The Riverside Bookshop blog
Dear loyal customers of Riverside Bookshop,
unfortunately, in line with government guidelines, we will be closed from Thursday the 5th of November until further notice. If you wish to order from us in the meantime we can be found via our profile on bookshop.org here: https://uk.bookshop.org/shop/theriversidebookshop
Thank you for your continued support during this difficult time and we hope to be back with you soon!
Love from,
The Team at Riverside Bookshop
Hardback, Nosy Crow, £25, out now
This gorgeous anthology of animal poems for children has just arrived, and it is a complete joy. There’s a poem for every day, varying from the funny to the serious, and the short to the reasonably epic. There are poets here I recognise and many that I do not. This book is ostensibly for children, but like the best children’s books is really for all humans.
For autumn, a spider poem by Bashō:
With what voice,
And what song would you sing, spider,
In this autumn breeze?
The Britta Teckentrup illustrations are vivid and engaging. We at Riverside are massive fans of her work, especially the stunning Under the Same Sky (https://riversidebookshop.co.uk/2018/01/16/under-the-same-sky-by-britta-teckentrup/).
This is a book to keep and share forever. It’s big, and heavy, and perfect for curling up with on a chilly autumn evening.
Review by Bethan
We’re very excited to have signed copies of Platinum Blonde by Phoebe Stuckes and published by Bloodaxe Books.
Order from us by phone or email and get free delivery within the UK.
We’re working on a new downstairs poetry display… and we’ve included quotes on belly 
bands so you can try before you buy and see why we like them all so much. The section will be ever-changing but at the moment it features Mona Arshi, Rachael Allen, Warsan Shire, Hannah Sullivan, Hera Lindsay Bird, Claudia Rankine, J.O. Morgan, A. K. Blakemore, Emily Berry and Richard Scott.
Riverside Bookshop is pleased to be selling the first joint work from the excellent poet Catherine Madden and superb designer Louise Evans. It is a series of poems and 
illustrations in which the authors alternate inspirations. Half the poems are Cat writing in response to drawings by Louise, and half the drawings are by Louise in response to poems by Cat.
We have signed limited editions of this beautiful book for sale. And we are especially proud to have Cat as one of our expert booksellers here at Riverside.
A second book by Cat is due out soon!
Paperback, Paekakariki Press, £10, out now
This lovely letterpressed book features many local sights and spots which will be familiar to our customers.
Local author Michael Shann has captured the sensory joy of Borough Market perfectly: “to weave through the waft of grilling beef/paella, mulled wine and cheese/to take it all in and still to keep moving/past the gawp of a monkfish”. How excellent to have the Market on the page just when it needs our support and appreciation the most – http://boroughmarket.org.uk/articles/borough-market-bounces-back.
Lovely too to see the Redcross Garden immortalised here – we are fans of this tiny beautiful Bankside space (http://www.bost.org.uk/open-places/red-cross-garden/).
This pocket sized special edition would make a lovely gift for anyone with links to London Bridge or Southwark, and a great memento of a visit. The beautiful illustrations by Kirsten Schmidt make it extra special.
Review by Bethan
Nominated for the Samuel Johnson Prize, The Old Ways: A Journey on Foot is lyrical nature writing that draws deep on literature, myth and memory. It’s a book for walkers or indeed anyone who’s felt their imagination stir as they put one foot in front of the other on an ancient path. Macfarlane is intensely curious about the places and people he encounters – and himself. If you can read it outdoors with a majestic landscape as your companion then all the better. It’s also a book that does a fine job of reviving interest in the early 20th century poet Edward Thomas, who was heavily influenced by the English countryside. His collected poems are also available at the Riverside.
For fans of Robert Macfarlane, there’s also the intriguing Holloway about the author’s exploration of a sunken path in south Dorset. It’s a slender, exquisite volume illustrated by Radiohead artist Stanley Donwood.
Object Lessons, the superlative collection of short stories from The Paris Review, was a literary hit over Christmas. For anyone enraptured by that anthology of favourites from the New York magazine’s 60-year history, the obvious next step is to acquire a quarterly habit for The Paris Review’s inventive fiction, poetry and prose from international authors. Issue 203 features new fiction and poetry from James Salter, Rachel Kushner, Sarah Frisch, Tim Parks, Peter Orner, Ben Lerner and Geoffrey Hill, as well as Pulphead essayist John Jeremiah Sullivan and editor Lorin Stein’s interviews from the First Annual Norwegian-American Literary Festival.
British literary magazine Granta, which features award-winning reportage, memoir, fiction and photography, will be making headlines in the spring when it publishes its once-a-decade list of the best of young British novelists. In 2003, their literary roll call included David Mitchell, Zadie Smith and Sarah Waters. The latest issue, no. 122, has the stinging theme of betrayal with new writing by Ben Marcus, Janine di Giovanni, Karen Russell, Samantha Harvey, Colin Robinson and John Burnside.
Humboldt’s Gift is loosely based on Saul Bellow’s relationship with Delmore Schwartz who, as a short story writer and poet, in his early twenties burned as brightly as the best of them before failing to live up to the expectations that were placed on his young shoulders by the waiting literary observers. It’s impossible to unstitch the story of Delmore Schwartz, and in turn his own work as a writer/poet and teacher, from New York’s cultural landscape. At Syracuse University he taught a young Lou Reed, whose band, The Velvet Underground, would dedicate ‘European Son’ to him. In later years Schwartz’s life would be curtailed by increasing mental health problems and Bellows story begins with his narrator, ‘the successful’ Charlie Citrine, the toast of senators and Broadway (his hit play is about a character based on Humboldt’s genius) alike, hidden behind a car, spying his one time friend, in the gutter eating a pretzel stick, “the dirt of the grave already sprinkled on his face.” This is the last time that Citrine will see the older writer alive before he reads his depressing obituary (“for after all Humboldt did what poets in crass America are supposed to do.”) five years later. Back in his native Chicago to write his masterpiece on Boredom Citrine finds his own life to be in a slump. But then after a chance encounter with a small time hood at a poker game he is reunited with his old friend’s legacy and so he is forced to reavulate his own life. Whilst the premise of story is just that, this is also a book full of wisdom about the meaning of success, what it is to be ‘real’ and why America loves to see it’s poets, those who strive most of all to be real, dead. Advertised as having an introduction by the formidable Martin Amis, its mysterious omission will not hinder your enjoyment of this warm book. Read one of these books and you’ll want to read the other whilst listening to the echo of the Velvet Underground in your head.
