May 13, 2022
by Team Riverside
Elizabeth Strout – Oh William!
John Le Carre – Silverview
Elif Shafak – The Island of The Missing Trees
Kazuo Ishiguro – Klara and The Sun
Cecily Gayford – Murder by The Seaside
Elizabeth Day – Magpie
Sally Rooney – Conversations With Friends
Daisy Buchanan – Insatiable
Rutger Bregman – Humankind
Meg Mason – Sorrow and Bliss
Marion Billet – Busy London
bell hooks – All About Love
Colm Toibin – The Magician
Bernadine Evaristo – Girl, Woman, Other
Chris Power – A Lonely Man
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May 8, 2022
by Team Riverside
Elizabeth Strout – Oh William!
John Le Carre – Silverview
Emily St. John Mandel – Sea of Tranquility
Riku Onda – The Aosawa Murders
bell hooks – All About Love
Kazuo Ishiguro – Klara and The Sun
Meg Mason – Sorrow and Bliss
Kotaro Isaka – Bullet Train
Oliver Burkeman – Four Thousand Weeks
Caroline Criado Perez – Invisible Women
M.H. Eccleston – The Trust
Min Jin Lee – Pachinko
Clara Vulliamy – Marshmallow Pie: The Cat Superstar
Oliver Jeffers – Here We Are
Elizabeth Day – Magpie
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April 30, 2022
by Team Riverside
Hardback, Macmillan, £12.99, out now
Epic Adventures is a pleasingly large non-fiction picture book for children about great train journeys. From the Shinkansen bullet train in Japan to the Trans-Siberian express, this colourfully illustrated book inspires the wish to jump on a train and head off on an adventure. As we are just opposite London Bridge station, this urge is particularly strong just now!
You can tell this was written by a real train fan, as it has excellent facts and is suffused with enthusiasm. Sedgman is also author of train-based adventure stories for children including The Highland Falcon Thief, and the accessible prose in Epic Adventures shows that he is used to writing for children. He addresses the colonial heritage of some of the railways concerned, and the displacement they caused, which is important. I also appreciated the emphasis on rail as a more environmentally friendly form of travel.
My favourite of the many colourful illustrations is the northern lights overhead as the Arctic Sleeper speeds through to Norway.
As a fan of armchair rail travel (see The World’s Most Scenic Rail Journeys and Mighty Trains, on television) this inspires me to do some actual rail travel as soon as possible. Good for perhaps age 7 and up, Epic Adventures has history and geography, festivals and food. A nicely exciting gift for a young would-be traveller.
Review by Bethan
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April 26, 2022
by Team Riverside
So excited to have all these new signed copies in the shop…
Jessie Greengrass – The High House
Jeremy Atherton Lin – Gay Bar
Emily St. John Mandel – Sea of Tranquility
Maddie Mortimer – Maps of Our Spectacular Bodies
Catherine Prasifka – None of This is Serious
Laura Price – Single Bald Female
Ali Smith – Companion Piece
Nina Stibbe – One Day I Shall Astonish the World
Douglas Stuart – Young Mungo
Charmaine Wilkerson – Black Cake
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April 24, 2022
by Team Riverside
Kotaro Isaka – Bullet Train
Kazuo Ishiguro – Klara and The Sun
Eliot Higgins – We Are Bellingcat
Jeremy Atherton Lin – Gay Bar
Tim Marshall – Prisoners of Geography
Julian Barnes – Elizabeth Finch
Ray Bradbury – Fahrenheit 451
Catherine Belton – Putin’s People
Sarah Winman – Still Life
Bella Mackie – How to Kill Your Family
Emily Danforth – Plain Bad Heroines
Tom Burgis – Kleptopia
Luke Kennard – The Answer to Everything
Albert Camus – The Plague
Sathnam Sanghera – Empireland
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April 19, 2022
by Team Riverside
Thank you to Jeremy Atherton Lin for visiting to sign copies of Gay Bar! Nab one before they go.
