June 8, 2019
by Team Riverside
Hardback, Picador, £20, out now
This collection of essays from great science writer and neurologist Oliver Sacks, who died in 2015, is a real treat for anyone who loved his previous works.
As with his other books, the essays are readable, beautifully written and engaging. Known for his books The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat, Musicophilia and Migraine among others, he also wrote about his own life. His insatiable curiosity shines through, and it’s clear that this carried on throughout his long and interesting life. He covers a wide range of topics, from the joy of swimming to his love of libraries, to a piece about ferns, and the life of Humphrey Davy.
He addresses the ethics of writing about people who are or have been unwell in a clear and helpful way. His book review of Michael Greenberg’s A Summer of Madness raises the question, as Greenberg is writing about his teenage daughter Sally’s first experience of mania. Writing the book “… was not a quick or easy decision for either Sally or her father. Greenberg did not grab a pen and start writing during his daughter’s psychosis in 1996 – he waited, he pondered, he let the experience sink deep into him. He had long, searching discussions with Sally, and only more than a decade later did he feel that he might have the balance, the perspective, the tone that Hurry Down Sunshine would need. Sally, too, had come to feel this, and urged him not only to write her story but to use her real name, without camouflage. It was a courageous decision, given the stigma and misunderstanding that still surround mental illness of any kind” (p. 182).
My favourite essay is Travels with Lowell, an account of a road trip he takes with photojournalist Lowell Handler to find out more about Tourette’s. In the course of the trip, they visit La Crete, a Canadian town where many of the population have Tourette’s and town life accommodates this. I loved his observation after visiting: “There is, among Orthodox Jews, a blessing to be said on witnessing the strange: one blesses God for the diversity of his creation, and one gives thanks for the wonder of the strange. This, it seemed to me, was the attitude of the people of La Crete to the Tourette’s in their midst. They accepted it not as something annoying or insignificant, to be reacted to or overlooked, but as a deep strangeness, a wonder, an example of the absolute mysteriousness of Providence” (p. 106).
This is a deeply humane and engrossing collection. Read this and then read Gratitude, a book for all time (https://theriversideway.wordpress.com/2016/06/19/gratitude-by-oliver-sacks/).
Review by Bethan
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May 4, 2019
by Team Riverside
Hardback, Hamish Hamilton, £20, out now
Underland is an exploration of the subterranean world, and Macfarlane interprets this widely. He ranges from a glacier in the middle of a warm mountain range to the tunnels under Paris, from mines under Yorkshire to London Bridge (which is hollow and can be climbed through by those in the know). He does not shy away from difficult subjects, dealing with war crimes and human rights violations in European caves and crevasses, as well as the Anthropocene and climate change.
It is always a pleasure to read a new Robert Macfarlane book. Here at the Riverside Bookshop we loved The Lost Words (see https://theriversideway.wordpress.com/2017/10/03/the-lost-words-by-robert-macfarlane-and-jackie-morris/). He writes beautifully and manages to include very diverse fields of knowledge without alienating the reader or appearing like a dilettante. His account of visiting an underground lab exploring dark matter gave me the first explanation of this phenomenon I felt even vaguely able to understand (p. 56). He can make mysterious landscapes vivid, as when walking in the Julian Alps: “Holes in the trunks of the beeches hold micro-gardens of moss and ferns. Dwarf pines spread between the boulders of the streambank. Harebells, gentians and edelweiss star the understorey. Little trout flick as quick shadows in the bigger stream-pools. Towering above us are scree-slopes and bone-white summits jagging several hundred feet up from the ridge line” (p. 231).
Happily for me, Underland also includes much ice and snow. There are reflections on physical culture and the impact of global warming: “There is something obscene both to the ice and its meltings – to its vastness and vulnerability. The ice seems a ‘thing’ that is beyond our comprehension to know but within our capacity to destroy” (p. 363). This reminded me of some of the things I liked about the Library of Ice by Nancy Campbell (https://theriversideway.wordpress.com/2018/12/02/the-library-of-ice-by-nancy-campbell/).
The book is as much about challenging our experiences of time and space as anything else. How do we find language that will be understood for certain thousands of years from now, in order to warn those in the far future of our sealed tombs of nuclear waste? Do we carve warnings into rock in English? Macfarlane notes that only about 1,000 people read Cuneiform on Earth now, where once it communicated powerful proclamations across vast spaces – how do we know English will still be understood? Should there be ceramic tiles with pictograms? Showing what? He asks us to expand our thinking: “…a deep time awareness might help us see ourselves as part of a web of gift, inheritance and legacy stretching over millions of years past and millions to come, bringing us to consider what we are leaving behind for the epochs and beings that will follow us” (p. 15).
Fans of Macfarlane’s writing on mountains, lost ways and obscure words have a treat in store with Underland. A bonus for the curious and engaged.
Review by Bethan
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April 23, 2019
by Team Riverside
Hardback, John Murray, £16.99, out now
Heiða details a year in the life of a solo woman sheep farmer hard by the highlands of Iceland. Heiða Ásgeirsdóttir took over her family farm at Ljótarstaðir in her early 20s, when her father became ill. She is an environmental activist and poet as well, and during the year considers standing for Parliament for the Left-Green Movement (she is already a local councillor). From the farm, she can see highland pastures, a glacier, mountains. This is an engrossing quick dispatch from an unusual life.
Volcanic eruptions as well as extreme cold and snow on her remote farm make for hard work. Her commitment to her 500 sheep and other animals is evident, and leads to both her extreme work ethic and her worries when things go wrong. She is clear about the essential role farmers like her can play in conservation: “Icelandic agriculture is very close to my heart, no less than environmental conservation. As I see it, the two are totally intertwined since the farmer is entirely dependent on nature for his survival and has a duty, in my view more than in any other profession, to defend it by any means possible” (p. 161). Sometimes she works co-operatively with other farmers and family members, and you begin to understand how such working is essential to survival in extraordinary places.
