Meet the Team - Lucy Clare

Lucy Clare

Lucy joined in September of last year and has spent five wonderful months with us but will be leaving to go travelling in Costa Rica next week. Lucy has also just been accepted into Exeter University to study Spanish & Classics starting in September.

Lucy's choices are below.

Francis Spufford
Cahokia Jazz
Hardback £20.00

In his most recent book, Francis Spufford brings to life an alternate history of 1920s America where, at first glance, a city called Cahokia is thriving. However, this apparent peace quickly disintegrates when Barrow begins investigating a troubling death as a member of the Cahokia PD. This is an enthralling and unpredictable read which had me invested from the beginning - I didn’t want it to end!

Make it stand out

George Orwell
Homage to Catalonia 
Paperback £8.99

This particular memoir of Orwell’s details his experience fighting on the Republican side of the Spanish Civil War. It provides an eye-opening account of the less frequently covered brutalities of the Civil War, namely acts committed within the Republican cohort and is perfectly balanced politically and personally, easily making it a readable but informative piece of work. 

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Half of a Yellow Sun
Paperback £9.99

This novel set largely during the Biafran War follows the intersecting lives of 3 people: Olanna, the wife of an intellectual, Ugwu, her houseboy, and Richard, her sister’s partner. Adichie depicts the heartbreaking impact of war on lower and upper-class citizens alike, as well as the strength of family ties. It is an intimate and incredibly real piece of writing in which everyday struggles are exacerbated by war and leaves you emotionally invested throughout.

Robert Harris
Imperium 
Parperback £9.99

The first in a trilogy, Imperium is a deeply interesting fictional exploration into Rome and its important historical figures post-80 BC through the eyes of Cicero’s slave Tiro. It follows Cicero’s rise to political power and provides a convincing picture of the treachery and scheming that commonly surrounded Roman politics. Harris creates the perfect combination of history and tense storytelling in which factual information is never lacking but neither is a sense of intrigue.

Tracy Sierra
Nightwatching
Hardback £14.99 (published 8th February)

Fantastically gripping from beginning to end, this is a book I wish I could re-read for the first time. Suspense was wonderfully mastered during this thriller in which a single mother’s house is broken into, and not by your run-of-the-mill intruder. Flashes between past and present were beautifully crafted without slowing down the pace and all the while increasing interest. For anyone who enjoys feeling just a little bit scared, I couldn’t recommend this more!

The Alde and Ore Estuary Trust Charity Christmas Cards

Charity Christmas Cards
for the Alde & Ore Estuary Trust

Each year two local artists generously allow us to use an image for the Alde & Ore Estuary Trust Charity Christmas cards. We've done this for several years now and the cards have raised an excellent amount for a local cause which is dear to the hearts of all those who love the river.

The cards are 185 mm x 125 mm.
With a white envelope.
The message inside reads Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.
They cost £6.00 for a pack of six cards (three of each design).
They can also be available separately if you just want one of the two images.

Lily Leaver
Christmas at the Cliff

Lily Leaver has just started her second year at the Edinburgh College of Art, where she is studying Fine Art. When she is in Suffolk she lives in Iken with a view over the River Alde. Lily worked at the bookshop this summer and is back in Edinburgh now continuing her course.

Karen Lear
A Rose for Winter

Karen Lear is a florist, celebrant and artist as well as a lover of books and our glorious Suffolk coast, where she has lived almost all her life. As the seasons change, so do the flowers she captures in pen and finger-painted acrylics. Some of you will know Karen from the bookshop and the Literary Festival.  She lives in Leiston and has had many exhibitions locally.  Her work can often be seen in the Aldeburgh Gallery.

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The Alde & Ore Estuary Trust (AOET) is a charity, registered with the Charity Commission, registration number 1155115

The Trust aims to provide, preserve, maintain and improve river defences and flood protection, always taking into account the conservation and protection of the natural environment, flora, fauna, features of historic interest and the landscape and beauty of the Alde and Ore.

This will be achieved by upgrading the flood defences on the river walls. This will produce major benefits to both the local and UK economies, health, well-being and the natural environment. Click here to read more about the invaluable work of the Trust.

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Orwell Press Art Publishing

The bookshop would also like to thank Orwell Press who print the card to a high quality on favourable terms so more proceeds can go the charity. Thank you, James and Colin.

Meet the Team- Tom

Tom Wigan

Tom has worked at the bookshop for the past little while. Originally from Scotland, he has taken to Suffolk life and spends his time bass fishing and foraging coastal plants for the pot.

Delia Owens
Where the Crawdads Sing
Paperback £9.99

Set deep in the marshlands of North Carolina, Where The Crawdads Sing is the tale of Kya, the marsh girl. Abandoned by her family and ostracised by her community, Kya ekes out a living foraging plants and selling shellfish to a local gas station owner. 

Her story is pierced with tragedy and pain. The more hardship she experiences the stronger her bond with the marsh becomes. 

This life of raw survival, in the end leads to great accomplishments. Her wooden shack becomes a museum of collected shells, feathers, fungi and insects. Soon, a living is earned through her talent as an artist and knowledge of the marsh. The story demonstrates the drive and passion that can be spurred on by terrible circumstances.    

The dead body of a local man is the tensioner throughout the book.

A subtle, artistic flare flows through the whole story, effortless and natural. It is also filled with some extraordinary back country quotes that will tempt you to reach for your notebook. ‘Skinny as a tic on a flag pole,’being one, another, ‘Crazy as a three eyed rat.’  

Recycled Bottle Pen 
£1

If you’re flooded with guilt every time you pick up a pen, this could be the one for you.

Made almost completely from recycled bottles, this beautiful San Pellegrino Jade pen is a dream to write with. It has a wonderfully, satisfying slide when met with paper and if like mine, your handwriting looks like a deranged 5 year old’s, it does a good job of keeping it under control.

80% of the pen is made from recycled bottle, this is impressive. I’m guessing the 20% left over is for the ink tube, nib and spring for the click mechanism. 

