Heron Books

We resisted for as long as possible. There remain plenty of days and nights of 2025 on which books will be read. Nevertheless, here they are: The Book of the Year (up to 11 December) Lists. Yes, there are many books we have read this year which aren’t on there and should be. Yes, we might give a different answer on a different day. Yes, I considered making my whole list Barbara Pym novels. No, I do not know why we limited ourselves to fifteen books each. There is nothing scientific about this process. We all have to pretend that it makes sense to put a picture book about a…

Recently I have been asked for recommendations for a book to read whilst on the treadmill (who is doing this?), a book for someone who doesn’t like to think (should my suggestion perpetuate or change this?) and something for someone who is ‘really into poison’ (there is a wealth of literature out there but perhaps we should address ‘really into’ first, Agatha Christie notwithstanding). To the person wanting a suggestion for their partner, when I asked what they were like, I meant ‘what are they interested in?’ but it was lovely to hear about their striking cheekbones. I hope that we rise to each occasion and give apt recommendations. But,…

I am writing this shortly before the Heron Books annual party. All being well I shall press send shortly after the Heron Books annual party. Chances that I am still dressed as a character from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland? High. Chances that all labels ordering, ‘Drink me’ were obeyed? I’d risk a monkey on it. Chances that the Queen of Hearts got carried away, shouted ‘Off with their heads’ at anyone not suitably dressed up, tried to start a game of croquet (with herons rather than flamingos), lost the caucus race and fell through the looking-glass into another Lansdown in which the party comprised a sensible and sober all night…

Last week letters, this week diaries. Will our curiosity ever be satisfied? I hope not. Reading Helen Garner’s diaries, How to End a Story is utterly addictive. ‘Oh, just one more,’ I think, abandoning my bookmark. ‘Another won’t hurt,’ I say to the clock warning that it’s time to open the shop. ‘Actually, it makes sense to finish this section,’ I reassure myself, ‘then I’ll stop; I can stop at any time.’ My attitude is very similar to that when faced with a box of chocolate truffles. Garner’s diaries span twenty years, beginning in 1978 when her daughter is nine, her first novel Monkey Grip has recently been published and…

This week’s newsletter is not intended as a paean to the postman on whom I definitely do not have a crush. That blush you observe as a bookseller sees him making his majestic way down Regent Street is a quite normal reaction to the excitement of receiving letters, publishers’ catalogues and advance copies of books. Having said that, I have been reading The Postal Paths by Alan Cleaver in which the author sets out to research and walk the paths created by rural postal workers when they used to deliver on foot to the most remote places. The book is sweet and kind and full of admirable characters who were…

Perhaps I ought to be careful recommending a book about a morose, cynical bookseller whose rage at customers conducting lengthy (and dull) phone conversations in his vicinity and asking for books of which he does not approve threatens to boil over into such a frenzy that he may actually throw The Power of Now at the next nose-picker interrupting his thoughts to ask for it. Any similarity between the character working at the fictional Mute Books, who spends his leisure time reading Barbara Pym in the bath, and real persons is purely coincidental. Though he has inspired me to add a Presbyterian, his bathing drink of choice, to my cocktail…

On Tuesday Jay Griffiths and Gareth Howell-Jones are coming to the shop to talk about how animals, hedgehogs included, heal us. Since I was once rescued from a difficult situation by a hedgehog, a hedgehog which had itself been saved by my mother and named Lord Emsworth by my father, I fully endorse this message. Jay Grifiths’ latest book, How Animals Heal Us, is lovely. So much more than a paean to relaxing with a purring cat (which does have pain-relieving powers, releasing oxytocin) or the benefits of caring for animals in combating loneliness, the author’s deep research looks at how animals can heal individuals, both physically and mentally, but…

Sometimes one is reading a book so good that finishing it is followed by a period of mourning. A version of the five stages of grief must be endured before even considering reading anything else. Denial that the story is over is followed by anger that one didn’t come up with the idea oneself. Then comes a period of bargaining in the form of begging everyone else to read it and to love it as much. The depression phase is sometimes closer to repression, for example if you have just read That Broke into Shining Crystals by Richard Scott, or expression if you have just read Hunchback by Saou Ichikawa…

Inclement winds, gathering clouds, flood waters, rain and snow: few of those of late in Clifton but I have been buffeted and shivering in the domains of Sarah Hall, Philip Pullman and Sverker Sörlin where winds and snow are noisy with personality. Helm by Sarah Hall is named for the north-easterly wind which besets Cross Fell in the Pennines. Pictures of the bank of clouds which sweeps in with the wind across the Eden Valley are well worth gazing at, as the voice of Helm acknowledges: ‘The valley – after some Chistian-Pagan bunfighting – is [named] Eden. Seriously? OK, it is quite pretty.’ The helm wind is chilling and fierce,…

With thanks to the spider awaiting me last night, hanging upside down an inch above my pillow, not to mention the poltergeist which has set up noisy residence in my washing machine, I feel ready to declare that spooky season is upon us. Thus, in ascending order of age appropriateness and/or tolerance for the uncanny, the unsettling and the downright horrifying, some grotesque recommendations for you and your coven… Two interactive board books for minuscule monsters: Five Little Ghosts by Alex Barrow introduces a family of rather sweet and behatted ghouls trying to cause a scare, though mostly just worrying their mother, while Feed your Monster by Anna Milbourne, illustrated…