📚 🚶Announcing our Spring 2024 line up
These are the books you need to read
Dear walking book clubbers,
Here is a stack of four wonderful novels, chosen for your reading pleasure. Over these coming months we will travel from Japan at the start of the twentieth century to Nebraska a few decades earlier, then jump forward to London in the late 1950s before ending up in recent Norway. Along the way, we’ll consider friendship, love, resilience, memory, solitude and much much more. I am really excited to read this quartet of books with you over the first few months of 2024.
Our Spring 2024 titles at a glance
January The Ginger Tree by Oswald Wynd
Friday 19 Regent’s Park | Sunday 21 Hampstead Heath | Monday 22 Zoom
February My Ántonia by Willa Cather
Friday 23 Regent’s Park | Sunday 25 Hampstead Heath | Monday 26 Zoom
March The L-Shaped Room by Lynne Reid Banks
Friday 15 Regent’s Park | Sunday 17 Hampstead Heath | Monday 18 Zoom
April Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson translated by Anne Born
Friday 12 Regent’s Park | Sunday 14 Hampstead Heath | Monday 15 Zoom
If you’d like to book on to all four of our Spring walking book clubs, you can do so here. N.B. The March Regent’s Park walk is only being sold via Daunt as part of the Daunt Books Festival.
Choosing the books
The question I get asked more than any other is: How do you choose the books?
It’s a very imprecise art that involves scanning my shelves, bookshops, your suggestions and the internet, amassing a tottering tower of promising books and then whittling them down into those that I love and that ideally you might not otherwise discover, bearing in mind which ones suit the time of year, and also that work well together. Oh and I never choose new books.
Read on to discover why I chose these four, along with details of our events.
This year, please help me make a go of an extra walk each month around Regent’s Park, meeting at Daunt Books Marylebone on a Friday lunchtime!
N.B. I occasionally host bespoke walking book clubs, so if you’d like to book me for e.g. a literary hen do, or an office team-building exercise, or a book lover’s birthday party, please drop me a line.
Introducing our next books
Watch me fail to walk Alfie on Hampstead Heath, as I introduce our four for 2024:
January
The Ginger Tree by Oswald Wynd
In 1903, young, sheltered Mary Mackenzie sails to China to marry the British military attaché: a man she’s met only a few times and who turns out to be disappointingly devoid of passion. She attempts to fit in to the expat scene, has a daughter, and endures a joyless circumscribed existence, until a wild affair with a Japanese soldier leaves her pregnant. Rejected by husband, mother and country, Mary flees to Japan … Written as a series of compelling diary entries, this is a captivating portrait of a young woman’s adventure into waters unknown.
Why did I choose it? January can be even more of a struggle than Christmas - often we’re broke, we’ve given up booze, and it’s bitterly cold and dark outside. In other words, it’s the ideal time to immerse ourselves in a huge, utterly transporting novel, to journey to a different time and place, and escape into the astonishing emotional adventures of a great young heroine. This book was always being recommended by fellow booksellers, and I found this copy when going through my late mother’s books, in the painful process of emptying a storage room: It had been waiting for me! I sat down to read it, was utterly sucked in by the directness of reading Mary’s diary entries, and didn’t get up for hours…
Intrigued? You may enjoy THIS New York Times review from when it was originally published in 1978.
*** Tickets are now on sale for our January events ***
In Regent’s Park: Friday 19th January, 12-1.45pm, setting off from Daunt Books, 84 Marylebone High Street, W1U 4QW, £8-15
On Hampstead Heath: Sunday 21st January, 11.30-1pm, setting off from Daunt Books Hampstead, 51 South End Road, NW3 2QB, £8-15
On Zoom: Monday 22nd January, 8-8.40pm, £1-10
On Our Reading Radar: Friday 26th January, 1.30-2pm: Living abroad Join this month’s discussion thread to share your cultural highlights from the month, as well as your recommendations on the theme of LIVING ABROAD - What have you read or watched that has opened your eyes to the experience of living in a culture not your own?
Buy The Ginger Tree 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.
February
My Ántonia by Willa Cather
When orphan Jim Burden is sent to live with his grandparents in Nebraska in the late 1800s, he finds an unlikely friend in Ántonia Shimerda, an older Bohemian girl. After a childhood of shared adventures, their paths diverge, but Jim will never forget Ántonia, and her remarkable free spirit… Willa Cather’s best-loved novel is a beautiful portrayal of friendship, growing up, and Frontier life. This works as a stand-alone novel, even though technically it’s the third in Cather’s Great Plains trilogy.