One pound. One pound! Not many things can be bought for a humble pound these days, perhaps half a dozen eggs from a Suffolk smallholders driveway but even some of these have now ramped up to one fifty. Next time a pound is staring you in the face and you don’t know what it wants, come down to the Aldeburgh bookshop and give it us. We will give you one of these fantastic pens in return. 

Thomas Hardy
The Trumpet Major
Paperback £12.99

It’s easy to sideline the old classic writers when so much brilliant new prose is on offer. Reading Thomas Hardy’s, The Trumpet Majorreminded me why it’s sometimes worthwhile taking a step back, then taking a step forward toward the classics shelf. 

This smooth-rolling romance is set in the South West of England during the Napoleonic wars.  

It tells the tale of Anne Garland who, the single daughter of a widow, is riding through the complexities of young love. This is made more complex by the fact that every man within firing range is madly in love with her. 

The son of the local miller returns from an overseas posting and is shortly followed by a mysterious woman he met on his travels. Hardy goes into such wonderful detail about the preparation for her arrival. The bedroom floors are scrubbed with suds dripping to the rooms below, chickens are culled, a pig is slaughtered, and the enormous milking pale is used to stir the pudding. It’s all very wholesome and all very lovely. 

Beautiful landscape descriptions run through the book and as always Hardy sees through a wide lens. The gently sloping hills of South West England are painted perfectly.

Throughout the book, Hardy digs deep and brings to the surface the emotional strains of his complex and realistic characters. He has a wonderful way of celebrating what it is to be human and leaves you eager to know what decisions will be made next. This is certainly a page-turner in its own slow-burning way. 

David Whyte
Consolations 
Hardback £14.99

David Whyte is a poet and philosopher who spent his younger years sheep farming in Northern Wales and writing poems from his caravan.

In Consolations, everyday words are broken down in order to reap the full depth and meaning behind each one. Words we perceive as negative such as Despair and Loneliness are turned on their head encouraging the reader to see what can be born from these difficult mind states. 

Whyte blurs the line between positive and negative experience allowing us to see the whole, as opposed to getting lost in the discomfort we often feel.

With endless wisdom and insight he tells us what we already know but is so easily forgotten. He conveys his message in clear language, rolling along with a rhythm only an accomplished poet could achieve. 

Consolations is a good book for when we are feeling unwell and in a world where anti depressants are popped like smarties it should be a household must have. 

Mary Oliver
New and Selected Poems
Paperback £16.99

If you find poetry a bore, have a go at Mary Oliver before throwing in the towel. Her poems are clear, deep and easy to understand making them a joy to read and accessible to all.

Fixated by the natural world, Mary Oliver soaks up the messages of the wild and feeds them back to us with seemingly effortless grace.

Her relationship with all things natural is at an almost religious pitch and can only have been gained through years and years of observation and fascination. 

An innocence and purity flows through her work and a consistent message is always present, no matter what is happening in our human lives, we are part of a system far bigger than we can comprehend and it will continue to surge forward. 

Meet the Team- Lily

Lily Clapshaw

Lily has been with us at the bookshop since mid-August having graduated from university back in the Spring. As her parents are new Aldeburgh locals she has been loving working so close by and gaining hands-on experience in the book-selling world! This has been particularly useful as she is interested in a career in publishing. She will be off in late November to go traveling through Australasia and Southeast Asia but hopefully will be back next summer before continuing her studies.

Sally Rooney
Normal People
Paperback £9.99

Fittingly entitled, it is Sally Rooney’s gut wrenching portrayal of ‘normality’ in this novel that has resulted in such a seemingly mundane love story connecting with so many. Set against the backdrop of the 2008 recession in County Sligo Ireland, Connell and Marianne’s initial union is presented as being almost as doomed as their surroundings. Despite this unusual beginning, their sensitivity and inexplicable care for the other prevents a separation from ever lasting long. Throughout their story, Rooney articulates their self conscious inner dialogue with infuriating detail as their inability to fully divulge their insecurities brings re occurring complexity to the relationship. Although there is an inevitable impossibility to their partnership it is equally impossible to envisage them apart. Expressed with undeniable warmth and compassion and familiarity it is both a joy and a painful pleasure to live alongside Connell and Marianne in these pages. 

Nina Stibbe
Reasons to be Cheerful 
Paperback £8.99

Reasons to be Cheerful is the comically told and heart-warmingly insightful story of a young woman in 1980s Leicester who recently departed her family home to embark on work as a dental assistant. With no previous training or particular ambition for this line of work, Lizzie is thrust into the center of an endlessly chaotic workplace. Suddenly taking orders from an eccentric boss, navigating her puzzling new status of ‘girlfriend’, and experiencing independence from her unhinged, alcoholic mother for the first time, Stibbe narrates Lizzie’s excessive struggles in everyday life with tender hilarity. The juxtaposition of such exaggerated characters against the crushing normality of working-class Leicester enables this coming-of-age novel to innocently depict first-time occurrences with a tone that is both familiar and sensitive. And really funny. 

Audrey Niffenegger
The Time Traveler's Wife
Paperback £9.99

The Time Traveler’s Wife digresses from that of a traditional love story. This is almost entirely as a result of Henry and Clare, the two central characters’, relationship being characterised by Henry’s ability to involuntarily travel in time to different moments in his life. Whilst their initial meeting introduces Clare as only a small child, their lives continually intersect with a frustrating confusion until they are temporally synced for a period. As a reader, this story was far deeper than an escapist fantasy. On the contrary, it was utterly convincing in its exploration of how our time to experience the deep roots of familial love is limited, all from the perspective of a man who sees his life through every lens and age imaginable. 