She is resisting construction of a power plant near her farm, which would involve flooding part of her land. She resists despite the anxiety it causes her: “In these kinds of circumstance, I feel as if a knife has been thrust between my ribs – almost as if I’m having a heart attack” (p. 128). She also talks usefully about surviving depression: “now I also began to come to better terms with the things that I couldn’t fix, and to forgive myself for making mistakes…” (p. 273).
She notes that the farm has been worked since the 12th century. Refreshingly, she expresses her commitment to the land alongside her stance against discrimination: “I can’t bear prejudice based on skin colour, race, sexual orientation, nationality” (p. 249).
When Heiða gets to relax, it sounds heavenly, but you are clear it is hard won: “A winter’s night with a book is the best. Surrounded by stillness in my own mountain palace, lit up by stars and the moon; and maybe by the world’s most spectacular display of Northern Lights” (p. 205). There are memorable animals, including her cat Huggan (Solace) who can’t stand the smell of sheep and herds mice into the house. Also her excellent German Shepherd puppy Fífill (Dandelion).
The book is likely to be popular – Heiða has been interviewed in the Guardian (https://www.theguardian.com/food/2019/apr/14/heida-asgeirsdottir-icelandic-shepherd-new-biography) and will appear at the Hay Festival. I wish they had done an illustrated version of this book, as the places and people are so intriguing. This will appeal to lovers of nature writing, to those who love to read about completely different lives, to anyone who wants a story of women doing it for themselves and to other activists who find themselves at the forefront when they already have vastly too much to do…
Review by Bethan
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April 13, 2019
by Team Riverside
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
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March 9, 2019
by Team Riverside
Hardback, Skyscraper, £15, out now
First published in 1919, Words in Pain is a collection of letters written from a woman to her doctor and other friends and family following her diagnosis with a terminal illness. Olga Jacoby, young mother of several adopted children, writes with clarity and verve of her love of life and nature, of her rationalist and humanist beliefs, and of her dislike of organised religion.
Jacoby’s doctor was Christian and many of the often kind and humorous letters aim to provide him with a different perspective on life’s meaning. Jacoby can also be sharp and angry however, and so we have a rounded perspective on a woman applying her rational mind to her extraordinary situation. She is always courageous and often conciliatory: “death does not frighten me now. I think it is like taking chloroform; don’t struggle against it, hold the hand of a friend, and it is not half bad with its promise of rest for me and Heaven for you” (p. 5).
The book will be useful to anyone interested in the history of adoption. All her children know they were adopted, and her work to prepare them for her death is impressive. Her love for their individuality is clear: “Charles, the farmer-to-be… has been planning… how he can arrange to make farming pay, without killing ducks, chicken or even field-mice. I do not think he has yet found a satisfactory solution” (p. 25).
It is an intriguing book to read from a disability and chronic illness perspective, too. Her attitudes vary and are sometimes (to a modern reader) very dated, in this and other matters. At one point she demands of her friend: “Do not give in and say ‘I am disabled’. As long as you do not feel disabled you cannot be so” (p. 75). Later, as she becomes more unwell, she welcomes the use of a wheelchair as a way to conserve her energy. She always has absolute ownership of her own life and experiences. She talks about rationing limited energies in a way very reminiscent of the useful spoon theory (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoon_theory): “I have had to draw on a stock that a year’s incessant struggle had left small. No wonder that I deal out each ration now with minute carefulness and some fear that capital (this most valuable capital of all) may fail me at last” (p. 168).
The new edition has a helpful update on what happened to the family after Olga’s death from her great-granddaughter Jocelyn Catty, and useful notes from Trevor Moore providing context to the references. Jacoby remains in control and engaged till the last, reading, writing, thinking and debating. A remarkable record of a remarkable woman.
Review by Bethan
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March 3, 2019
by Team Riverside
Paperback, Penguin, £9.99, out now
If the sheer breadth of mindfulness, meditation, wellbeing and guidance books is really stressing you out, let us recommend The Science of Meditation, by science journalist Daniel Goleman and professor of psychology and psychiatry Richard J. Davidson.
This impressive work’s greatest strength is its ability to operate on many levels at once. On the one hand it’s an interrogative history of the scientific study of meditation, detailing the (more often than not, flawed) ways in which the results of this esoteric practice on the mind and body have been tested and evaluated. This technical content, while extensive, is never too dense, and always clearly laid out – so whether you’re learning about the neural profiles consistent with different meditative states, or how a sense of purpose in life can release an enzyme capable of protecting the strands of your DNA, you’re always taken through complex ideas one step at a time. it’s comprehensive but never woolly – in their own words, our guides aim to “keep it simple”.
On the other hand, it is an argument for the wide-ranging benefits of meditation. When Goleman and Davidson aren’t merrily shooting down vast swathes of studies into mindfulness practices for potentially biasing their test-subjects and making specious assumptions, they’re digging deep into sturdier research that shows the myriad ways in which these techniques can help a person. Lieutenant colonels diminish the symptoms of PTSD, zen students show improved resistance to pain, Tibetan monks (with PhDs in science) cultivate enhanced levels of compassion… The upshot, argue the authors, both long-time meditators, is that depending on your needs these practices can do a whole lot more than a) calm you down and b) bring you closer to oneness with the universe.
Which brings us to the book’s final function: that of a very useful guide on how to utilise different forms of meditation (it turns out there are quite a few) in your own life, depending on what you want to achieve from them. And – of course – they have the science to back up why each form may be the right one for you and your joint pain, or your anxiety, or your self-criticism.
Clear-headed, rigorous and insightful, this is the book for you if you want neuroscientific certainties with your spiritual enlightenment, and as a study of what we can say for sure about meditation and its psychological and physiological potential at this time it certainly feels damn near definitive.