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April 18, 2022
by Team Riverside
Elif Shafak – The Island of The Missing Trees
Taylor Jenkins Reid – The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
Stanley Tucci – Taste
Ali Smith – Companion Piece
Douglas Stuart – Young Mungo
Bella Mackie – How To Kill Your Family
Patrick Radden Keefe – Empire of Pain
Michael Lewis – The Premonition
Sathnam Sanghera – Empireland
Caleb Azumah Nelson – Open Water
Frank Tallis – The Act of Living
Adam Hargreaves – Mr. Men in London
Eliot Higgins – We Are Bellingcat
Kotaro Isaka – Bullet Train
Mary Lawson – A Town Solace
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April 2, 2022
by Team Riverside
Kazuo Ishiguro – Klara and The Sun
Kae Tempest – On Connection
Taylor Jenkins Reid – The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
Marion Billet – Busy London
Tom Burgis – Kleptopia
Colm Toibin – The Magician
Richard Osman – The Thursday Murder Club
Brit Bennett – The Vanishing Half
Matthew Green – Shadowlands
Daisy Buchanan – Careering
Tom Chivers – London Clay
Susanna Clarke – Piranesi
Kotaro Isaka – Bullet Train
Agatha Christie – Miss Marple and Mystery
Michael Lewis – The Premonition
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March 20, 2022
by Team Riverside
Kazuo Ishiguro – Klara and The Sun
Catherine Belton – Putin’s People
Riku Onda – The Aosawa Murders
Rutger Bregman – Humankind
Marion Billet – Busy London
Caroline Criado Perez – Invisible Women
Tom Burgis – Kleptopia
John Preston – Fall
Eliot Higgins – We Are Bellingcat
Charlotte Mendelson – The Exhibitionist
Kotaro Isaka – Bullet Train
Tim Marshal – The Power of Geography
Rebecca F. John – Fannie
David Baddiel – Jews Don’t Count
Siobhan Dowd – The London Eye Mystery
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March 14, 2022
by Team Riverside
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
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March 4, 2022
by Team Riverside
Tim Marshall – The Power of Geography
Caleb Azumah Nelson – Open Water
Frank Tallis – The Act of Living
Riku Onda – The Aosawa Murders
Maggie O’Farrell – Hamnet
Patrick Radden Keefe – Empire of Pain
Karen McManus – One Of Us is Lying
David Baddiel – Jews Don’t Count
Gertrude Stein – Food
bell hooks – All About Love
John Preston – Fall
Sathnam Sanghera – Empireland
Natasha Lunn – Conversations On Love
Marian Keyes – Rachel’s Holiday
Richard Osman – The Thursday Murder Club
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February 16, 2022
by Team Riverside
Paperback, W H Allen, £9.99, out now
The Madhouse at the End of the Earth is an engrossing account of a journey to Antarctica in 1897. One thing after another goes wrong for the crew of the Belgian whaling ship the Belgica, and they get stranded for the whole of the winter darkness, their ship frozen in a sea of ice.
Among those on board is a doctor, Dr Frederick Cook, who will later be imprisoned in his native USA for fraud. But as those on the ship suffer the effects of cold, dark, and malnutrition, his innovation and care keeps his colleagues alive. As things get worse, and the Captain withdraws, Cook seems able to turn his hand to anything. One part of the story that stayed with me was Cook creating a treatment for crew members suffering from scurvy and depression (among other things) of standing unclothed and in private in front of a fire. As Sancton notes: “His wild idea to have his ailing shipmates stand naked in front of a blazing fire is the first known application of light therapy, used today to treat sleep disorders and depression, among other things.”
The Madhouse at the End of the Earth works in many different ways. It’s a story of adventure and survival, failures of leadership, and physical and mental courage. It contributes to the history of medicine, as Sancton discovers that Cook’s case study is still used by Jack Stuster, a behavioural scientist who works with NASA, among others. As a study of how people cope, or don’t, under extreme strain, it is fascinating.
Also on the unlucky ship is Roald Amundsen, later famous as an epic Antarctic explorer in his own right. The insight given here into his early life is intriguing. He emerges as stoic in himself, and unbending in his attitude to others.