Sylvia Plath
The Bell Jar 
Parperback £9.99

This story commences in the buzzing environs of 1950s New York as a summer of work experience draws to a close for the protagonist, Esther. Far from signifying a dwindling of her opportunities however, Esther’s career prospects and intelligence are conveyed with a dazzling certainty. Irrespective of this, the plot follows a rapid unravelling of her mental state. Mirroring Plath’s real-life struggles in her own early-20s, there is an honesty imparted on this novel that forces the reader to reflect on each painful revelation that is divulged. Frequently compared to poetry for the effortlessly beautiful metaphors employed to describe the ugly entrapment of severe mental health issues, Esther is heart wrenchingly far away and yet dangerously close to familiarity. It is exciting, crushingly sad, lost and at points bizarrely uplifting. In spite of it all, there is something oddly optimistic and beautiful about Plath’s only novel. 

Elena Ferrante
Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay
Paperback £9.99

Written under the pseudonym Elena Ferrante, ‘Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay’ is the third out of a quartet of novels set in 20th century Naples. Whilst the plot line tends to diverge in a multitude of directions, each story ultimately centres around the complex friendship between two women, Elena and Lila. This begins with their unlikely union in childhood and draws to a close in their old age. From the first novel, ‘My Brilliant Friend’ to the last ‘The Story of the Lost Child’, Elena, a fictional character although suspected of resembling the author’s own upbringing, narrates the trials and tribulations of existing alongside her closest friend in the politically turbulent Neapolitan environs. ‘Those Who Leave and Those Who Stay’ sees Elena and Lila graduate into middle age and grapples with themes of jealousy, abandonment and motherhood through a brutal and unforgiving lens. The severity of the encounters that they endure is executed through the bleak writing style that Ferrante employs. At times depressing, and often infuriating, one cannot help but admire the shear relentlessness of their unique and involuntary bond. 

To Look Forward To

Dolly Alderton
Good Material
Hardback £16.99 (published 9th November)

The highly anticipated new Dolly novel spans the turbulent months following a 35-year-old stand-up comedian’s break up with his long-term girlfriend. Dumped and bemused by the love of his life’s recent exit from their partnership, Andy endeavours to discover why she fell out of love with him. Told with equal parts humour and sensitivity, ‘Good Material’ is littered with profound insights that simultaneously expose and connect with any reader. It observantly captures the typical (and a typical) dynamics of male friendship, reviews problematic compromises in a long-term relationship and revisits what a fulfilling life could look like for a modern woman with a refreshing degree of honesty. Alderton’s pitch-perfect tone ensures that her readership feels continuously understood.

Good News on the Price of the Shell Line Book

Good News - Change of Price for The Shell In Time

Lida and Els have kindly agreed to let us sell the book at the launch party for the special pre-order price of £15.00 (reduced from £20.00).  Click here to pre-order or come and collect your copy on Friday 20th October.

Friday 20th October at 6 pm
At The Aldeburgh Bookshop

Lida Kindersley & Els Bottema
A Shell in Time
Hardback, £15.00 reduced from £20.00 for the occasion of the launch

This is the memoir of two artists who first met as schoolgirls in Delft. Their paths converged and diverged as they grew up and followed their individual vocations, as ceramicist and letter cutter. What brings them back in touch is the coincidence of cancer: that both are diagnosed in the same year, but are then able to support each other through the trials of chemo treatment. They choose to convalesce on the bleak coast of Suffolk, and there create a natural artwork which has moved and motivated visitors from across the world: the shell line of Shingle Street. 


All are welcome.  Refreshments will be served.

Pre-order below

A Shell in Time

£20.00

Quantity:

Add To Cart

Cool Crime Covers - Clare Keegan - 2024 Diaries

Cool New Covers to Penguin Crime and Espionage Classics

Hats off to the designer of these stunning reprints for a new Penguin Modern Classics Crime and Espionage collection.  Cleverly modelled on the green and white design colours of Penguin's crime paperbacks, this is a really interesting selection of the best of their backlist. 

All ten are available as a set at our special price of £90 (retail price £100)

Len Deighton
SS-GB
Paperback, £9.99

First published in 1978.  Classic thriller: what if England had been conquered and occupied by the Germans in the Second World War?

John le Carre
Call for the Dead
Paperback, £9.99

First published in 1961.  Le Carre's masterful debut novel introduces the celebrated spook George Smiley in a murky story of betrayal, intrigue and murder.

David Grubb
The Night of the Hunter
Paperback, £9.99

First published in 1953.  Murderous ex-convict Harry Powell misrepresents himself as a prison chaplain upon his release from prison in order to con the widow of his former cellmate into revealing the hiding place of his hoard.  An atmospheric Southern Gothic.

Edogawa Rampo
Beast in the Shadows
Paperback, £9.99
Translated from the Japanese by Ian Hughes

First published in 1928.  A seminal work of crime fiction from one of Japan's pioneers of the genre, Beast in the Shadows spins a twist-laden tale of disturbing letters, damsels in distress and sinister writers in which nothing is as it seems.

Dorothy B Hughes
In a Lonely Place
Paperback, £9.99

First published in 1947.  A classic hard-boiled thriller it was also a film starring Humphrey Bogart.

Eric Ambler
Journey into Fear
Paperback, £9.99
With a new introduction by Norman Stone.

First published in 1940.  An unassuming English engineer has traveled to Turkey on business. And somebody wants him dead.  This breathless wartime chase finds him desperately fleeing unknown assailants across Europe.

Georges Simenon
Maigret and the Headless Corpse
Paperback, £9.99

First published in 1955.  A baffling case. A mysterious inheritance. It starts when a man's arm is fished out of Paris's Canal Saint-Martin.  Number 47 in the Maigret series.

Ross Macdonald
The Drowning Pool
Paperback, £9.99

First published in 1950.  This is the second novel to feature Private Detective Lew Archer, who is called on to investigate a case of libel and blackmail in oil-rich California.

Chester Hines
Cotton comes to Harlem
Paperback, £9.99

First published in 1965.  A rollercoaster of a crime novel, Himes' effervescent caper sees two detectives engage in a fast-paced attempt to retrieve the money stolen from the good people of Harlem by a ruthless conman.  It is the best known of the Harlem Detective series.

Josephine Tey
The Franchise Affair
Paperback, £9.99

First published in 1948.  By the author of one of our favourite books, The Daughter of Time. 