Review by Tom
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January 15, 2019
by Team Riverside
Paperback, Oneworld Publications, £9.99, out now
How refreshing to get a completely different take on a period that can seem so familiar! Shortlisted for the Wolfson History Prize, this is an outstanding history which tells the stories of ten African lives in Britain, and usefully sets each in context.
There is a strong local connection to the Riverside Bookshop. Reasonable Blackman, an independent silk weaver, lived here in Tooley Street in the parish of St Olave’s. Two of his children died during the plague and he and his wife and remaining child were shut up in their house with a red X marked on the door. They were not permitted to leave, to prevent the further spread of infection. An independent skilled craftsman, he supported a family of five with his fine goods. Tooley Street then was known as a rough and ready area, with many alehouses – Kaufmann quotes Christopher Hudson writing in 1631: “alehouses are nests of Satan where the owls of impiety lurk and where all evil is hatched…” (p. 117).
If you enjoyed David Olusoga’s Black and British: a Forgotten History, you must definitely read this (I loved Olusoga’s book, as it completely transformed both my knowledge of and my attitude towards British history). Black Tudors would also be perfect for those who like readable social history, focussing as it does on everyday lives. It includes the stories of a countrywoman, a rural worker, a sailor, and many more diverse and intriguing people besides.
Kaufmann is clear about the relevance of her work in the current political and social climate: “As debate about immigration becomes ever more vituperative and divisive, it is vital to understand that the British Isles have always been peopled with immigrants. The Black Tudors are just one of a series of peoples who arrived on these shores in centuries past” (p. 262).
Entertaining and enlightening, this would be a perfect non-fiction holiday read.
Review by Bethan
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December 2, 2018
by Team Riverside
Hardback, Scribner, £14.99, out now
The list of places Nancy Campbell covers in researching The Library of Ice was enough to make me keen to read it. Upernavik Museum in Greenland, Vatnajökull in Iceland, Walden Pond in Massachusetts, Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam…
Campbell is an artist, writer and poet, and The Library of Ice could be considered travel writing, cultural history, nature writing, or memoir. It’s not necessary to pick these bits apart: the book as a whole works well as a meditation on ice. She is an engaging guide, and her curiosity leads to adventures in the archives and outside.
The book is full of intriguing and pleasing facts and stories. I was pleased to learn of the origins of Torvill and Dean’s immortal Bolero skating performance, and of Robert Boyle’s attempts to research the phenomenon of cold and his irritation at the difficulty of his experiments.
Despite my longstanding Antarctic obsession, I did not know that George Murray Levick of the Scott expedition in 1912 was so horrified at what he found to be the ‘hooligan’ and ‘depraved’ behaviour of the penguins that he censored his scientific reporting on the Adélies. In the Natural History Museum archive survives a copy of a report Levick wrote for colleagues, limited in circulation and with a note on the front saying: ‘The sexual habits of the Adélie penguin, not for publication’.
Campbell’s awareness of damage from climate change informs much of the book, and her accounts of traditional knowledge of ice reminded me of some of the testimony from Mary Robinson’s excellent book Climate Justice (https://theriversideway.wordpress.com/2018/10/08/climate-justice-hope-resilience-and-the-fight-for-a-sustainable-future-by-mary-robinson/).
If you enjoy good books about cold places, such as Sara Wheeler’s Terra Incognita or The Magnetic North, this will be a chilly pleasure.
Review by Bethan
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October 17, 2018
by Team Riverside
Hardback, Chatto & Windus, £20, published 11 October 2018
Eve was Shamed is a timely and comprehensive update on women as they engage with the UK’s criminal justice system, from a legendary feminist human rights lawyer. The depth of her experience over years of legal practice and activism makes this a must-read. You don’t have to agree with everything she says to benefit from her thoughtful and erudite commentary.
17 years after I first read her classic book on women and the law Eve was Framed, Eve was Shamed shows where we have made progress and where so much remains to be done. Her account includes experiences of women lawyers, survivors of domestic or sexual violence, prisoners, judges, and others. She finds that “despite the dramatic changes which have taken place in women’s lives over the last four decades, women are still facing iniquitous judgements and injustice within the legal system. All the legal reforms have produced only marginal advances”. (p. 317)
Kennedy’s dual commitment to feminism and to human rights is particularly interesting. Her values inform her approach to her work, including her analysis of difficult or controversial situations in public life. She recounts occasions when this has led to conflict with people she has been allies with, and it is evident that she values the process of discussion and exchange that leads to resolution, even where this is uncomfortable or challenging. She notes: “feminism is about justice if it is about anything, and that means for men as well as women. Justice for women is not secured by reducing justice for men.” (p. 324)
She has lost none of her passion or commitment on the things that matter to her, making her a useful model for how to survive and remain effective during bleak times. Her considered solutions to problems are offered throughout, and this means that despite the subject matter you feel that real change is possible. Jacky Fleming’s inspirational cartoon remains helpful (see https://www.jackyfleming.co.uk/product/never-give-up/).
Review by Bethan
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October 8, 2018
by Team Riverside
Hardback, Bloomsbury, £16.99, out now
I wanted a book to remind me that climate change can be tackled, and to inspire me to engage with this massive problem without leaving me doom laden and depressed. This useful book by former Irish President and former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson does just that. Taking a rights and justice approach is natural for her. “This injustice – that those who had done least to cause the problem were carrying the greatest burden – made clear that to advocate for the rights of the most vulnerable to food, safe water, health, education, and shelter would have no effect without our paying attention to the world’s changing climate”.
Robinson places the stories of people on the frontline of climate change at the heart of this short book, and sees her job as getting their voices heard. It was the stories of these activists, mainly women, which I found most useful.
Constance Okollet is a small scale farmer from Uganda who has organised women in her community to challenge climate change, has given evidence internationally on the direct impact on her region of extreme weather: “in eastern Uganda, there are no seasons any more”.