Sancton evokes the harshness of the Antarctic landscape and the claustrophobia of the trapped ship very well. “Where the water ended, the snow began, as if the ocean had risen half way up the Himalayas”. The descriptions of sounds of rats eating the crew’s limited food are suitably revolting. His impressive use of archive materials including the ship’s logs, crew diaries, and accounts published later by those who had been on board lends credibility to his review of the psychological states and emotions of those he is writing about.
He notes the colonial context to this journey, namely Belgium’s grotesque history in Africa at the time of the expedition. I was troubled by the title, uneasy about the use of ‘madhouse’, but I eventually felt it made sense for the time Sancton was writing about.
I read it over two days while on holiday, and felt lucky to have the chance to race through it. Because the story was unfamiliar to me, despite my having read a lot about Antarctic exploration, I tensely awaited each new development. It held me till the last page.
Review by Bethan
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February 13, 2022
by Team Riverside
Tim Marshall – The Power of Geography
Patricia Lockwood – No One Is Talking About This
Hafsa Zayyan – We Are All Birds of Uganda
Natasha Lunn – Conversations on Love
Virginia Woolf – Flush
Sathnam Sanghera – Empireland
Stanley Tucci – Taste
Frank Herbert – Dune
Sally Rooney – Conversations With Friends
Abdulrazak Gurnah – Afterlives
Mo Willems – Don’t Let The Pigeon Drive The Bus
Lorraine Mariner – Ten Poems on Love
Anna Malaika Tubbs – Three Mothers
Karen McManus – One of Us Is Lying
Peppa Pig – Peppa’s Magical Unicorn
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February 5, 2022
by Team Riverside
Natasha Lunn – Conversations on Love
Frank Tallis – The Act of Living
Susanna Clarke – Piranesi
Tim Marshall – The Power of Geography
Damon Galgut – The Promise
Maurice Sendak – Where The Wild Things Are
Charles Dickens – The Great Winglebury Duel
John Preston – Fall
Caleb Azumah Nelson – Open Water
Claire Fuller – Unsettled Ground
Bernadine Evaristo – Girl, Woman, Other
Richard Osman – The Thursday Murder Club
Brit Bennett – The Vanishing Half
Francis Spufford – Light Perpetual
Tom Chivers – London Clay
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February 1, 2022
by Team Riverside
Paperback, Metro, £11.99, Publisher
The pocket-sized London’s Hidden Walks series is well researched and handy. The latest addition, subtitled Every Street Has a Story to Tell, is a genial and inspiring guide to some hidden London treasures.
Who knew that the Spanish Civil War memorial was right next to Fulham Palace? Or that the cabman’s shelter in Pimlico, a small green wooden hut serving refreshments, is one of the sole survivors of more than sixty such? History, architecture, art, literature and generally bizarre things all feature.
South London is especially well represented here, with Clapham, Peckham and Tooting all featuring. Even in areas I know very well, I’ve learnt to look for some surviving gems because of this book.
Nicely illustrated with quirky photos and useful maps, this is a pleasure to read before you set out, as well as providing suggestions for good restaurants, pubs, and shops on the routes. The inclusion of notable ghost signs is especially welcome (I used to like the Barlow and Roberts ghost sign on Southwark Street near here, but it seems to be gone now – https://ghostsigns.co.uk/2021/10/barlow-roberts/). This book encourages us to look up: there is often something interesting up there.
Review by Bethan
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January 21, 2022
by Team Riverside
Richard Osman – The Thursday Murder Club
John Preston – Fall
Hanya Yanagihara – To Paradise
Stephen Millar – Londons Hidden Walks
Sasha Dugdale – Ten Poems About Walking
Stanley Tucci – Taste
Frank Tallis – The Act of Living
Nan Shepherd – The Living Mountain
Taylor Jenkins Reid – The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
Khaled Hosseini – A Thousand Splendid Suns
Caroline Criado Perez – Invisible Women
Donna Tartt – The Secret History
Joan Aiken – Arabel and Mortimer Stories
Claire Fuller – Unsettled Ground
Kazuo Ishiguro – Never Let Me Go
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January 16, 2022
by Team Riverside
Paperback, William Collins, £9.99, out now
I read Islands of Abandonment in hardback during one of the lockdowns last year. I was transported to wildly different newly-wild places around the world, even as I couldn’t stir much from home: a former military base on a Scottish island; an abandoned agricultural institute in the Tanzanian mountains; the drowned homes and fields of the Salton Sea in California. Flyn explores what the natural world can do when left mostly alone by humans. She focuses on places that were once hubs of human activity, where decaying buildings and landscape changes are the inheritance of the land.