Abducted, beaten, hidden in an attic, a young woman stages an audacious escape. But is her story everything she claims it to be?

Fifteen-year-old Betty Kane can recall every detail of the room where she says she was held at the country house known as The Franchise - even the crack in its round window. But her alleged kidnappers, a quiet-living mother and daughter, claim they have never seen her before. Somebody has to be lying. But who?

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UK Bookshop.Org

Remember you can order any of these and other books from the excellent online Bookshop.org and have all the convenience of buying online in an ethical way that supports independent bookshops.  Bookshop.org has now earned over £3,000,000 for UK independent bookshops and no one is flying to the moon on the proceeds.  Follow the link here and we will all benefit.

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Claire Keegan
So Late in the Day
Small slim hardback, £8.99

We have just five signed copies of this exquisite new short story by the author of Foster and Small Things Like These.  Signed copies are very limited -- we applied for 20 but were only allocated these five.  We would like to go to our loyal customers so get in touch as soon as you can if you want a signed copy.  We do have lots of unsigned copies. Publication date is tomorrow.

After an uneventful Friday at the Dublin office, Cathal faces into the long weekend and takes the bus home. There, his mind agitates over a woman named Sabine with whom he could have spent his life, had he acted differently.
 

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Anna Funder
Wifedom
Hardback, £20.00

The Sydney-based author of Stasiland has now written this eye-opening account of the neglected life of George Orwell's first wife Eileen O'Shaughnessy.  Using newly discovered letters from Eileen to her best friend, Funder recreates the Orwells' marriage, through the Spanish Civil War and WW II in London. As she rolls up the screen concealing Orwell's private life she is led to question what it takes to be a writer - and what it is to be a wife.

Anna bravely battled her way through the Aldeburgh Carnival on Monday last week to sign copies at the shop.  Here she is with John just after the floats had passed.

1000 piece jigsaw of Aldeburgh - Golf Quarterly-

Book Launch

Friday 20th October at 6 pm
At The Aldeburgh Bookshop

Lida Kindersley & Els Bottema
A Shell in Time
Hardback, £20.00

This is the memoir of two artists who first met as schoolgirls in Delft. Their paths converged and diverged as they grew up and followed their individual vocations, as ceramicist and letter cutter. What brings them back in touch is the coincidence of cancer: that both are diagnosed in the same year, but are then able to support each other through the trials of chemo treatment. They choose to convalesce on the bleak coast of Suffolk, and there create a natural artwork which has moved and motivated visitors from across the world: the shell line of Shingle Street.

All are welcome.  Refreshments will be served. 

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Half Term Event for Children

Wednesday 25th October
At 12 noon and at 2 pm

Meet the Author and a Reading
For children from about 3 to 7 years old

Kate Rolfe
Wolf and Bear
Hardback, £12.99

This beautiful story is about a playful young wolf and her best friend, Bear. The two best friends always play together, whether it's paddling in the stream, skidding in the snow, or tumbling in the falling leaves. But sometimes Bear feels sad and wants to be alone.  It is a tale of kindness and hope, exploring the topic of depression.

Authentic and sensitively illustrated, this picture book gently introduces young children to a topic which can often be difficult to discuss. Written and illustrated by the hugely talented Kate Rolfe, winner of the V&A Student Illustrator of the Year Award 2022.

Author and award-winning illustrator Kate Rolfe will do two sessions of reading -- at 12 & at 2 pm -- and it is a chance to meet the author.  We will try and remember to bring some cushions in as the children will have to sit on the floor.

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A Solace, a Comfort and a Joy

William Sieghart, editor
The Poetry Pharmacy Forever
New Prescriptions to Soothe, Revive and Restore
Fuschia pink hardback, £14.99

This is the third collection in this phenomenally successful series of poems prescribed for all manner of spiritual ailments by friend of the bookshop, William Sieghart. 

William's selections are inspirational.  There are old favourites which it is wonderful to be reminded of and new poems which you may never have encountered.  Of the first one: 'This is less a collection of verse than a companion for life. There are words here for everyone, for every moment in our journey, dispensing wisdom and reassurance. As practical as it is beautiful, this anthology combines traditional verse favourites with new discoveries, ideal for poetry novices and ardent fans alike. A book to cherish.'

Pocket-sized and ideally portable, The Poetry Pharmacy presents poems for everyday worries and for finding the strength to tackle life's greater hurdles.

Special Offer
All three look fantastic together -- intense turquoise, bright orange, and deep pink.  Get all 3 for £40 (reduced from £45)

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Victoria Elbroch
Aldeburgh Lifeboat
730 mm x 510 mm
1000 piece wooden jigsaw puzzle with the shaped 'whimsy' pieces
£112

We are exclusive stockists of Vicky Elbroch's iconic view of the Aldeburgh Lifeboat on the beach and we have just commissioned Wentworth Jigsaws to cut an even bigger version.  This 1000-piece puzzle should keep you occupied as the nights draw in. 
 

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Elegant, Witty Writing on Golf

Timothy Dickson, ed.
Golf Quarterly
Annual Subscription £35.00

This is the perfect present for the golfer in your life.  We  have Issue 48 (pictured) here at the shop which you can have a look at in the shop and which we will give you FREE when you sign up on their website.

Golf Quarterly, which appears in print four times a year in a compact and attractively designed 44-page A5 format, combines elegant writing with sharp wit about the game and its characters. Packed with stories about people and places, past and present, each edition weaves a unique and varied tapestry that is as quirky and unpredictable as most other magazines are worthy and dull. 


The magazine was co-founded by Tim Dickson and Jon Connell, who is best known as the founder of The Week. Tim, the editor, is a keen amateur golfer who is a member of Royal St George’s, Royal Wimbledon, Royal Portrush and the Royal & Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews. He once played golf off 5; he now plays off 9.  Whatever that means.

Snooks the Aldeburgh Dog, Food, Austen, Shakespeare, Murder and Pigeons

September News

Watch out Orlando and Plumdog, there's a new Chap in Town

Resa Barber
Snooks Alerts The Lifeboat
Large illustrated paperback, £8.99

Click here to order your copy.

