📚 🚶Our January Walker's Walk
Alessandra's mountains | Tania James event at Daunt tomorrow | Persephone Festival
Dear walking book clubbers,
Our Walkers’ Walks are a monthly slot where I shift the focus from my walks to yours. It’s a chance for us to get to know our diverse, global community of 2,500 walking book clubbers a little better and take inspiration from how and where we enjoy walking. You can find all our walkers’ walks HERE, a collection that takes us all over the world, from Cape Town to the Mississippi, Sydney to Tel Aviv, and of course includes some super London walks too. Keep on reading to discover Alessandra’s experience of being a flâneuse in the Dolomites.
I would love to share YOUR walk with the group, 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.
It was wonderful to start 2024 with such a warm response to The Ginger Tree by Oswald Wynd, which ended with this month’s On Our Reading Radar on the theme of Living Abroad featuring Barnaby Rogerson from Eland Books. If you missed this, do check it out HERE for some brilliant reading recommendations and please feel free to share your tips on it - it’s never too late!
Next week, I’ll be introducing our February book, My Ántonia by Willa Cather. Before then I wanted to highlight a couple of other events with me coming up - one TOMORROW EVENING, and the other in April.
Tania James on Loot
In case you’re free tomorrow (Tuesday) evening, then please come along to hear me interview the author Tania James about her engrossing new novel, Loot, at Daunt Books Marylebone High Street. It’s a great novel about a young wood carver in Mysore, India at the end of the 18th century, full of evocative historical detail woven into a gripping plot. I’d love to see you there, and I know a few walking book clubbers are already coming, so there’ll be some friendly faces in the audience. You can buy tickets HERE.
If you don’t have £10 to spare but would like to come, please hit reply and let me know - I’m have TWO comp tickets to give away.
The Persephone Festival
I’ve been having a very fun time helping Persephone Books organise The Persephone Festival, which will be in Bath on 19-21 April. We’ve just announced the programme, ahead of tickets going on sale on 1st February, and I’m excited about the talks and other events (concerts, film screenings, endpapers workshops, supper club) that are lined up with some incredible speakers, including Anna Jones, Max Porter, Rachel Joyce, Elizabeth Day and of course Nicola Beauman. There will also be two Emily’s Persephone Walking Book Clubs around Bath’s Royal Victoria Park - one discussing Saplings by Noel Streatfeild and one discussing Someone at a Distance by Dorothy Whipple. You can look at the full programme HERE, and you can register HERE to be notified when tickets go on sale. Hope to see you there!
Alessandra’s Walk
Alessandra first came to a walking book club last January, when we discussed Barbara Trapido’s Brother of the More Famous Jack. She emailed me afterwards telling me that she couldn’t help but smile when thinking back to the walk, found the format helped her develop her ideas, included some photos, and was upgrading her subscription to paid. It was the dream email to receive! Alessandra is Italian - I’m so impressed by her ability to read and discuss in English, along with many others of you for whom English is not your first language. (Lucky you not having to hear me struggle along in my own idiosyncratic Italo-French!) London is a phenomenally international city, and I love the fact that our book club is such a melting pot. Since Alessandra’s first walk, we’ve stayed in touch both on the walks and by email; it’s wonderful to hear more about her walking life:
I’ve never been a sporty girl, but I've always been a great walker, mainly an urban walker, loving to walk and look up the buildings, loving the hidden details. I come from a small town nestled in the North of Italy, between the concrete of the industries and the ochre, flat countryside in summer, yet rich in history from the Middle Ages. In just a short drive, you are surrounded by constant, majestic beauty, either nature or the city. Here I am at the foot of the huge peaks of Dolomites nearby.
It was while I was working (and walking) in nearby Milan that I discovered the book Flâneuse by Lauren Elkin and I was happy to have found the right label for myself. ‘Flâneuse’ is a French noun, the feminine form of flâneur, who is an idler, a dawdling observer, usually found in cities. The label suited me a lot when I used to travel to London as a tourist. But it also suited me when I started to grow as a nature walker. Because of the busy, noisy urban environment, I realised how much the woods, the massive presence of the mountains, the crisp air, were very helpful; it's so wonderfully healing to be immersed there, watching the tiny details offered by Mother Nature.
When I moved to London, Hampstead Heath was my best option to perpetuate this need to be in nature, despite living in such a big city. Living near Hampstead Heath helped me a lot, especially during the harsh time of the pandemic. Actually, it's saved my life, it helped me to stay centred and not burn out. And when I discovered Emily's Walking Book club, it was like a breeze of fresh air, the same you feel tingling on your face at 2,000 metres above sea level and beyond. Because of my working timetable I cannot attend that often but still it makes me feel like I’m moving around - moving my feet on those written sheets of the book recommendations.
Thank you Alessandra. I love the thought of our feet moving across the pages of our books!
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, thanks.
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 captures the essence of life 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.
A reminder that you can find details of all our books and events for January-April 2024, here:
Happy walking,
Emily