Through activism, Okollet met Sharon Hanshaw of Biloxi Mississippi (founder of Coastal Women for Change) and other climate witnesses. Hanshaw, a former beauty salon owner who saw her community devastated by hurricane Katrina, said: “Connecting with women who were facing similar issues across the globe, and standing up and working for solutions, was inspiring. It is women who bear the brunt of climate change”. (Read more of Hanshaw’s story here: https://lithub.com/climate-change-needs-to-be-about-economic-justice/)
The price some of the activists pay for their work is heavy. Robinson describes a tearful Hindou Oumarou Ibrahim of the Republic of Chad speaking of reporting back to the elders of her region: “I tell them that I will have a solution soon… They think I am finding a solution, but I know how slowly the fight against climate change is going and that a solution is not coming tomorrow. The solution for this problem will not be for them. It will not be for now.”
There has been some criticism of the book for failing to focus sufficiently on failures of states in addressing climate change (see for example Cara Augustenborg in the Irish Times – https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/climate-justice-review-irish-sins-cloud-inspiring-stories-1.3643596). Others may notice that Robinson does not for example address population control, or the issue of whether nuclear power should be part of the renewable energy that replaces energy from fossil fuels. But the book is not intended as a primer on climate change (though it can be read with no specialist knowledge). It is a call to positive action against despair, and is best summed up by the advice of Hanshaw, citing her civil rights activist father: “pray and believe, and always believe in what you can do instead of can’t do”.
Review by Bethan
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October 3, 2018
by Team Riverside
Hardback, Hodder and Stoughton, £25, out now
This gorgeous cookbook marries tempting recipes with luscious photos of both the dishes and the market. The recipes are unusual but achievable, and unsurprisingly give star billing to the exceptional ingredients for which the market is famous.
I immediately wanted to make (or more accurately, eat) the barbeced courgettes, burnt lemon and za’atar. Suzanne fancies Autumn Panzanella and Cat would like rhubarb and ricotta on toast. We could all do with a Gooseberry Syrup Gin Cocktail right about now as well.
The book is arranged by season, and includes helpful lists of what’s best at each time of year. It manages to capture some of the sensory delights of the market – Turnips greengrocer Fred Foster writes: “I like to think of our produce displays as live art. They draw people in and provide a backdrop to the Market… The seasons are crucial because ultimately they affect what the displays are made from. As the seasons change, the displays change. It’s continual. You can define the time of year by the colours you see”. (p. 205)
The first mention of the market by London Bridge was in a Norse chronicle in 1014 – a thousand years of tasty snacks, feast preparations, and irresistible tasters.
As London Bridge’s local independent bookshop, we are big fans of our local market and have been known to head over there for emergency baklava to provide instant mood lifts for our hardworking booksellers. For a poetic take on the market, see also Michael Shann’s recent poetry collection To London (https://theriversideway.wordpress.com/2017/06/21/to-london-poems-by-michael-shann/).
Review by Bethan
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September 9, 2018
by Team Riverside
Paperback, Avery Hill Publishing Limited, £9.99, out now
This beautiful graphic novel tells the story of South London’s great north wood. Remnants of the wood can be found in the names and places of Norwood, Sydenham, Forest Hill, Honor Oak Park, Crystal Palace, Gipsy Hill and others.
Using a local fox to guide us from prehistory to today, The Great North Wood shows how important the forest was to the development of South London and celebrates its continuity to today. On the way we learn some excellent facts. I was intrigued to find out that Pear Tree House block of flats in SE19 was built to be “a control centre in the event of a nuclear attack on London”, and the book even includes a floorplan of the reinforced concrete basement. Sharp modern realities exist alongside ancient magic in this enchanting account.
As so many of our regular customers head home from London Bridge to these areas, I am sure that they will recognise the depictions of bus stops and chicken shops. The gorgeous colour palette helps make this a book to return to again and again.
Many South Londoners will be getting this for Christmas from me. Hopefully they aren’t reading this.
Review by Bethan
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August 26, 2018
by Team Riverside
Paperback, Penguin, £1 each, out now
This is a superb series of mini books featuring extracts from works by twentieth century authors published by Penguin. The list is excellent and it is almost impossible to resist grabbing a fistful and bunking off work.
Several of the books are an easy way in to authors I have been meaning to read for ages. The short collection of essays by Audre Lorde, The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House, boosted me into reading her full collected essays, Sister Outsider. In an hour’s reading, I had my brain shaken up and challenged by Lorde’s intersectional ideas and beautiful prose.
Other favourites so far include Chinua Achebe’s Africa’s Tarnished Name. The great Nigerian novelist gives us a series of short essays, and describes a visit to Northern Rhodesia in 1960 made while he was living as an exile in the US. He boards a bus and sits in the front, next to the driver’s seat. “When finally I turned around, probably because of a certain unnatural silence, I saw with horror that everyone around me was white. As I had turned around they had averted their stony gazes, whose hostility I had felt so palpably at the back of my head. What had become of all the black people at the bus stop? Why had no one told me? I looked back again and only then took in detail of a partition and a door”. He does not move, and when asked by the ticket collector why he is sitting there says: “… I come from Nigeria, and there we sit where we like in the bus”. He stays in his seat until he reaches his destination, and disembarks to cheers from the black passengers.
Martin Luther King Jr’s Letter from Birmingham Jail feels timely and useful. “Now is the time to lift our national policy from the quicksand of racial injustice to the solid rock of human dignity”.
There are options for pure entertainment and for risky reading. Whether you need an emergency back up book in case you finish your current one on the tube, or whether you want to treat yourself to a pick and mix of striking ideas and great writing, this series is irresistible. For the full list see http://www.penguinmodern.com/. We love our display, too.