Aldeburgh resident and good friend Resa Harrington has written a wonderful doggy tale of about the little terrier on the plinth at the Aldeburgh Boating Pond.

'Did you know there is a little dog called Snooks who sits on a plinth by a children's yacht pond?  He watches everything that's going on.  Everyone thinks he is a statue but magically he comes alive and goes to the rescue whenever he senses danger'.

With enchanting illustrations by Theronda Hofmann.

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The Aldeburgh Food and Drink Festival

We all think we have enough cookbooks, but you will have to make room on your shelf for these two.  We took a lot of our books to the Aldeburgh Food and Drink Festival so come in to see if we have signed copies.

Jeremy Lee
Cooking: Simply and Well, for One or Many
Hardback, £30.00

Jeremy Lee of Quo Vadis fame, came to the Aldeburgh Food and Drink Festival (Saturday 23rd and Sunday 24th September) and we have so many copies of his wonderful book. 

The book won the Andre Simon Award for Best Food Book, the Fortnums Special Award.

Other cooks with books at the Festival include the brilliant Thomasina Miers and everyone's favourite spice master, Cyrus Todiwala, so look our for signed copies of their books.

Bee Wilson
The Secret of Cooking
Hardback, £28.00

We couldn't resist this one either. Newly published.  The sub-title, 'Recipes for an Easier Life in the Kitchen' , sums it up and this is a book you will read from cover to cover. Delicious, simple, unfussy food with lots of clever ideas.  She tells you what you do and what you don't need to do -- no need to sweat aubergines any longer as modern varieties are sweeter. Bee has written several excellent books on food and food related topics: First Bite: how We Learn to Eat, Consider the Fork, the history of how we cook and eat, This is Not a Diet Book and The Way We Eat Now.  This is really her first proper recipe book.

Recipes pretend to be a factual form of writing but they are actually one of the lovelier kinds of fiction, with a happy ending on every page.  Bee Wilson.

‘Reading The Secret of Cooking is like sitting in a warm kitchen with an exceptionally articulate friend' (Nikki Segnit, author of the equally brilliant Flavour Thesaurus).  Other fans include Nigella, Diana Henry, Itamar Srulovich and Sarit Packer from Honey & Co.

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First Folio: the 400th Anniversary Facsimile

William Shakespeare
Mr William Shakespeare's Comedies, Tragedies and Histories.  Published according to the True Original Copies.
Facsimile casebound in real cloth with slipcase, £125.00
First published 1623.  This facsimile edition published October 2023.

Click here to pre-order a copy pulbished in October.

If you wanted to buy a first edition of Shakespeare's plays, the First Folio, you would need something in the region of £7 million pounds and a lot of patience. Of the 750 copies originally published, only about 200 exist today, and of these only a small handful of these are still in private ownership.  Of the 200 copies extant, the British Library holds five, one of which is complete.  This copy, the finest in the British Library, has been reproduced in facsimile for the 400th anniversary of the publication. So, while £125 may seem expensive, it is the closest way most of us will get to owning our own folio.

It is the only contemporary source of eighteen of Shakespeare’s plays. Without it, performances of such popular plays as The Tempest, Twelfth Night and Macbeth would not be possible.

Changes and corrections were made during the long printing process. Small alterations were also made to the (now iconic) portrait of Shakespeare created by Martin Droeshout for the title page. As a result, no two surviving copies of the First Folio are identical and few are complete.

Further details of the publication can be provided on request.  We are only getting these to order from the British Library.

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Hilary Davidson
Jane Austen's Wardrobe
Beautifully illustrated hardback, £25.00

Dress historian and Austen expert has worked out from references in  Jane Austen's 161 surviving letters what she wore and how she wore.  Jane was slim -- if you heard Front Row last night you will know they think she was tall and slimmer than Kate Moss -- and she was pretty stylish, keeping abreast of modern fashions.  A fascinating and surprising look at the novelist.  She wasn't dowdy but it's the opposite of fast fashion.  A basic wardrobe of about thirty dresses was re-used and re-purposed and re-accessorised to keep up with the times.  It is another way of enjoying the witty and waspish letters and a perceptive insight into the world of a woman of this period.

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New Murders on the Shelves

Richard Osman
The Last Devil to Die
Hardback, £22.00

We have in the fourth book in the wildly popular Thursday Murder Club series.

Robert Galbraith
The Running Grave
Hardback, £25.00

We have already sold lots of the seventh book in the Cormoran Strike series by Robert Galbraith, who, as we now all know, is J. K. Rowling. It is a massive 960 pages long and it was published on 26th September.

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Write, Fold, Send

Pigeon Post
Little card boxes, £6.99
Six letters in a box, each with a different design front and back

We are always on the lookout for beautiful stationery and this ingenious product caught our eye.  Inspired by origami, these are unique little packs of folding letters, where the letter (beautifully illustrated) folds into it’s own envelope using a very neat origami fold and is then sealed with a stamp.

We have all 15 designs in stock -- come and have a look.  Other artists are Angie Lewin, Melssa Castrillon, who illustrated Philip Pullman's His Dark Material book covers, Asta Barrington, Chris Andrews, Jake Lever and many more.

Angela Harding
Wonderfully Wild
Box of six folding letters, £6.99

The Pigeon pack illustrated here Wonderfully Wild is designed by Angela Harding and features hares, whippets, song thrushes, puffins and kingfishers.

As the designer, James Morse-Brown, says, 'It’s a kind of nostalgic throw-back to the old fashioned letter - like a book, it's analogue, real - not digital! - and produces a warm glow when you receive one in the post (or send one).'

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The Celtic Spirit by Dr Noel Adams

Book - Exhibition - Talk

The Celtic Spirit

Dr Noël Adams

Ancient Metalwork from the Barrow Collection

Highly illustrated hardback, £30.00

Dr Noël Adams. The Celtic Spirit.

