writer. Take this passage, for instance, in which he reminisces about the days when shamanic ritual could transport performers into other states of consciousness:
‘You had to dance to the drum around a fire until you were so dehydrated that blood spouted out of your ruptured nasal capillaries, or stand in an icy river and chant until you could feel your soul rising like vomit into your mouth, or eat fly agaric mushrooms and watch yourself floating into the forest canopy. Then you could pass through the thin membrane that separates this world from others, and your species from other species. As you pushed through, in an epiphanic labour, the membrane enveloped you, like the amniotic sac in which you issued from your mother.’
Foster’s attempts to experience animals’ consciousness by immersing himself in their phenomenal worlds stem from a similarly impassioned desire to ‘be’ a beast (apparently he has been obsessed with birds and animals since he was a child), involves a similarly intense ‘labour’, as well as the odd moment or two that really could be described as epiphanic.
Even for those usually uninterested in nature writing Being a Beast is a winner: who can resist discovering what earthworms taste like, for instance (the terroir varies, apparently, according to region, like wine)? This is vital, dynamic, exhilarating writing that uncovers deadened senses, invokes empathy, fosters compassion and the all-important feeling of oneness. In delving into the ‘being’ of various ‘beasts’, Foster does something else too: he allows us to see ourselves more clearly – human or otherwise.
Review by Emily
Susan Hill signed edition
Sort your Christmas book presents with a signed copy of one of the following – all of these are now in store:
Buy while stocks last – when they’re gone they’re gone!
There are foxes with scarves on and cats fighting fairy lights, polar bears snowboarding and badgers sledging. In between we have all the traditional scenes you could wish for and we can sort you out for winter landscapes and robins as well. We also have rude funny ones. There are extra special individual cards, and packs of charity cards. Come and peruse at your leisure.
From 1 December to 13 December, our opening hours are:
Monday – Friday 9am till 6.30pm
Saturday 10am till 6pm
Sunday 11am till 6pm
From 14 December to 24 December, our opening hours are:
Monday – Friday 9am till 7pm
Saturday 10am till 6pm
Sunday 11am till 6pm
On Christmas Eve we will close at 4pm. The shop will be closed 25-28 December and will reopen on Tuesday 29 December.
We have many excellent advent calendars now in store – get yours now! Father Christmas, Battersea Cats and Dogs Home, 3D, wild animals… We also have a huge range of unusual Christmas cards, gift bags and wrap, and ribbons.
Thank you to our friends at Divine chocolate for providing heavenly free chocolate bars to everyone buying a book in our shop today!
This celebration of National Chocolate Week has been very popular with our customers as you can see… It turns out there is a big crossover between booklovers and chocolate fans.
It would seem that London Bridge’s favourite chocolate is Milk Chocolate and Orange (this was entirely gone by 2.30pm).
For excellent chocolate recipes, we can sell you a copy of the Divine Chocolate Cookbook – or you can visit http://www.divinechocolate.com/uk/recipes
Goodies..