Why did I choose it? So many people have recommended this to me over the years that it had become frankly embarrassing that this remained a gap in my reading. When I finally sat down to it, I could certainly see what all the fuss was about, and I also felt it made an interesting companion to January’s The Ginger Tree: another book about journeying into the unknown, resilience and growing up, only in extremely different circumstances.
Listen to THIS episode of NPR’s You Must Read This for a short exploration of why My Ántonia is brilliant to read, and re-read.
In Regent’s Park: Friday 23rd February, 12-1.45pm, setting off from Daunt Books, 84 Marylebone High Street, W1U 4QW, £8-15
On Hampstead Heath: Sunday 25th February, 11.30-1pm, setting off from Daunt Books Hampstead, 51 South End Road, NW3 2QB, £8-15
On Zoom: Monday 26th February, 8-8.40pm, £1-10
On Our Reading Radar: Friday 1st March, 1.30-2pm: Us and the land Join this month’s discussion thread to share your cultural highlights from the month, as well as your recommendations on the theme of US AND THE LAND - What have you read or watched that explores our relationship with the land?
Buy My Ántonia 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.
March
The L-Shaped Room by Lynne Reid Banks
Jane Graham - 27, unmarried, pregnant and kicked-out-of-home - retreats to a dingy boarding house in West London. In this collection of misfits and outsiders, she discovers friendship, love and happiness; vitally, she finds that that self-respect is always worth fighting for. N.B. This was written in 1960 and contains offensive language that reflects the attitudes of the time.
Why did I choose it? This is another hark back to my bookselling days, when a particular colleague loved this book so much she insisted a stack of it remained on the till at all times. It’s in a similar vein to two of our popular previous picks: Margaret Drabble’s The Millstone and Barbara Comyns’ Our Spoons Came from Woolworths, and I’ve been waiting for the right moment to add it to our repertoire.
You can watch the trailer for the award-winning 1962 film adaptation, starring Leslie Caron HERE.
In Regent’s Park with The Daunt Books Festival: Friday 15th March, 10-11.45am, setting off from Daunt Books, 84 Marylebone High Street, W1U 4QW, £tbc (please note the earlier start time)
On Hampstead Heath: Sunday 17th March, 11.30-1pm, setting off from Daunt Books Hampstead, 51 South End Road, NW3 2QB, £8-15
On Zoom: Monday 18th March, 8-8.40pm, £1-10
On Our Reading Radar: Friday 22nd March, 1.30-2pm: London Join this month’s discussion thread to share your cultural highlights from this month, as well as your recommendations on the theme of LONDON - Which books and films do you think capture the spirit of the city?
Buy The L-Shaped 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.
April
Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson translated by Anne Born
Sixty-seven-year-old Trond seeks solitude in a remote corner of Norway, only to find his idyll destroyed on happening upon a man from his past, who forces him to remember what he’d rather forget… Memories of a childhood tragedy and life in Occupied Norway rise to the surface in this painful and evocative masterpiece.
Why did I choose it? I always have an eye on helping readers discover more books in translation (in the UK, only 3.3% of fiction sales are translated - a shocking statistic that I would very much like to change!), and Scandi-lit is an area in which I’ve read alarmingly little. This book has been periodically recommended to me over the years, and I was immediately absorbed in its atmosphere and gripped by the story when I finally picked it up. Be warned: there is a deeply shocking moment near the beginning - if you are feeling a little vulnerable, especially about children, please take note and steel yourself…
The final couple of paragraphs of THIS joint review by Ian Thompson for the Guardian is a great, spoiler-free introduction.
Tickets go on sale 1st March
In Regent’s Park: Friday 12th April, 12-1.45pm, setting off from Daunt Books, 84 Marylebone High Street, W1U 4QW, £8-15
On Hampstead Heath: Sunday 14th April, 11.30-1pm, setting off from Daunt Books Hampstead, 51 South End Road, NW3 2QB, £8-15
On Zoom: Monday 15th April, 8-8.40pm, £1-10
On Our Reading Radar: Friday 26th April, 1.30-2pm: Solitude Join this month’s discussion thread to share your cultural highlights from this month, as well as your recommendations on the theme of SOLITUDE - Which books and films do you think explore the state of being alone?
Buy Out Stealing Horses 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.
Here are the block booking buttons again:
Happy reading!
Emily
I just came across the walking book club - what a fantastic idea,taking a stroll in the park and discussing a book (at least that’s what I’ve understood). 😃