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May 20, 2018
by Team Riverside
Hardback, Jonathan Cape, £18.99, out now
The answer given by nature writer and environmentalist Mark Cocker is ‘maybe’. This unusual book gives a brief history of attempts to protect nature in Britain over the last 150 years, told through the stories of some of the organisations and individuals involved. It is framed by the catastrophic findings of the 2013 State of Nature report, which found that 60% of native species in the UK had declined over the last 50 years, 31% badly, and that over 600 species were under threat of extinction. Cocker notes that the figures “don’t indicate the bottom of a curve: they chart the direction of an arrow. It means that, however bad things are, they will get worse without major change”.
Cocker is critical of the largest of the environmental organisations, including the National Trust and the RSPB, finding them sometimes overly concerned with competing for members and also unsuccessful in critical campaigning. He finds that failures to work together mean that whole-ecology approaches are being undermined by separate projects. But he allows that their difficulties may reflect something of the British public’s own ambivalence towards nature. He quotes a letter to the Daily Mail from a National Trust member apparently responding to the Trust’s campaign on climate change: “Thanks to Dame Helen Ghosh’s political agenda outside the true objectives of the National Trust, that’s £100 membership saved this year.”
He also gives due credit to individuals both within and without these groups who have been effective in seeking to protect nature, or who remind us to pay attention. I loved the example of his friend and colleague Tony Hare, who on looking at “a square foot of turf dotted with miniscule scarlet fungi and prostrate lichens” reminded his friend that “what was happening here was the same as any rainforest”.
The approach taken is not straightforward polemic. Cocker successfully mixes history with accounts of several localities as informal case studies showing how particular types of areas are faring. As a result, Our Place is readable and interesting.
Where the book has limitations they are deliberate and mostly acknowledged. There is not much about international frameworks or organisations working for the natural environment in my view, and marine protection is almost entirely missing. But as a personal rallying call for a different attitude to nature protection in the UK, it works, and shows that any of us can choose to pay attention to this critical concern. I echo his praise for those amateurs and professionals who study and protect even the unpopular or obscure bits of our natural world, and especially those who make this possible for children and young people.
Review by Bethan
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May 15, 2018
by Team Riverside
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May 7, 2018
by Team Riverside
Hardback, Penguin, £14.99, out now
This is a brutally honest autobiography covering the childhood of the author of superb 
fiction including The Gustav Sonanta, Sacred Country and Restoration. Her account of her 1950s childhood spans an idyllic family farm, a middle class London house, a freezing cold boarding school, and a Swiss finishing school. It seems clear that her parents and grandparents did not love her very much, if at all.
It is essential reading for any fan of her work, not least as she helpfully indicates where stories from her life have found their way into her fiction. In her novel Trespass, someone’s mother ruins their birthday by getting trapped in a swimsuit and making everyone else feel dreadful. This is a real event, and the effects have been lifelong, meaning Tremain struggles to celebrate her birthday. “… In my heart, I’m looking out for darkening skies, for the sound of the sea, for the thing that will sabotage the day – the thing that nobody else has seen”.
One saving grace is her nanny, Nan, who showed her how to love and be loved. During a revelatory conversation with a colleague she discloses to another person for the first time the loveless nature of much of her upbringing. The colleague replies: “… listen to me: you were lucky. You could have been a depressive mess by now, or you could be dead from drugs or drink, but you’re not. Nan saved you. She was your angel”.
Her mother is shown as very cold, but Tremain is fair in describing how she too was unloved by her parents, or at least loved less than her brothers. Her mother was also sent away from home at a very young age, which affected her for the rest of her life. Tremain’s even handed description of a horrifying event which happens to her mother while Rosie is a teenager feels both fair and sympathetic. Her father, as in her life, feels essentially absent from this book. He is a not-very-successful playwright and he seems sometimes to go beyond merely disengaged to being actively hurtful and hostile.
Her determination to write is a joy in the book, as are her discoveries of reading and music. Her friendships are vital to her and we see the beginnings of lifelong ones here. She writes of her friends with affection and crispness. Rosie renames herself Rose as she ends her childhood. She makes her young adulthood all her own. What might seem a mean time restriction on an autobiography works very well, and you could not ask for a more candid author. Recommended.
Review by Bethan
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March 11, 2018
by Team Riverside
Paperback, Vintage, £8.99, out now
Linda Coverdale’s superlative translations of the work of French powerhouse Emmanuel Carrère continue to delight us at Riverside – this latest sees the writer and filmmaker tell the story of a love affair, a family history and a possibly-doomed documentary in a “non-fiction novel” heavy on sex and introspection.
At the book’s beginning Carrère is ostensibly investigating the curious tale of a Hungarian soldier who, during World War 2, was imprisoned by the Russians, transferred to a psychiatric institution and somehow forgotten about, only being released in the noughties. A fascinating story; but also a feint, as we soon discover it’s not the anecdote itself that interests Carrère but its passing similarity to the life of his Nazi-collaborator grandfather, a similarly disturbed figure who was “disappeared” after the end of the occupation. It’s this buried history that hangs over the Carrères like a dark cloud, and one which this book sees him trying to purge in one way or another.
The unexpected lyricism that made his wonderful The Adversary so effective is well served here by a narrative that interrogates love, betrayal, and ennui, flitting effortlessly from travelogue to existential rumination, erotic fantasy to historical reportage. But what’s really interesting is that Carrère often doesn’t come across at all well; a slave to his neuroses and passions, irrational and impulsive, he embarks on a poorly thought-out film project in a Russian town in tandem with a poorly thought-out relationship with a woman whose non-bohemian existence he can’t help but feel ashamed of. In both cases, as apparently in all things, he seems driven not so much by constructive sentiments as demons from his past, and having an author bare all on the page in such a borderline masochistic way is both shocking and powerful.