£30.00

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This beautifully illustrated catalogue of the Barrow Collection of Celtic metalwork is now available at the Aldeburgh Bookshop.  The book accompanies a forthcoming exhibition at Orford Castle of this stunning collection amassed over the past forty years by a Suffolk resident and rarely seen on public view.

The Barrow Collection celebrates the astonishing metalworking skills of the Late Iron Age people known as the Celts.  The majority of Celtic objects were cast in copper alloy; a few of exceptional status were made in gold or silver, the latter often gilded. The objects in this catalogue largely consist of dress accessories like torcs, brooches and bracelets as well as the metal fittings that adorned carts, horses and vessels. The earliest reflect the range of grave goods deposited in the furnished burials of the wealthier members of society in Europe and Britain. Although most are ‘orphans’, lacking provenance or context, by comparison with excavated pieces many can be dated in line with archaeological chronologies of the Iron Age.

The visual impact of the finest Celtic metalwork often arises from a pulsing surface movement, superficially asymmetrical, but underpinned by precision, compass-drawn patterns. The earliest Celtic metalwork re-interpreted the vegetal and animal motifs found on Etruscan vessels. From the beginning their castings were enlivened with precious coloured coral, an imported substance thought to have magical properties. Alongside the elegant geometries of design and fantastic beasts, the human head alone, the locus of the spirit and intelligence, was an image that had particular significance in the Celtic visual world. The smiths who made these sophisticated pieces, imbued with the power to work and infuse spirit into iron and bronze, were held in high regard in Celtic societies.

In Late Iron Age Britain, the most famous Celtic tribe in popular imagination were the Iceni based in modern day Norfolk and Suffolk, whose doomed revolt against the Romans in AD 60/61 was led by their warrior queen, Boudicca, wearing a golden torc. Several small fitments in this exhibition are metal detectorist finds in the late 20th century from this region of East Anglia.

Special Exhibition of the Celtic Spirit Exhibition at Orford Castle

Celtic Treasures: Art of the Iron Age at Orford Castle

Daily 10 - 5 
From August 25 - 6 November 26, 2023
Weekends thereafter

Meet the Team - Isabelle Sarginson Allen

Over the past three years, Isabelle has become a familiar face in the bookshop. Between shifts, she spends her time tracing the winding Suffolk footpaths and rivers that have become companions, woven through her life over the past 20 years. At weekends she can be found at White House Farm; the home of the Alde Valley Spring Festival and Galloper Sands Gallery, cooking vegetable-based feasts for art events. When at home she is in her studio painting, practicing yoga or diving with meditation. With motherhood on the horizon, Isabelle will be transitioning from working behind the counter to rifling through the children's section.

Anna Jones
One: Pot, Pan, Planet
Hardback £28

My first choice is One: Pot, Pan, Planet by Anna Jones.

In terms of flavours this is the first cookbook I've come across to rival recipes by Moro and Ottolenghi. Having eaten a plant-based diet for over 10 years, I find a recipe's use of herbs and spices is especially important. Anna Jones performs food alchemy, turning what have become everyday mundane vegetables, into bright, fresh flavoured dishes. Ingredients you can find in any supermarket become eastern food fusions - often in under 30 minutes.  I especially recommend Gobi Manchurian on page 272.

Lao Tzu
Tao Te Ching
Hardback £10.99

My second choice is the Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu.

This wonderful book is similarly nourishing. Somewhere between poetry and prose, the Tao Te Ching shows us ways of approaching life, action by action, in a way that is effortless and harmonious with the outer world and our inner nature. Through the lessons Lao Tzu shares we can let go of our surface sense of self and dive to a deeper level of being where we merge with our environment and accept our existence as just another rhythm within the cycles of life.  

James Nestor
Breath
Paperback £10.99

My third choice is Breath by James Nestor.

The impulse to breathe weaves through every moment of our lives. With each breath you are born and you die. From our first inhale to our last exhale. James Nestor's book explores the role breathing has in our lives, he looks at how it has been warped and stunted by modern life and how with practices, posture and conscious awareness we can harness rather than hinder all the benefits this simple, life giving practice provides us. James trials a range of methodologies whilst including accounts varying from athletes who use breath to boost their performance to Indian pranayama practitioners who can pause their breath for over 40 minutes at a time.

Robert Macfarlane
Underland
Paperback £10.99

My fourth choice is Underland by Robert Macfarlane. 

From Breath to breathlessness, Underland is a truly breath catching book. You will feel claustrophobic as the book takes you into Parisian catacombs and mile deep caves. You will feel a sense of relief each time the book surfaces to sunlight. His writing is gripping and poetic. Here is a standout part which has imprinted into my mind since reading it, where he describes a cave formed by water from inside to out. "The cave twists into the cliff. Time reverses space - the deeper in they get, the younger the cave-space. The journey into darkness is a journey to the present. The sea has taken thousands of years to win each yard of stone".

Rachel Carson
Silent Spring
Paperback £10.99

My fifth choice is Silent Spring by Rachel Carson.

So much of who I am has been inspired, formed and fed by nature, especially time spent along Suffolk rivers, beneath our counties tree canopies and nestled into the shelter of heathlands. Rachel Carson has helped me become an advocate of the countryside I owe so much. 'Silent Spring' gives our land and the wild life within it a voice. This voice exposes the violence of humanities actions on the earth and the destruction caused by so many of our practices. What is a weed but a plant we don't know the name of, whose many uses we have forgotten. 'Silent Spring' grounds the reader back to earth with intimate knowledge of life within a wide range of environments and their inhabitants. Read it to understand the balance created within the web of the natural world. Read it to clearly see the disproportionate weight we add to disrupt this balance. Read it to inspire your own voice within the current conversation of climate and inspire your actions within your environment. 

Madeline Miller
Circe
Paperback £9.99

My final choice is Circe by Madeline Miller. 

