Two Reviews for Halloween

Vlad was an ordinary everyday, fashionista vampire. He looked cool dressed in traditional vampire black, except his rosy cheeks made him look horribly alive. It was really hard to keep his cheeks covered, so he became a shy vampire. Until an accident happened to the bat hat of his friend Shelley and her – aaargh – pink hair was revealed. With mutual support, the twosome realised that even the most stylish vampires could vamp it up without just being dressed in black, and a new world was open to them. With apologies to our Goth customers.

–Ross

As Halloween and Samhain approach, and the weather turns grim, there’s nothing better than curling up with a book of spooky stories. One of my favourites is the classic vampire novella Carmilla. Considered to be the first literary depictions of a vampire it predates Bran Stoker’s Dracula by some 26 years, although stories in the oral folk tradition have been around for much longer. It’s an uncanny story of a friendship between two young women, fraught with sexual tension, and one is certainly taking more from the relationship than the other. Pushkin’s new paperback edition features a star red and black cover with red page edges, to help readers recover any Gothic image compromised from the book above.

–Kate

…and more for the rest of the year

After ninety years, Penguin has come up with the most bleedin’ obvious Penguin book ever. We imagine everyone in the Penguin colony slapping their collective foreheads and shouting “Of course” and giving a promotion to the person who thought of it.
But is it any good? Yes, because apart from the delightful Penguin endpapers, scientist Peter Fretwell (with fine illustrations by Lisa Fretwell) plays it straighter than a penguin can walk covering the eighteen species of penguin, their habits, their environment, their evolution and their relationship to humans. Well, straightish, with just a few penguin-like waddles, because it would be a shame not to be diverted along the way.

–Ross

As someone who enjoys staring out of train windows at flat landscapes, this book intrigued me. The author identifies her traumatic childhood in Pakistan with flat landscapes, which become both an escape and a liberation. She visits flat places in the UK, including the Fens and Orkney, connecting them to her past. Her personal insights and observations on how who you are—like a weathered landscape—is shaped by your surroundings is fascinating. A great read!

–Giselle

Ypi’s new book is a joy to read and a nightmare to know where to shelve in the shop! It’s a form of intensely researched creative biography, trying to both uncover truths and honour memories of her grandmother, Leman. Through following Leman’s journey, we’re offered an intimate insight into central European histories throughout wars, collapsing empires and occupations. An adventure through the archives, Ypi reconstructs and creatively imagines conversations and encounters that shaped her grandmother’s life, drawing from informant interviews and prison confessions, as well as family anecdotes and the author’s own memories. I listened to this as an audiobook on Libro.fm and really enjoyed hearing the author narrate such a personal account.

–Sarah

The inventor of the World Wide Web offers a reflective and questioning look back at the technology that now infuses all of our daily lives, for good or ill. Blending memoir, tech history, and a call to action, Berners-Lee reflects on the original ideals behind the web—openness, decentralization, and universal access—and how far we’ve drifted from them.
Covering ever relevant and pressing issues like data ownership, privacy, misinformation, and big tech, he reimagines the web not as a tool for exploitation, but as a force for good, and while some sections slip into technical jargon and ideas that only the geeks among us will find fascinating (yes, guilty!), it remains largely readable and remains highly relevant to all of us.

–Carl

We were lucky enough to have Agnes and her translator Nichola Smalley come to do an event on translation earlier this month- an evening which prompted me to read Lidbeck’s first book to be translated into English, Supporting Act. This book is brilliant! The writing is sparing with a dry sense of humour, conveyed brilliantly in the translation. The literary equivalent of splashing cold water on your face to wake you out of mundane patriarchal malaise. This is a feminist novel that took Sweden by storm – and for good reason. Our protagonist is trapped in societal expectations and demands on how she performs womanhood: her roles as mother, lover and carer; but the novel also challenges how self-imposed these trappings are by her own complacence and apathy. I raced through this and have bought two copies as presents since!

–Sarah