Props must go once again to Coverdale also; as with the best translators, the continuity of the author’s voice across the works she has interpreted is evident – which is perhaps not easy when her subject is so mercurial – and her word choices paint a vibrant picture of a narrator who is at once urbane aesthete and helpless obsessive. In short, exactly the kind of person you want to read about.
Review by Tom
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March 6, 2018
by Team Riverside
Hardback, Virago, £14.99, out now
A wonderful book featuring our occasional shop dog Zeus, seen here running Riverside on Christmas Eve https://theriversideway.wordpress.com/2017/12/24/happy-christmas-from-team-riverside/.
On Smaller Dogs and Larger Life Questions has already received very positive reviews (see Alison Burns’ review here: http://bookoxygen.com/?p=7761) and Kate Figes appeared on BBC Radio 4’s Woman’s Hour to discuss it (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09smh89).
We are delighted to have this book at Riverside and send good wishes to our friends Kate and Zeus.
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January 31, 2018
by Team Riverside
Hardback, Tinder Press, £18.99, out now
Neil Ansell wrote Deep Country: Five Years in the Welsh Hills, a transporting account of living alone in a remote hut in Wales, which has become a modern classic of nature writing. It was beautifully written, dealing with the choice and personal consequences of human silence and solitude. His descriptions of the nature that surrounded him (and particularly the birdlife) were vivid.
The Last Wilderness addresses many of the same themes. Ansell visits a truly wild area of Scotland in a series of solo trips over a year, and also recalls his journeys all over the world. The silence in this book is not optional. He is losing his hearing. He notices over the year that he can no longer hear the songs of different birds.
He still delights in birds: “I might catch a glimpse of a water rail emerging shyly from among the reeds, or a jewel of a kingfisher driven to the coast by bad weather inland.” His recollections of childhood encounters with nature can also be very funny. A crow lands on his head and he feels very proud, “… and then it drove its beak into the very top of my skull, as if it was trying to crack a nut”. He sometimes reminds me of Chris Packham when he’s talking about this period of his life. Ansell remains engaged with the present, and he reflects as he wanders on the likely impact of climate change on the places he visits. The area explored is around Knoydart, and is remote and wild enough to appeal to anyone with a love of nature and solitude.
Review by Bethan
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January 8, 2018
by Team Riverside
The Red Parts by Maggie Nelson
Paperback, Vintage, £8.99, out now
Before Maggie Nelson was born her mother’s sister was murdered in a shockingly violent way, an unsolved crime which overshadows the family in the subsequent decades and which Nelson has previously explored in her collection of poetry Jane: A Murder. In 2005 the case is unexpectedly re-opened, The Red Parts, as described in its subtitle, is an autobiography of the trial that follows.
Nelson’s previous book, The Argonauts is a combination of theory and memoir, The Red Parts has these features too, but also mixes in the generic conventions of true crime.
This true crime element is the driving force behind the story, and its tropes seem reassuringly familiar, the hardworking cop, the witness who first discovered the body, the gory description of the aftermath of violence done to a woman’s body. Although of course in the wise hands of Nelson these ideas are not presented without emotionally thoughtful analysis.
When asking her mother why she didn’t tell Maggie that she had had a minor accident, her mother questions what would be the point in doing so. Maggie replies that, “Some things might be worth telling simply because they happened.” (p31) Indeed Red Parts questions the ethics over who has the right to tell a story, does she have the right to write about Jane when she never met her, for example? Nelson also discusses whose stories get told at all, by anyone, is Jane’s murder still receiving attention from TV channels interested such as 48 Hours Mystery, and crime bloggers because she was pretty, white and middle-class?
Although she never met her aunt, her violent end shapes her mother’s way of bringing up two daughters, as well as the way her mother reacts to Maggie’s father’s death years later. Nelson is thorough in her analysis of what it means to live under the daily perceived threat of masculine violence, present because of her aunt’s murder, but also just because she’s a woman, so of course it’s there anyway. She is reminded in the gruesome true crime documentaries of course but also in most mainstream culture, Taxi Driver is a particularly difficult film for her and her mother to see, and she reads James Ellroy’s My Dark Places, a book about Ellroy’s murdered mother and his, “subsequent sexual and literary obsession with vivisected women.”(p69), alongside her investigations.
Nelson’s prose deals with the book’s difficult questions with a deftness that, of course, doesn’t ever answer anything, but makes The Red Parts a special and effecting read.
Review by Cat
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November 26, 2017
by Team Riverside
Hardcover, Chatto and Windus, £14.99, out now
An ice cold exploration of Finland and ships, told with style and wit by the author of Down to the Sea in Ships. Clare travels on the icebreaker Otso, which is clearing a path through the Arctic Circle.
Reflecting on climate change, Clare discusses A Farewell to Ice by Peter Wadhams who wrote of how changes in the sea ice will impact human life profoundly over the coming years (https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/273799/a-farewell-to-ice/). He also introduces us to the characters of those who do the dangerous work of icebreaking. There is something very appealing about reading about a whole area of work and life about which you know nothing. In this way it is similar to Mark Vanhoenacker’s joyous book about being a modern pilot, Skyfaring.
There are pleasing nuggets of information, as you find in the best travel books. I am looking forward to using the Finnish word kalsarikännit, which is “The feeling when you are going to get drunk home alone in your underwear – with no intention of going out.” I am already familiar with hygge but this is a useful addition to my vocabulary.
Another pleasure of this book was the reminders to read or reread other eclectic Arctic literature, of which Clare is a fan. He reminded me to reread Arto Paasilinna’s Year of the Hare (http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/06/books/a-skewed-and-skewering-look-at-finland.html).
This would be a great present for any armchair (or actual) traveller who favours ice, snow and the Arctic. Clare’s turn of phrase is vivid: “The ice stretches to opaque horizons. As the lines of the forest fall away behind us, all bearings seem lost”.