This is also a story of reclamation, identity and nature. Similar to Carol Ann Duffy with The World's Wife, Madeline Miller reforms old narratives that left women remembered within shallow stereotypes. In Circe Madeline Miller gives Circe a full, complex past that reframes her place within Greek mythology. Circe is a woman who transforms situation after situation with nothing but her own guile, grit and vision. In spite of being banished to a barren island to remain isolated for the rest of her infinite life, Circe gives herself agency. Discovering what looked to be a sparse environment to be a rich landscape, full of plants with a wealth of uses, Circe equips herself with knowledge and power. She plays her part in events that should be far from her reach and is able to shape her own future.

Summer Voices from The Bookshop: Lily

MEET THE ALDEBURGH BOOKSHOP TEAM
 

This week we introduce Lily Leaver.  Lily has just finished her first year at the Edinburgh College of Art, where she is studying Fine Art.  You may have noticed that our recent window displays have been particularly good--all thanks to Lily.  She's been with us for quite a few weeks and will be off travelling mid-August, but we are very much hoping that she will be back often in the university holidays.

Lily's reading choices are below.

Plays

Tom Stoppard
Arcadia

Faber & Faber
Paperback, £9.99

Set in a single room of a fictitious English country estate,  Stoppard investigates a series of dichotomies; Romanticism versus Neo-Classicism, order versus chaos, past versus present, within subjects such as academia, nature, history and relationships. With these themes interwoven throughout a suspenseful plot and littered with compelling characters, this play lends itself to being read as a work of fiction, allowing one to sit with Stoppard’s weighty philosophical hypotheses and pick up on clues meticulously dispersed throughout the text. Flitting between two time periods, historians in the present day investigate the lives of the Regency-era inhabitants of Sidley Park over two hundred years prior, making for a tantalizing read full of dramatic irony and red herrings. 

Poetry

Frank O’Hara
Selected Poems

Carcanet Press
Paperback £12.95

O’Hara shares his insightful and meandering contemplations on themes such as his New York coterie of artists and writers in the mid-twentieth century, the Cold War, and his most intimate relationships.  Predominantly written during his lunch breaks whilst working at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, O’Hara is frequently described as the modern-day flâneur, chronicling niche observations of his surroundings with plentiful imagery, providing a stirring insight into the bohemian lives of the New York School. Much like the work of his friends and contemporaries, such as Pollock and de Kooning, O’Hara’s poetry is oftentimes radical, experimental and immensely thought-provoking, particularly Why I am Not a Painter and The Day Lady Died.

Non-Fiction

John Berger
Ways of Seeing

Penguin
Paperback £9.99

This commonly revered collection of seven short essays had a profound impact on me as an artist, as Berger encourages his readership to question their stance as a viewer, the biases of artists and the impact of photography and advertisement on art. Particularly, Berger provokes one to consider the male gaze throughout the history of western art, from the European tradition of the reclining female nude in oil, to the perpetual objectification of women within contemporary media, (moving me to read the compelling works of critics such as Linda Nochlin, Rosemary Betterton and more recently, Katy Hessel). This series of essays promotes the consideration of the many aspects of the conception and perception of a work of art, succinctly covering a multitude of critical art theories.

Short Stories

F. Scott Fitzgerald
Flappers and Philosophers

Penguin
Hardback £14.99

Fitzgerald illustrates his criticisms and observations of early 20th century America, addressing themes of youth, wealth, beauty and idealism within a series of 45 short stories. Unlike his five novels, these short stories often involve a subtle element of Magical Realism, such as his most eminent novella and predecessor to The Great Gatsby, Diamond as Big as the Ritz. Fitzgerald’s characters vary with each story, yet so many of them display such vitality and provide a fascinating insight into the Jazz Age.

Memoir

Dolly Alderton
Everything I Know About Love

Penguin
Paperback £12.99

Alderton’s candid memoir evokes a sense of solidarity and comfort for those who read it. Interwoven with hysterical anecdotes, Alderton reflects on her relationships, antics and experiences throughout her 20s. Her wry, self-deprecating sense of humour is paired with devastating revelations, remedied with refreshing introspection. In terms of the wisdom imparts her stance is clear, stating that; ‘Nearly everything I know about love, I've learnt in my long-term friendships with women’. This book has been passed around all of my friends, sending photos of silly or resonant extracts to each other along the way. 

Up Next

Robert Macfarlane and Stanley Donwood
Ness

Penguin
Paperback £9.99

Having recently moved to Suffolk, I felt compelled to browse our tremendous selection of ‘local’ books. Here, I discovered this modern fable and was enticed by Donwood’s illustrations, having greatly admired his work for some time. 

Summer Voices from The Bookshop: Serenity

MEET THE ALDEBURGH BOOKSHOP TEAM
 

Continuing our project to showcase our colleagues over the summer months, next up is Serenity Sanders. Serenity is with us for a week's work experience and currently in her first year of A-Levels, studying English Literature, Media Studies and Film Studies. Once completed she hopes to attend university and major in screenwriting.  She's been a great help in the shop, working on the till, unpacking boxes and shelving books, ordering stationery and generally being very useful.

Patricia Highsmith
Carol
Paperback, £9.99

A clandestine love affair transcending societal conventions and grappling with the complexities of desire

Within a society which threatens to suffocate individual pleasure with its rigid assemblage of expectations, Carol explores the concept of when one's sexual identity fails to align with societal expectations. Highsmith's artful prose and nuanced characterization transport readers to a heavily traditional New York disallowing the connection between a pair of opposing women who represent the complexities of human connection. Despite being dominated by rigidity, the overt passion between protagonists is elegantly illustrated, creating a literary gem. With its thought provoking narrative and its profound manifestation of forbidden desire, Carol exists as a timeless testament to the potency and depth of love.

Margaret Atwood
The Handmaid's Tale
Paperback, £9.99

A harrowing novel with unwavering patriarchal tension against subjugated women

Using inspiration from real events, Atwood presents a deeply confined, controlled, copiously patriarchal dominated society. Navigated through a first person account which reveals the repercussions of being fertile in a exceedingly misogynistic, contemporary America. With the unsettling and imaginable events which seem increasingly relevant in modern day society, each chapter forefronts prominent inequalities which constantly reminds readers of the struggle for autonomy.