The book features evocative colour photos, including a series of four Google Earth shots showing the transformation of a regular suburban home in Detroit into a ruin with trees growing through it alongside disappearing sidewalks. It made me think of the loss of people’s homes and communities, alongside the resurgence of other kinds of lives. Flyn’s descriptions are as vivid as the photos. She visits an abandoned canteen near Chernobyl: “The whole room is dominated by an enormous stained-glass scene that takes up the entire far wall: a moon rising in the west, into a sky of electric blue and crimson; and in the east, a burning sun, haloed in purple and orange and gold. Around and between, four godlike women rise, in simple robes, cups over each breast: the seasons”.
The attention and respect Flyn gives to non-human life reminds me of Robin Wall Kimmerer’s transformatory book Braiding Sweetgrass (see https://riversidebookshop.co.uk/2020/07/14/braiding-sweetgrass-indigenous-wisdom-scientific-knowledge-and-the-teachings-of-plants-by-robin-wall-kimmerer/). Flyn’s attempts to see the whole of the life, both non-human and human, in the places she visits echoes Robin Wall Kimmerer’s approach.
Often in these ostensibly abandoned places, some people remain. They might be caretakers, witnesses, those in search of a different way of being on earth. For example, former lab technician and current informal caretaker Martin Kimweri attends the former science facility in Tanzania, and looks after the many white and black mice whose ancestors were kept by the scientists. Flyn also comes across those who have stayed in their homes as other people left and the world changed utterly around them, as well as people who travel out into these spaces looking for something new. She is sensitive to these stories, which are necessarily those of outsiders.
As a woman who likes exploring places on her own, I appreciate Flyn’s solo venturing. Islands of Abandonment can be read as nature writing, adventurous travel, conservation literature or reflections on how cultures deal with the end of civilisations. It’s no wonder that authors including Kathleen Jamie and Adam Nicolson have praised Islands of Abandonment (the hard to classify nature of the work reminded me of both these authors, see https://riversidebookshop.co.uk/2020/08/24/surfacing-by-kathleen-jamie/). Flyn’s thoughtful responses to what and who she sees make this a thoughtful and strangely positive read.
Review by Bethan
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January 14, 2022
by Team Riverside
Hanya Yanagihara – To Paradise
John Preston – Fall
Rutger Bregman – Humankind
Claire Fuller – Unsettled Ground
Sathnam Sanghera – Empireland
Richard Osman – The Thursday Murder Club
Lucy Caldwell – Intimacies
Claire Keegan – Small Things Like These
Nan Shepherd – The Living Mountain
Maggie O’Farrell – Hamnet
Douglas Stuart – Shuggie Bain
Raven Leilani – Luster
Matt Haig – The Midnight Library
Riku Onda – The Aosawa Murders
Wendy Kendall – My Little Garden
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January 4, 2022
by Team Riverside
Hardback, Hoxton Mini Press, £22.95, out now
Did you know that Fortnum and Mason’s was started by one of Queen Anne’s footmen, who had a side business flogging off used candle wax from the queen’s household? Or that the wooden flooring in Liberty’s department store is from a nineteenth century warship? These are the kind of excellent nuggets that feature alongside engaging photos in this beautiful coffee table book (see some of the photos here https://www.hoxtonminipress.com/products/pre-order-london-shopfronts).
I was delighted to see good representation of bookshops (shout out to colleagues at Marchpane and John Sandoe) alongside famous London shops such as the old-school art emporium L Cornelisson and the legendary Beigel Bake on Brick Lane. Many of the entries include an update on how the businesses have managed during the pandemic, reminding us that some are small independent and/or family companies. SE1 is well represented too, with the famous M Manze pie and mash shop and Terry’s Cafe.