Review by Bethan
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October 23, 2017
by Team Riverside
Hardback, Maclehose Press, £12.99, out now
Lampedusa – Gateway to Europe is a book of extraordinary and moving first hand 
testimony from Dr Pietro Bartolo who runs the medical services for refugees landing on (or shipwrecked near) the island of Lampedusa in the Mediterranean. Those he treats are often in profound states of suffering after terrifying flights from their home countries. He is also deals with the bodies of those who have died on the journey. Often, the living and the dead arrive together.
Dr Bartolo interweaves the story of his own life, and particularly how he came to be doctor on the island where he was born, with accounts of individual refugees he has met over the last 25 years. His father was a fisherman, and his family are shown as hard working people with a deep respect for the sea. He writes: “There is an unwritten rule that you might only understand if you were born on an isolated island like ours: leaving another human being at the mercy of the waves, no matter who they are, is unacceptable – unthinkable, in fact. This is a law of the sea. It is taken so seriously that when the Italian government prohibited taking migrants on board a boat, fishermen often defied the law and ended up in court” (p. 87). He recounts one maritime disaster after another, relentless deaths and terrible injuries, which continue to this day.
He tells the story of the miraculous revival of one young refugee, Kebrat, who has been given up for dead when she is landed on the pier during the catastrophe of 3 October 2013, in which at least 368 people lost their lives. After 20 minutes of emergency work, her heartbeat is re-established: “I had experienced the greatest surge of emotion in my twenty-five years of first aid work” (p. 190).
The author and his team were seen in the film Fire at Sea (https://www.theguardian.com/film/2016/jun/09/fire-at-sea-review-masterly-and-moving-look-at-the-migrant-crisis). Newly translated from the Italian, the book is recommended by Philip Gourevitch, who wrote the extraordinary story of the Rwandan genocide We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow we will be Killed with our Families.
My personal view, shared by many others I am sure, is that when the histories of our period are written, future generations will be incredulous that we allowed so many to die while they were fleeing death at home.
The nightmare in the Mediterranean is not over. Bartolo is frustrated by the variation in media coverage, which is sometimes at saturation point and sometimes completely absent. This book stands as a lasting corrective to that. It is an instant classic of refugee and migration writing, and an overwhelming indictment of the human actions that make this happen.
Review by Bethan
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October 20, 2017
by Team Riverside
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
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October 17, 2017
by Team Riverside
Paperback, Canongate, £9.99, out now
This fresh and interesting account of Laing’s midsummer exploration of the Ouse river is now available in a good new edition of the excellent Canons series.
Originally published in 2011, this is nature writing partly in the vein of Helen Macdonald’s H is for Hawk, or Amy Liptrot’s The Outrun. Exploring East Sussex in part to get away after a horrible relationship break up, Laing brings a sharp eye to the natural world in what may feel like a very familiar area: “It is astonishing what wood and earth together will yield, given a spark and a puff of air. A windowpane, say, bubbling and settling into cool green sheets, like ice on a winter’s day” (p. 31). She preserves a genuine sense of wonder at the natural world, while never prettifying what she experiences.
There are excellent literary stories throughout the book, particularly about Virginia and Leonard Woolf who are strongly associated with this area. I am a fan but didn’t know that after their house in London was bombed, “the Woolfs went down to salvage what they could from amidst the dust and rubble: diaries, Darwin, glasses, her sister’s painted china. A melancholy business, but she says she likes the loss of possessions, the liberation” (p. 207).
The steamy heat Laing walks through rises off the page, and we are reminded that midsummer is still something magical, even in the midst of modern life.
Review by Bethan
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September 17, 2017
by Team Riverside
Paperback, Virago, £9.99, out now
A cracker of a memoir this, Darling Days tell the story of author and activist iO Tillett Wright’s distinctly off-the-wall upbringing in the squalor of downtown New York.
With its depiction of an exhilarating if hand-to-mouth existence in the East Village of the 1980s, the punk and new wave subcultures spawned there and the drugs that desolated its communities, Darling Days follows in the footsteps of autobiographies like Patti Smith’s Just Kids or Richard Hell’s I dreamed I was a Very Clean Tramp – both by poets and novelists who share not just glittery New York-based life stories but also a way with strong, beautiful prose. Tough acts to follow, but Tillett Wright more than holds his own on both counts.
He’s certainly had an interesting life straight out of the gate, born to a mother who was equal parts Amazonian warrior and Playboy centrefold, a model, hard drinker, addict and widow (her former husband having been shot by police in dubious circumstances). The pair’s adventures, clashes and anecdotes make for compelling, bewildering and sobering reading; there are several sections in the book, after the young iO has done something like rush to find a cop to protect her mother from an abusive boyfriend, when you find yourself saying, he’s how young at this point?
But all these wild experiences can make for sub-par reading at best if the author can’t bring them to life on the page. Thankfully, Tillett Wright’s writing is frankly brilliant; he has a fantastic way with imagery, razor-sharp descriptions of locales and characters bursting fully-formed into your mind’s eye. Angular faces, voluptuous bodies, mean streets and crumbling blocks are drawn in brilliant chiaroscuro style… and, as with Smith and Hell, there is something intangibly New York about it. At times his keen eye for this slum of a city and its crooked inhabitants is almost Dickensian.
The vivacity of Tillett Wright’s storytelling and style really can’t be emphasised enough, and his tale is a captivating one. For a living, breathing slice of a fascinating period of American life, look no further.
Review by Tom
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August 14, 2017
by Team Riverside
Hardback, HarperCollins, £16.99, out now
In the Days of Rain is an engrossing and deeply personal account of a childhood in a fundamentalist Christian sect. What happens after you leave? How do you get answers about your own life when silence prevails and some of the people you might ask are dying or dead? This complex and moving book is a daughter’s story of being brought up within the Exclusive Brethren, in which her father and grandfather were preachers.