Oscar Wilde
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Hardback, £10.99

Explores the consequences of immorality and deviating from societal conventions

Wilde conveys yielding to one's desires through a fin-de-sièce aristocratic Britain juxtaposed with a uncanny gothic setting. The novel effectively weaves a cautionary tale of a young man's Faustian pact where physical manifestations display the burden of his immoral actions. The Picture of Dorian Gray displays the ramification of unchecked hedonism and, for readers, prompts introspection.

Daphne du Maurier
Rebecca
Paperback, £8.99

A chillingly gothic setting examines the immense influence a enigmatic, deceased women can hold over another.

With du Maurier's atmospheric writing evoking a sense of foreboding and unease readers become equally entangled in the unnamed protagonists life just as she becomes suffocated in a labyrinthine web of secrets. Whilst reading the novel the lingering presence of the past seemed to almost overpower the principal narrative with its potent characters. Nonetheless, it is a captivating yet eerie blend of psychological suspense and romance based in an uncanny country estate which blurs the boundaries between reality and perception.

Bram Stoker
Dracula
Hardback, £16.99

Dracula plays upon fears of 19th century Victorian society with its overt consequences of reverse colonization

Within his haunting narrative, Stoker's seminal work unveils the dark allure of the immortal antagonist through an exploration of primal fears. The evocative atmosphere and intricate character development offer a gripping exemplification of fundamental human morality between the living and the deceased.

Summer Voices from The Bookshop: Ben

Meet The Aldeburgh Bookshop Team
 

Over the summer months we have some new staff joining the existing team. They will introduce themselves and the books they love over the coming weeks.

First up is Ben Morgan.  Ben has been with us since March and he's off at the beginning of August to start an MFA in Poetry at Brooklyn College, New York.  Ben has been in charge of our poetry section, which explains why that department is looking a lot cheerier.

 

Fiction

Daisy Hildyard
Emergency
Fitzcarraldo (2022)
Paperback with French flaps, £12.99

Beautiful evocation of a rural childhood, spiked with eco-poetic urgency.

Uncannily lucid, Emergency blends the sensual reverberations of her narrator's early world with the developing awareness of its fragility, haunted by the abstracted forces of capital, 24/7 labour and globalisation as they come to infect the delicate relations between the human and 'non-human people' of her remote Yorkshire village. Rerouting the traditional trajectories of the novel into a mesmeric web of temporalities, enmeshments and co-dependencies, Hildyard, in spite of the urgency of the title, retains a meditative, gradually expansive pace, tracking the fragments, distortions and distensions of her childhood environment as she absorbs the loss of its bio-complexity. Without defaulting to the elegiac or didactic, Emergency stretches the reader's sensory threshold to engage the vast and granular scales of change in the Anthropocene, to see a world, in spite of the fire and darkness at the margins of the novel, 'irradiated with living'.

Natasha Brown
Assembly
Penguin (2022)
Paperback £9.99

Elliptical and electric novel that sketches the frayed edges of modern Britain's myth of social equity.

Shot through with impressionistic energy, social satire and moving introspection, Assembly navigates the concussive atmosphere of the privilege-ridden corporate sphere, with a prose compressed to surreal density by the accelerating stress of 21st century urban living. Against this encroaching backdrop, Brown outlines the unstable contours of a relationship, exploring its discourse with both sharpness and tenderness as it careers towards denouement in the boyfriend's big country house. There is a fierce intensity to Brown's clipped sentences, capable of disturbing the facade of an increasingly complacent liberalism, presenting the reader with the texture of a consciousness as it moves through a world still dominated by elitist sensibilities, playing across that strange membrane between what is felt and what is said, even when what is felt remains opaque to us, unstable, contingent and fugitive.

Poetry

Daisy Lafarge
Life Without Air

Granta (2020)
Paperback £10.99

Explores the shifting interfaces between lifeforms; acidified, warped and curative.

Lafarge hones the sharper edges of her scientific lexis to dissect the traditional terrain of the love poem, revealing the entanglements, molecular, human and nonhuman, vibrating beneath the visible. Still 'unabashedly love', these poems plot the steep gradients between intimacy and violence, the promiscuity of the material world, the incessant collisions of atoms as they swerve, combine and ignite to form feeling.
 

Rachael Allen
Kingdomland

Faber (2019)
Paperback £10.99

With haunting, hallucinogenic clarity, Allen dreams a turbulent world into being: 'where mayhem / in the slew / of interlocking / waters clarifies / into a vision'. Kingdomland is a miasmic landscape of contracted distances and impasses, where forms emerge, dissolve and reemerge changed. 

Non-fiction

Teju Cole
Black Paper

University of Chicago Press (2023)
Paperback £9.99

Teju Cole turns his acute focus to the interplay of light and shadow in the work Caravaggio, the music of Beethoven, Mahler, and Kasse-Mady Diabate, and South-African and Japanese photography, exposing the process he develops to record what remains of the light in dark times.

Timothy Morton
Humankind: Solidarity with Nonhuman People

Verso (2019)
Paperback £9.99

I read Morton slowly, with long breaks and no claims to any total understanding. Each chapter carries an ecstatic discharge rearranging my thinking patterns, tunes me into strange frequencies, pitches, vibrations, all directed toward the author's attempt to make the abstract uncannily tangible. Morton has range, for anyone interested in economics, ontology, phenomenology, climate change, music, abstract art, the gut, tech, the book meanders through an eclectic array of topics in its promotion of 'the symbiotic real', blurring the many boundaries we've erected to define ourselves, for a larger field of empathy and solidarity, the forms of engagement he suggests cost us the least and become our most valuable.

Upcoming Titles

Ben Lerner
The Lights

Granta Poetry (September 2023)
Paperback £12.99

Excited for Lerner's fifth poetry collection, fifteen years in the making. Since receiving The Hatred of Poetry from a friend, and writing my undergraduate dissertation on his poetics, Lerner's work has mesmerized and moved me. Looking forward to studying under his guidance at Brooklyn College.