Dear walking book clubbers,
As we come to the end of our trip to the Antipodes this May - after some fruitful discussions about Helen Garner’s The Children’s Bach and a wonderful On Our Reading Radar with NZ writer Catherine Chidgey on Friday (check it out HERE)- I’m so happy to leave you with a walk from Natalia, an Aussie in our ranks.
Natalia joined Emily’s Walking Book Club at the start of this year, and has been a wonderfully friendly and chatty presence on our walks and zooms. She has kindly taken some great photos of our walks, that you’ll have seen on here over the months, and I’m thrilled also that Natalia, with her background in the books industry, is one of our first Bookbanks volunteers, soon to be sharing her love of books with Bookbanks guests at our London sites.
Before we join Natalia on her Montenegro adventure, you can find details for our June Giovanni’s Room events (look out for my introduction to the book, landing in your inbox next week), and for two other June events with me - hope to see you at something next month!
Our June Giovanni’s Room events
A landmark work of gay writing, Giovanni’s Room is about a fated love triangle: David, an American in 1950s Paris, who has a tormented affair with Giovanni, an Italian barman, while his fiancee is away in Spain. Baldwin begins his story on the eve of Giovanni’s execution, after David has abandoned him … What follows is a painful articulation of shame and powerful exploration of conflicted desire, convention and sexual identity.
Please note that for the benefit of your fellow walkers, you need to have read the book before coming along to a walking book club. If you’ve not read the book, you are very welcome to join the Zoom instead.
Emily’s Regent’s Park Walking Book Club: Friday 21st June, 12-1.45pm, setting off from Daunt Books, 84 Marylebone High Street, W1U 4QW, £8-15
Emily’s Hampstead Heath Walking Book Club: Sunday 23rd June, 11.30-1pm, setting off from Daunt Books Hampstead, 51 South End Road, NW3 2QB, £8-15
Emily’s Zoom Book Club: Monday 24th June, 8-9pm, £1-15
On Our Reading Radar: Friday 28th June, 1.30-2pm: Intersectionality Join this month’s discussion thread to share your cultural highlights from the month, as well as your recommendations on the theme of INTERSECTIONALITY - What other great books and films explore aspects of compounded prejudice?
Buy Giovanni’s Room from Daunt Books HERE and receive 10% off using the code WBC at checkout, or just tell them you’re in the group if you’re buying it in the shop.
More June events with Emily
Moll Flanders Walking Book Club at the Stoke Newington Literary Festival
Sunday 9th June, 10.30-12 noon, meeting at The Mildmay Club, 33-34 Newington Green, London, N16 9PR
Fancy a stroll around Stoke Newington’s Clissold Park for a change? Join me as Emily’s Walking Book Club heads to North-East London for a walk-talk about Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe as part of the wonderful Stoke Newington Literary Festival. Daniel Defoe lived in Stoke Newington and Moll is one of the first – and certainly one of the most vivid – narrators in English literature, as she tells of her life of crime and capers in this beloved classic novel.
Celebrating The Penguin Book of Classics with Henry Eliot
Thursday 20th June, 6.30pm at The Gilded Acorn Bookshop, 1 Portsmouth Street, WC2A 2ES
Join Henry Eliot (host of the beloved podcast On the Road with Penguin Classics) and me as we celebrate Penguin classics and more. Henry and I have been collaborating on a few ideas recently, and I’m looking forward to chatting to him about all things classic!
You can have 10% off the ticket price using the code FRIENDSANDFAMILY when booking using the button here:
Natalia’s walk
I love Natalia’s description of her hike to the ice cave. It shows how the best things in life are often the least planned, and just how much we can learn from talking to people.
“Why aren’t you going to the ice cave?”
On a family trip to the Balkans, we decided to go for a hike in the famous Durmitor National Park. We had arrived the afternoon before the day of the walk and, after discovering the accommodation we’d booked was a disaster, we luckily found a local who had a spare room we could stay in. Before setting out we went to talk to a neighbour we’d met the day before — we wanted to give someone notice of where we were heading and when we expected to get back. We showed her where we planned on going, only to be asked “Why are you bothering with there? Why aren’t you going to the ice cave?” We didn’t even know there was an ice cave. So, with the help of our new friend, we quickly reconsidered our route to include the said ice cave and set out.
This was a walk that was at the ‘hike’ end of the spectrum rather than ‘stroll’. But it was so worth it. There was an amazing profusion of plants — dozens and dozens of varieties of wildflowers. You could walk 10 metres and come across various different flowers, grasses, succulents, alpine herbs and other plants, all on the same stretch of trail. Durmitor is truly a botanist's paradise. And of course, there was the ice cave.
It is magical. We arrived and sat above it to eat lunch. You can walk down into the cave along a steep slope (there is a cable to hold on to/pull yourself back up) and while it looks like you can go on and actually enter the cave, we didn’t. It was quite amazing to come out of the extreme summer heat and sit at the mouth of the cave and feel chilled.
While Croatia may be the best-known tourist destination in the region, Montenegro, and neighbouring countries Albania and Kosovo, hold their own when it comes to holiday delights. Beautiful walks, amazing nature – and of course, an ice cave. If you are considering your own walking adventure in Montengro, a great book to start with is Mountains of Montenegro.
Thank you so much Natalia for sharing this with us.
And how about your walk?
I would love to hear about your walking life. When you have a chance, please reply to this email with a snap or two of a walk that is meaningful to you (please check you have permission to share if anyone else is in your photo; landscape format rather than portrait tends to sit best), along with a couple of lines about the walk and why it’s special for you.
Happy reading,
Emily