The sect ordered followers to retreat from the world, and many commonplace things were banned. Stott’s nuclear family left when author was six but the break was never really discussed afterwards, and much of her extended family are still members of the Brethren.
The book opens with the adult children gathering in East Anglia as their father is dying. He asks his daughter to help write his memoir of life in the sect, including the parts he has previously found impossible to discuss, about the sect’s turbulent period in the 1960s. What results is Stott’s own account, including not only chunks of social religious history but also reflections on how it affects family relationships. This includes Stott’s own children, born well after her relationship with the sect ended. Best known as a writer on Darwin, Stott’s explanation of how she both discovered Darwin’s work and then wrote about it is particularly effective. An engaging story, well told and strangely hopeful.
Review by Bethan
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July 23, 2017
by Team Riverside
Paperback, Penguin Random House, £8.99, Out now
A bona-fide stranger-than-fiction story, the twists and turns of re-released true crime sensation The Adversary will have you exclaiming “I don’t believe it!” to no one in particular as you read.
Beginning with an account of the 1993 murder of a wife and two children by their husband and father, Jean Claude Romand, the narrative then spirals rapidly out of control as the killer – a respected French doctor and member of the World Health Organisation – is revealed to have been living a double life of colossal proportions.
As a tale it’s utterly astonishing; but it’s the moments where author Emmanuel Carrère pauses to reflect on the proceedings – whether he’s tracing Romand’s footsteps while trying to get into his headspace or drawing comparisons between the murderer’s deceased family and his own – that truly affected me. Unexpectedly lyrical and philosophical, his interjections are just as engrossing as the plot, and make sure that the book never feels ghoulish or lurid despite its fixation on a horrific crime. This isn’t writing to titillate – it is measured, respectful and questioning, and all the more powerful for it.
In short, Carrère has crafted nothing less than a modern In Cold Blood. Genuinely unputdownable.
Review by Tom
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July 17, 2017
by Team Riverside
This excellent new biography charts the rollercoaster life of Margaret Anne Bulkeley, 
born in Cork into genteel chaotic poverty, who became Dr James Barry – leading and innovative army surgeon in the nineteenth century.
An almost unbelievable yarn, Margaret’s remarkable life takes in Edinburgh, Cape Town, Canada, and many other places en route. A believably flawed character, several times I found myself gasping at the audacity of her behaviour. Some serious new archival research has been undertaken for this book, but the learning is worn lightly and the book zips along with much action, adventure, and drama. No wonder it was BBC Radio 2’s Fact not Fiction book choice.
This is a great addition to the literature of the history of medicine and surgery, but is equally important as women’s history. Advice: if you don’t already know the story of this life, don’t read a summary beforehand – let the book unfold and you’ll be treated to a truly vivid narrative.
The authors are very good at identifying the current names of locations so the reader can place the action. Some of it happens in London, and in particular Southwark, and so this is another great read for Riverside Bookshop locals. This was a perfect holiday read for me.
Review by Bethan
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June 14, 2017
by Team Riverside
Paperback, Vintage, £3.50, out now
“Don’t think, Tim. Do not think! Do not give yourself commands not to think! Silence!”
In this short delicious extract from his book Teach us to Sit Still, Parks is a very funny and very honest guide to the world of meditation. In response to serious health issues including chronic pain, he decides to learn to meditate, in a relatively extreme way, by attending a silent Vipassana retreat for multiple days.
He struggles with many things that will be familiar to meditators. His legs feel like they are on fire from the unfamiliar poses. He is enraged by catering trollies outside the meditation room. He is suspicious of some of the ideas promulgated and often tries, unsuccessfully, to suspend critical judgement: “I remembered something I had translated once from a book on pre-Vedic philosophy: ‘so as not to be hurt, before coming near the fire, the wise man wraps himself in the meters’. The arcane instruction had impressed, I remembered it, and I had a vague idea it might now be appropriate in some way, but it also sounded like something from Indiana Jones”.
Alongside the funnies there is a serious endeavour to learn something new and take a different approach to suffering, which makes for engaging reading. If you fancy giving mindfulness and meditation a go yourself, you can always try London teacher Tessa Watt’s excellent Mindfulness book.
This is part of a brand new series of extracts called Vintage Minis, out now for only £3.50 a pop. Read Nigella Lawson on Eating, Joseph Heller on Work and Roger Deakin on Swimming. Full list here, or see how many you can spot in the attached photo of our lovely shop window! (https://www.penguin.co.uk/vintage/vintageminis/)
Review by Bethan
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May 31, 2017
by Team Riverside
Paperback, Michael O’Mara Books Ltd, £9.99, out now
This beautiful gift book is small enough to be shoved in your backpack as you head off to get your nature fix in London. Enticing photos and good directions make this one of those guides that is as good to fall into on the tube as it is to work out where to find a wildlife friendly pond to picnic next to (Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park).
Some of the places listed I can vouch for myself. I like the crazy little triangular castle at Severndroog which has amazing views over London; Spitalfields City Farm, home of the Oxford v Cambridge Goat race; and Bunhill Fields, the city oasis that’s also the burial place of William Blake. But I was really impressed with how many of the places listed I’d never heard of – what about seeing herons at the Greenwich Peninsula Ecology park, or learning woodworking at the Green Wood Guild in Stepney?
There are useful suggestions of relaxing pubs and outdoor activities, and also a list of festivals such as the Marylebone Summer Fayre and the Cultivate Festival in Waltham Forest. Many of the things listed are free, and also easily accessed by public transport. If you’re hot in the city just now, this book will help you get a bit of country escapism without having to go too far.
A great local tip for next time you’re in the bookshop – it’s not too far to the fabulous Red Cross Garden, free and friendly for Bankside. http://www.bost.org.uk/open-places/red-cross-garden/
Review by Bethan
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