📚 🚶Our February Walker's Walk
Sarah G's Aldeburgh walk | Booking links for February & March events
Dear walking book clubbers,
As some of you probably know, Emily’s walking book club has now been going for over a decade, and while some of you have aged (graciously) with the group, many of you are relatively new to our community. We are now at around 2,500 members and about a thousand of you joined in the last year or so. Many of Our Walkers’ Walks to date have focussed on our long-standing members, so I wanted to take this opportunity to shine the spotlight on a newer member of our group. Read on to discover a bit more about Sarah G’s first walk with us and her Aldeburgh walk (pictured above).
A reminder that I would love to share YOUR walk with the group, no matter when you joined, so when you have a moment please hit reply and send me a couple of lines about where you enjoy walking and why, along with a picture. Thank you.
Our My Ántonia by Willa Cather events are this coming Friday, Sunday and Monday. Links to book your tickets to these below, as well as to our March events (at the bottom of this email).
I also wanted to take a moment to point you towards the Daunt Books Festival (see Sarah’s walk below for more about it!) which is on Thursday 14th and Friday 15th March. There are some great talks this year - I especially recommend Sathnam Sanghera, who is the most phenomenal speaker - and while I no longer work at Daunt’s or organise the festival, I still feel very fond of it as something that I founded many years’ ago at a bookshop that has got to be one of the most special places on Earth.
Our February My Ántonia events
Emily’s Regent’s Park Walking Book Club: Friday 23rd February, 12-1.45pm, setting off from Daunt Books, 84 Marylebone High Street, W1U 4QW, £8-15 N.B. There is an excellent, fully accessible path throughout - good for those who don’t fancy the mud.
Emily’s Hampstead Heath Walking Book Club: Sunday 25th February, 11.30-1pm, setting off from Daunt Books Hampstead, 51 South End Road, NW3 2QB, £8-15
Emily’s Zoom Book Club: Monday 26th February, 8-8.40pm, £1-10 Feel free to tune in even if you’ve not read the book - our zooms are open to all.
On Our Reading Radar: Us and the Land Friday 1st March, 1.30-2pm with special guest Ashley Olsen, Executive Director of The Willa Cather Foundation. Hosted here on substack - the link to join will arrive in your inbox. 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 has opened your eyes to our relationship with the land? I’m delighted to welcome Ashley Olsen to this month’s thread, who’ll be sharing The Willa Cather Foundation’s expertise with the group despite the time difference!
And in case you missed it, you can find my webcast about My Ántonia here, and my introduction to the book, including some useful links in the first newsletter of the month here:
Sarah G’s walk
Sarah G first joined our book club at the 2023 Daunt Books Festival. This photo of last year’s festival walk shows how absolutely soaking wet it was that day - I’m so glad the weather didn’t put her off! Since then, we have forgiven Sarah for not reading the book that time, thanks to her enthusiastic attendance and conversation. I especially enjoyed chatting to her about our Christmas book, The Dark is Rising. She also offers the perfect spur to book into the Daunt Festival 2024.
I am certainly a newbie to Emily’s Walking Book Club. My working life had changed a few years’ ago and I heard about the Daunt Book Festival in March last year. I contacted a very close old friend and we signed up enthusiastically. A great day out; an opportunity to meet up, surround ourselves with the gorgeousness of Daunt Books in Marylebone, listen to thought-provoking talks and have lunch in a nearby pub to soak in the ambience. It all worked beautifully well. What I hadn’t realised for the walk was that there was an expectation that you should have read the book! I cringe when I think back to this and how forgiving the group was to tolerate my ignorance. Of course I should have, but I was caught up in the booking of the various events of the day before giving thought to other preparations. The book was Akenfield by Ronald Blythe, and I was caught up in the social history of a rural life that seems to have disappeared, although I have memories of staying with my own grandparents in West Wales with little technology and a great deal of community.
Last October I stayed in Aldeburgh for a few days with another close friend. The weather was grey and blustery and I was worried about family members. Getting away to somewhere on the Suffolk coast was bliss; it is a favourite place and those early morning walks were both invigorating and therapeutic. The North Sea waves crashing down with an inevitable rhythm on the grey pebbles were both repetitive and comforting, and the emptiness of the beach, apart from the occasional dog walker, cleared my head. I would buy delicacies from the fish huts and the lovely bakery on the way back to the cottage and feel so much better than when I had left earlier that morning. During that time I bought another Ronald Blythe book, The Time by the Sea, a recollection of his time in Aldeburgh from 1955 – 1958 from the Aldeburgh Bookshop. This was an absolute joy to read. His accounts of his relationships with the organisers of the Aldeburgh Festival, including Benjamin Britten, Peter Peters, and then his links with the artists John Nash and Cedric Morris were wonderful, and has made me want to walk and explore around this area further. I have already booked another trip. In less positive achievements, I still haven’t finished Akenfield!
Thank you Sarah!
Please do share your own walks with me if you’re able - you don’t need to write much if you’d rather not, just a couple of lines and a photo would be splendid.
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 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, £8 (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.
Happy reading,
Emily