Hammocks for Herons – 22 February 2025

The ceilings are so high in the new shop that we may be getting carried away. Our ambition knows fewer and fewer bounds. Now that we have a kettle, we can plot for even grander things. Reading tents, hammocks, champagne fountains. How have I coped for so long without a photograph prop shelf? We have a corkscrew but does the kitchen also need an oyster knife? We vegans wouldn’t want to offend any visiting ostreoideaphiles. Certainly it is only a matter of time before we install a dumb waiter for sending books and snacks between floors.

One minute we’re discussing houseplants. The next world domination.

For those who are also so inclined, may I present you with Weasels by Elys Dolan. The cutest picture book ever written about megalomania. Also good on why you should check that you did actually plug in the world-supremacy machine before you declare it broken and take the whole thing apart. A lesson for us all.

If you are designing your own such machine and in need of brushing up on your physics, How to Walk on the Moon by William Potter and Richard Watson is essential. Through Professor Katzenstein and his unlikely rat accomplice one can learn how to measure a shark, how to reach terminal velocity, how to look back in time and how to see behind a star. Mind blowing.

Young readers seeking further inspiration to conquer this and other worlds (but in a kind, empathetic way) will love the Dungeon Runners series and the Lightfall series.

Dungeon Runners by Kieran Larwood and Joe Todd-Stanton follows part-gnome part-dwarf, Kit, as he tries out for the dungeon running league. All the fun of an escape room, without the claustrophobia. The second in the series takes the contest to the skies. All the fun of flying, without the agoraphobia.

In Lightfall: The Girl & The Galdurian by Tim Probert, Bea, not a pig, comes home to find that her grandfather, a pig, has remembered an important task and gone away, without explaining further. Bea finds herself teaming up with the last member of the Galdurian race, Cad, to search for her grandfather and, in so doing, to save the world. This is a graphic novel for true art appreciators. Pages with no writing held me captive.  

Meanwhile, what better to ignite aspirations of grandeur than with The Lives of the Caesars…? Tom Holland’s new translation of Suetonius is excellent. Debauched too, of course. I’ve made it to Gaius/Caligula. My cheeks were turning pink as I read. Purely because I was sitting by the fire in a pub, not because I was at all scandalised…

Who gets to rule? By the Fire We Carry by Rebecca Nagle and Embers of the Hands by Eleanor Barraclough both look fascinating and have been nominated alongside many excellent books for the Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction. The former reports the plight of the Muscogee people forced into exile in the 1830s and their fight for decades to regain some land and recognition. The latter unearths the everyday stories of women, children, travellers and people who were enslaved in the Viking Age.

And what worlds should be conquered? I have just read Aerth by Deborah Tomkins. Aerth is a planet rather like ours except that no one has invented cars, telephones or the internet while they have managed successful missions to Mars. I cannot describe it further without giving anything away. Though that makes it seem as if this is a novel of big revelations and twisting plot. In fact, it is a collection of short insights which amalgamated become an examination of how we shut our eyes to what is happening in front of us and what an individual ought to do for a community and vice versa.

The antidote for all of this could be love. And you’ll find it in the form of Three Days in June by Anne Tyler, one of those novels where the characters feel like people you’ve known for ever and you don’t quite spot when it happens but suddenly their happiness is more important to you than anything.

We look forward to seeing you in the new shop soon and/or at one of our events (more to announce: I was distracted from updating the website by pig wizards and dumb waiters).

May your weekend be dominated by plots, books and weasels,
Lizzie