Some of those working in the shops tell us why they love it, including Guido Gessaroli of the Coffee Run in the Seven Sisters Road: “This is the London I came here for… Diverse, multicultural, a friendly neighbourhood. The area is sometimes considered a bit shabby, but to me it feels real and down to earth”.
Most places included were new to me, and this book made me want to eat and shop my way around London purely to visit them. I’d love it if the next edition had a map of sites so that you could arrange walking tours between the places.
The shop fronts and interiors that have been preserved are especially valuable, and are my favourite things in the book. New designs that are clearly intended to lift the hearts of anyone even walking down the street are delightful too (Saint Aymes and Mira Mikati, I mean you). Plot your London days out now, and use this jolly book to do it.
Review by Bethan
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December 31, 2021
by Team Riverside
Rutger Bregman – Humankind
Yotam Ottolenghi and Noor Murad – Ottolenghi Test Kitchen: Shelf Love
Michaela Coel – Misfits
Frank Herbert – Dune
Bernadine Evaristo – Girl, Woman, Other
Caroline Criado Perez – Invisible Women
Kate Ellis eds. – Brick Lane Bookshop Short Story Prize Longlist
Richard Osman – The Man Who Died Twice
Jessica Harrison eds. – The Penguin Book of Christmas Stories
Sally Rooney – Conversations With Friends
Richard Osman – The Thursday Murder Club
Maggie Shipstead – Great Circle
Tom Chivers – London Clay
Clare Chambers – Small Pleasures
Roma Agrawal and Katie Hickey – How Was That Built?
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December 18, 2021
by Team Riverside
Roma Agrawal and Katie Hickey – How Was That Built?
Yotam Ottolenghi and Noor Murad – Ottolenghi Test Kitchen: Shelf Love
John Le Carre – Silverview
Richard Osman – The Thursday Murder Club
Claire Keegan – Small Things Like These
Abdulrazak Gurnah – Afterlives
Hannah J. Parkinson – The Joy of Small Things
Colson Whitehead – Harlem Shuffle
Various Authors – The Haunting Season
Susanna Clarke – Piranesi
Michaela Coel – Misfits
Stanley Tucci – Taste
Dave Eggers – The Every
Various Poets – The Liberty Faber Poetry Diary
Amor Towles – The Lincoln Highway
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December 5, 2021
by Team Riverside
Roma Agrawal and Katie Hickey – How Was That Built?
Frank Herbert – Dune
Caroline Criado Perez – Invisible Women
Bernadine Evaristo – Girl, Woman, Other
Richard Osman – The Thursday Murder Club
Susanna Clarke – Piranesi
Damon Galgut – The Promise
Riku Onda – The Aosawa Murders
Richard Osman – The Man Who Died Twice
eds. Jessica Harrison – The Penguin Book of Christmas Stories
Taylor Jenkins Reid – The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
Sosuke Natsukawa – The Cat Who Saved Books
Merlin Sheldrake – Entangled Life
Shirley Jackson – The Missing Girl
Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche – Notes on Grief
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November 27, 2021
by Team Riverside
Frank Herbert – Dune
Piranesi – Susanna Clarke
Harper Lee – To Kill A Mockingbird
Jessica Harrison eds – The Penguin Book of Christmas Stories
Brit Bennett – The Vanishing Half
Sosuke Natsukawa – The Cat Who Saved Books
Sarah Moss – The Fell
Noor Murad, Yotam Ottolenghi – Ottolenghi Test Kitchen: Shelf Love
Elena Ferrante – The Lying Life of Adults
John Le Carre – Silverview
Sally Rooney – Beautiful World, Where Are You?
Roma Agrawal and Katie Hickey – How Was That Built?
Merlin Sheldrake – Entangled Life
Amor Towles – The Lincoln Highway
Matt Haig – The Midnight Library
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November 21, 2021
by Team Riverside
Riku Onda – The Aosawa Murders
Elizabeth Strout – Oh William!
John Banville – Snow
Taylor Jenkins Reid – The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo
Roma Agrawal and Katie Hickey – How Was That Built?
