summer travels: a journey through my local bookshop

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I’m not doing any. Well, not yet. Right now I’m just trying to get to that point. But I wandered into Stoke Newington Bookshop this morning and had a very uncharacteristic browse. It was like visiting a foregn country, so much of my book-buying is done either online or second-hand. And anyway, I’m usually completely directed, not browsing. So today I saw some things I would be reading, if I were doing that thing we call Summer Reading.

One of them was the new, now-in-paperback novel Michael Tollington Lives, by Armistead Maupin. I used to love his sweet books. If I ever have anything that feels like productive leisure time again, I will certainly want to read this in the bath or on a veranda – or maybe on the Tube, to make me feel as if I am on a veranda.

One was Uncorrected Proof, by the wonderfully-named Louisiana Alba, who lives around here I believe, and who has been assiduously facebooking this work. I looked at it and thought it looked good. I’d read it. If I were reading anything. So if you are local or can get to a copy, have a look & get it & let me know what you think.

There’s a novel also, called Away, by Amy Bloom, whose first book of short stories I loved many years ago. She’s a wonderful writer. But I have to say, this one I would buy despite, not because of, the blurb on the back from MsLexia magazine. It’s so terrible and off-putting that I copied it down and reproduce it for you here. Poor Amy Bloom; she’s better than this:

“This is a novel about loss and hope, about survival and understanding, and, ultimately, about love… the piercingly beautiful Away will linger in your mind long after Lillian (who she? ed.) has reached her final destination.”

Good GRIEF. Who WRITES that crap. Poor old Amy Bloom.

After that I was noticing book covers, and how there is this new font with loads of swirls and circles coming off it – it was used last year on Ian Duhig’s book The Speed of Dark – which seems to be getting a bit overexposed now, to say it one way. And it’s being copied on others, where they have a similar font with flowers and plants growing out of the letters. And all those book jackets with cropped faceless girls on them. I’m waiting to see a cropped faceless man.

Allen Ahlberg’s Collected Poems are out in hardback, with gorgeous, sophisticated drawings by Charlotte Voake. Sad, of course; but lovely. Readers will remember Ahlberg as the husband part of the husband-and-wife team Janet and Allen Ahlberg, who wote, among other things, Peepo! and Each Peach Pear Plum (which Ms B knows entirely by heart). Janet is no longer here to illustrate this book but it couldn’t be any more beautifully illustrated than it is. And, invoking the spirit of my best friend Ms RS-D’s kid, when he moaned about being sent out to play, “It’s our holiday too, you know!”), the first poem I saw in it, written in jaunty rhymed quatrains, is about children in the playground being jealous of the teachers sitting in the nice cosy staff room drinking nice cups of tea.

Got junior-school kids? Get them this book.

I was taken aback, in my travels through this strange country, to see a book called Paradise Lost (about the destruction of Smyrna in 1922; good title, as they’d say in Shakespeare in Love) – written, though, by Giles Milton! Is that supposed to be a GOOD thing?!? Paradise Lost, by Milton? Jesus wept.

Er, and that’s kind of it. They’re stocking Poetry magazine, which is great news. I picked up a copy of the May issue, which has a face-off between my friend Joshua Mehigan and Cate Marvin, on the subject of Alice Oswald, in it. Possibly not the most deathless thing either of them has ever written but I’m glad to have it, as my subscription has lapsed… There is a discrepancy, though, which has always troubled me, between the terrible, tiny, useless poetry section in this bookshop – which does nothing to reflect the number of poets with Stoke Newington connections* – and the fact that they sell several poetry magazines, & sell them out, which must mean there is a lively local interest. You have to think they might be missing a trick. Long ago I gave up ever looking for a poetry book in this shop. I used to buy kids’ books and current fiction from them, but now that I no longer need much of either, I mainly use the shop for greeting cards and wrapping paper.

* me, of course, though I admit I am hardly Seamus Heaney. Roddy Lumsden, Annie Freud, John Stammers, though they have all now moved (though Annie’s daughter still lives in the neighbourhood); Tim Wells, a few inches from the shop; Donut Press, which publishes Tim, Highbury; Yang Lian; Clare Pollard, unless she’s moved; Martha Kapos; & Michael Donaghy lived nearby. I think Greta Stoddart is near as well. Anybody want to let me know of others?

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Filed under Stoke Newington, books, poetry