📚 🚶A NEW THING! On My Reading Radar

What else have I been enjoying, and what's coming up?

Dear walking book clubbers,

Welcome to On My Reading Radar 2.0.

Once a month, our Monday newsletter will leave our current book club pick in favour of other things on my cultural horizon.

Of course, I would LOVE to share your recommendations too. Either send me an email with your tips and I’ll share it next time, or leave a comment on this post. Looking forward to hearing your thoughts.

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Books

The stand-out book for me this month (aside from our book club pick, of course) has been The Glassmaker by Tracy Chevalier. I loved spending time with our heroine, Orsola Rosso, in Murano - the glassmaker’s island in the Venetian lagoon - beginning in the Renaissance and ending in the near-present. Once you accept the authorial time-travelling trick, you get completely caught up in the world. I learnt so much about making glass, and Venice, but also really loved the characters - it was a real pleasure to read. You can read my review for the Spectator, HERE. And do come along to see me interview Tracy Chevalier about The Glassmaker at The Owl Bookshop, Kentish Town on 7th November: book a ticket HERE.

I’ve really enjoyed getting stuck into Diamond Street by Rachel Lichtenstein ahead of my unusually urban walking book club around Hatton Garden with the Goldsmiths’ Centre on 1st October. There is 1 ticket left if you’d like to come, so snap it up! HERE is the booking link.

I was thrilled to host an author event at Bookbanks Newington Green with Ann Bridge, author of The Pages of the Sea. Her novel describes a different Windrush story: what happened to the children who were left behind, when parents left the Caribbean for the UK. It was a story that resonated with food bank guests - with one saying it was the same story as his mum’s, and another sharing her own very similar personal experience. The event was extraordinary, transforming the atmosphere of the food bank into that of a literary salon, with a very engaged discussion taking place after the reading. 25 copies of the book were distributed thanks to her publisher Weatherglass Books, and Arts Council funding via the Republic of Consciousness Prize. We are busy programming more literary events at all our Bookbanks sites (including Hammersmith and Fulham, which is now fully funded - THANK YOU those who helped us get here!) to help bring books in all their forms to people accessing food banks: next month, we’ve got our first writing workshops taking place at two Bookbanks sites in partnership with the wonderful Indie Novella!

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Kids’ Books

In the evening, one of my great pleasures is spending 20 minutes reading a classic to my three kids (ages 9,7,4). Admittedly the four-year-old doesn’t listen much, but that moment of lying down together for a story is a special one. It is also a good gauge of exhaustion as if I’m too overtired that’s when I fall asleep mid-sentence! At the moment we are nearing the end of Five Children and It by E. Nesbit. It IS good, but to be honest not as wonderful as I remember, and certainly not as good as The Railway Children (which we read a few months’ ago). I love the inventiveness and the dynamics between the children, but perhaps it does feel a bit too dated to be thoroughly enjoyed, especially the way the author’s voice often comes through to pronounce things that today feel either sexist or snobbish.

In other reading, nine-year-old is really enjoying Ingo by Helen Dunmore, the seven-year-old is deep into the very long Alex Rider series by Anthony Horowitz, and the four-year-old is obsessed with THIS beautiful Sleeping Beauty musical book from the Story Orchestra, and is genuinely terrified of ‘The Carabosse’! (Also, I can’t get over the fact that the illustrator’s surname is Tickle.)

And our whippet, Alfie?? Well I can tell you for sure that he absolutely hates the audiobook of The Hobbit - whenever we put it on in the car he growls and whines until we eventually give up and switch to music. Perhaps he thinks there is a strange threatening man among us, or perhaps he just isn’t into fantasy.

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Film and Television

We have been exhausted by the back-to-school, back-to-work, seasonal shift and rather than going out for our culture this September have tended to watch it on the sofa.

How have I only just come to Slow Horses? We had to binge the entire first season in two evenings (which I never do and it did not help with the exhaustion) but OH MY GOD it was too brilliant. The second season we sensibly stuck to one per evening, until the final two. Who knows how fast we’ll get through seasons three and four. For any of you, who like me, have missed it - it’s an adaptation of the Mick Herron books about the goings on at Slough House - an MI5 outpost for recruits who’ve messed up. The magic is in the relationship between River and Lamb (Gary Oldman), and the twisty plots and great shots of London. Highly recommend!

I have also just embarked on the new series of beloved Colin from Accounts, and so far it’s just as good as the first.

I finally got around to watching the classic Antonioni film The Passenger, starring a young Jack Nicholson, which is available on BFI Player HERE. Slow, beautiful, thoughtful, troubling… I think it’s about searching for meaning, finding your way in a messy world. Maybe it’s about something else. In any case, I loved it.

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Coming up

The Park Theatre are kindly offering walking book clubbers 20% off the premiere of Autumn, adapted from Ali Smith’s wonderful novel. Book HERE and use the code: AUTUMN20 at checkout.

I’m intrigued about Ballet Shoes at the National Theatre HERE.

And I will definitely try to get to see the by-all-accounts-incredible Van Gogh at the National Gallery, HERE.

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And you?

What are you enjoying or excited about? Leave me a comment, or drop me an email!

Hope you enjoyed this new version of On Our Reading Radar. The next one will be towards the end of October. Look out next week for my intro to next month’s book, Mrs Bridge….

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October

Mrs Bridge by Evan S. Connell

Mrs Bridge is a housewife and mother in 1950s Kansas City, raising her children and making a home for her husband. She follows all the rules: putting out special hand towels for guests (although she hopes they won’t use them, and is furious when her son does), judges people by “their shoes and their manners at the table”, and has never met a socialist. In a series of beautifully drawn, subtly ironic and yet devastating vignettes, Connell catches the contradictions, narrowness and fear that can shadow a life of comfort.

Intrigued? Read THIS RAVE REVIEW by Tom Cox in the Guardian.

In Regent’s Park: Friday 11th October, 12-1.45pm, setting off from Daunt Books, 84 Marylebone High Street, W1U 4QW, £8-15

On Hampstead Heath: Sunday 13th October, 11.30-1pm, setting off from Daunt Books Hampstead, 51 South End Road, NW3 2QB, £8-15

On Zoom: Monday 14th October, 8-9pm, £1-15

Buy Mrs Bridge from Daunt Books HERE and receive 10% off using the code WBC at checkout, or just tell them you’re in Emily’s Walking Book Club if you’re buying it in the shop.

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Happy reading,

Emily