Noor Murad and Yotam Ottolenghi – Ottolenghi Test Kitchen: Shelf Love
Harper Lee – To Kill A Mockingbird
Stanley Tucci – Taste: My Life Through Food
John Le Carre – Silverview
Frank Herbert – Dune
Nora Ephron – Heartburn
Rutger Bregman – Humankind: A Hopeful History
Susanna Clarke – Piranesi
Charlie Macksey – The Boy, The Mole, The Fox and The Horse
Caroline Criado Perez – Invisible Women
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November 15, 2021
by Team Riverside
Paperback, Penguin, £10.99, out now
Ice, snow, owls: sold.
Naturalist and PhD student Slaght goes to Primorye in remotest Russia in 2006 to research and protect the world’s largest owl, the Blakiston’s fish owl (see excellent pictures in Helen Macdonald’s rave review, here – https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jul/22/owls-of-the-eastern-ice-by-jonathan-c-slaght-review-an-extraordinary-quest). Slaght describes it: “Backlit by the hazy gray of a winter sky, it seemed almost too big and too comical to be a real bird, as if someone had hastily glued fistfuls of feathers to a yearling bear, then propped the dazed beast in the tree.”
This is an account of work at the sharp edge of conservation and research. Slaght is working at a time when local economies are changing rapidly. Logging and free market ventures are expanding into areas of remote and limited fish owl habitat, and it becomes imperative that conservationists work out what the threats are, and what opportunities exist to protect the owl.
This is travel writing as much as nature writing. Slaght conveys how quickly the ancient forest and surrounding environment can change, from conditions that are beautiful and wild to extreme and life-threatening. There are rivers and pools warmed by radon, Amur tigers hunting, hermits and wilderness. Endurance is required to get through the hardships he and his colleagues face in finding, tagging and relocating the owls over several years.
Literally toxic masculinity features, as hunters and others working in the area sometimes engage in extreme drinking to forge trust with strangers like Slaght, who not only is an outsider but also an American and an ornithologist. Several times he’s part of a party that must not break up until the vodka bottle is empty, and sometimes the ‘vodka’ is ethanol. But he gets to work alongside committed lifelong conservationists and assistants, and finds that people will often help him and his colleagues when they need it most.
The owls are known locally as “the owls who ask for a fur coat”. In Russian when a pair sing to each other, it sounds like each is saying “I want a fur coat”. Owls of the Eastern Ice is a truly engrossing and transporting book.
Review by Bethan
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October 15, 2021
by Team Riverside
Riku Onda – The Aosawa Murders
Yotam Ottolenghi, Noor Murad – Ottolenghi Test Kitchen: Shelf Love
Caroline Criado Perez – Invisible Women
Richard Osman – The Man Who Died Twice
Sally Rooney – Beautiful World, Where Are You?
Bob Mortimer – And Away…
Marion Billet – Busy London
Sosuke Natsukawa – The Cat Who Saved Books
Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche – Notes on Greif
Suzanna Clarke – Piranesi
Frank Herbert – Dune
Florence Given – Women Don’t Owe You Pretty
Judith Kerr – Mog the Forgetful Cat
Jeremy Paxman – Black Gold
Jonathon Franzen – Crossroads
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October 13, 2021
by Team Riverside
Hardback, Particular Books, £20, out now
This new graphic novel and memoir charts historian Rebecca Hall’s search for women rebel slave leaders in archives in the UK and US. It is gripping, moving, and compelling.
Formerly a social justice lawyer, Hall’s work starts in New York in 1999, and Hugo Martínez’s illustrations show the slaving past literally reflected in the city as Hall walks through it. It’s a brilliant way of showing how the past is inescapable in the present. The graphic novel format lends itself to this so well, literally illustrating the similarities in some behaviour and surroundings between then and now. A smartly dressed white man barges into Hall without seeing her, and in a window reflection a white man in a tricorn hat pushes past another Black woman.
There are newly found stories of women-led revolts here, showing that her exhaustive work has paid off, and they are told with deep humanity.
As with Saidiya Hartman’s work on transforming and disrupting the archive, Hall does the work of interrogating why archives are as they are (anyone who loved Wayward Lives and Lose Your Mother will find this essential reading – see https://riversidebookshop.co.uk/2020/09/23/wayward-lives-beautiful-experiments-by-saidiya-hartman/). The realisation that current racism and sexism have some of their roots in slavery is manifest. The historian as human is very present – “This work I’m doing is hard, and it hurts.”
Wake gives a vivid account of the difficulty of finding people in official archives when their voices are not recorded, being considered of no importance, or when their only seeming presence is as property. She is also explicit about the UK archives which barred her from access, and those which felt they held nothing about slavery.
Hall describes herself as being haunted by slavery. This really is a haunting book, necessarily violent and painful, showing that hard and committed work by historians can be revolutionary.
Review by Bethan
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October 12, 2021
by Team Riverside
Hardback, Allen Lane, £20, out now
I did not expect to laugh out loud while reading a proper scholarly history of the index. But I did, several times. And I now know that the little pointing hand in the margin is a manicule: ☞ (see also https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/manicules).
I did not realise that an index might be more than a handy tool. In the course of Duncan’s account, we find out than an index can be so many other things. For example, a means of revenge, a strange addition to fiction, or a way to satirise an author. We get information on the first things organised by alphabet, the first page numbers, and all kinds of natty anecdotes. One of my favourite bits is 19th century historian J. Horace Round’s extensive diss-fest index entry on his nemesis Professor Edward Freeman, which includes “his ‘certain’ history”, “misconstrues his Latin”, “his failure” and “his special weakness” (p. 14-15).
I am a fan of a good index. They can drive you nuts if they are absent or shoddy. Why would anyone make a travel book without at least a location index? Am I supposed to memorise the location of every café that makes the best bath buns or Black Forest gateaux? One of the most enjoyable I’ve seen recently is the one for Rob Halford’s Confess, in which the Judas Priest frontman’s life is summarised under the entry for Halford, Rob. But this leads to another topic covered in the History, namely the suggestion that students might cheat (gasp) by reading only the index instead of the actual book. Another favourite is in Donald Knuth’s The Art of Computer Programming (volume 3 from 1973). He references “royalties, use of”, and this refers to the purchase of his dream pipe organ (see https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/organ.html).
Index, A History of the has been added to my list of relaxing and entertaining non-fiction that I have found helpful during the pandemic. During the first lockdown, I realised that the most engaging reading I was doing was well written non-fiction on topics about which I knew nothing (lots of scope here, obviously). Top hits for me were Born to Kvetch, Gathering Moss, and Entangled Life.
Make time to work your way through this book’s own index. It is enormous fun and had me cackling. This is what I’ll be getting for my bookish people for Christmas this year.
Review by Bethan
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October 9, 2021
by Team Riverside
Sally Rooney – Beautiful World, Where Are You
Richard Osman – The Man Who Died Twice
Karina Lickorish Quinn – The Dust Never Settles
Sosuke Natsukawa – The Cat Who Saved Books
Caroline Criado Perez – Invisible Women
Shon Faye – The Transgender Issue
Roma Agrawal and Katie Hickey – How Was That Built?
Merlin Sheldrake – Entangled Life
Riku Onda – The Aosawa Murders
Pat Barker – The Women of Troy
Stanley Tucci – Taste: My Life Through Food
William Boyd – Trio
Richard Osman – The Thursday Murder Club
Brit Bennett – The Vanishing Half
Bob Mortimer – And Away…
Posted in Fiction, Kids books, London, News, Non fiction, Reviews |
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October 2, 2021
by Team Riverside
Sally Rooney – Beautiful World, Where Are You
Roma Agrawal and Katie Hickey – How Was That Built?
Shon Faye – The Transgender Issue
Caroline Criado Perez – Invisible Women
Richard Osman – The Man Who Died Twice
Tom Chivers – London Clay
Maggie O’Farrell – Hamnet
Suzannah Clarke – Piranesi
Frank Herbert – Dune
Riku Onda – The Aosawa Murders
Chimamanda Ngozi Adiche – Notes on Grief
Brit Bennett – The Vanishing Half
Colson Whitehead – Harlem Shuffle
Bob Mortimer – And Away…
Marion Billet – Busy London
Posted in Fiction, Lifestyle, London, News, Non fiction |
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