Riverside bestsellers of 2016

We’re quite impressed with the books we’ve sold this year… Among our top 30 were:

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child – J K Rowling

The Girl on the Train – Paula Hawkins

My Brilliant Friend – Elena Ferrante

The Vegetarian – Han Kang

The Sellout – Paul Beatty

All the Light We Cannot See – Anthony Doerr

We Should all be Feminists – Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

A Little Life – Hanya Yanagihara

His Bloody Project – Graeme Macrae Burnet

How the Marquis Got His Coat Back – Neil Gaiman

The Little Book of Hygge – Meik Wiking

Prisoners of Geography: Ten Maps That Tell You Everything You Need to Know About Global Politics – Tim Marshall

The Green Road – Anne Enright

The Crooked Sixpence – Jennifer Bell

Number 11 – Jonathan Coe

Grief is the Thing with Feathers – Max Porter

Sweet Caress – William Boyd

The Silk Roads: a New History of the World – Peter Frankopan

The Dog Who Dared to Dream – Sun-mi Hwang

Trump and Me – Mark Singer

Politics and the English Language – George Orwell

Black Holes – the Reith Lectures – Stephen Hawking

Several of these are Team Riverside favourites so we’re feeling pretty chipper about it all. What will be the surprise hits of 2017?

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Cabin Porn – Inspiration for your Quiet Place Somewhere, by Zach Klein and Stephen Leckart

Paperback, Penguin, £10.99, out now

What do you need for your ideal hideaway?  A mountain view and an icy lake?  Dense woodland and a log burning hot tub?  A warm nook for reading, or a breezy beach veranda for birdspotting?  If this is the kind of thing you dream of, this book will make you smile from the beginning to the end.  Stuffed with great photos of boltholes all over the world, the combination of escape and nature plus contentment is irresistible.

The book is a selection of highlights from the blog http://cabinporn.com/, where it is possible to spend an inordinate amount of time looking at beautiful places and sighing wistfully.  This lovely paperback also has short essays with enticing titles such as ‘how to live 30 feet in the air’ and ‘how to make a homestead in the wilderness’.  However, I must confess to not actually having read a single one of these most-likely-excellent pieces, as I have fallen into the pictures and can’t get out.  I don’t think I have ever reviewed and recommended a book in which I’ve not read any of the words!

I prescribe one volume of this topped up with occasional dips into Danish cosiness manual Hygge (which we also have… see https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/1112343/the-book-of-hygge/) for maximum comfort and consolation.  Curl up and enjoy.

Review by Bethan

Skyfaring – A Journey with a Pilot, by Mark Vanhoenacker

Paperback, Vintage, £8.99, out now

The cover of this book makes me want to jump on a plane and fly off somewhere.  As someone who likes flying, despite serious concerns about climate change, I thought I might like this book.  I was wrong.  I love it.

If I’m looking for escape in a book, I’m most likely to find it in one concerning a subject completely new to me which is explained with style and generosity.  Skyfaring meets these criteria effortlessly.  Vanhoenacker is a deeply enthusiastic, knowledgeable and thoughtful guide to the several worlds of aviation.  The book is stuffed with excellent facts and anecdotes (I was delighted to learn that when friends or relatives of airplane crew are passengers on a flight with them, they are often fondly referred to as ‘Klingons’).  For a taster of his prose and some lovely pictures, see http://www.vox.com/2016/5/2/11520288/pilot-airplane-photos and http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/25-incredible-views-from-plane-passengers-windows-collected-by-an-airline-pilot.

Sometimes the book feels very personal, as when the author talks about why he became a pilot, or when he provides a personal gloss on a feature of flight that might seem at first sight mundane or technical.  He is not afraid of bringing art, philosophy or emotion into a scientific subject, or of relating all of these to real life: “Georgia O’Keeffe was afraid of flying but obsessed with the clouds she saw from aeroplanes, which she painted with an all but religious devotion…  I try to remember, when I haven’t flown for some time, and the handles of the bags of food shopping which I’m carrying though a cold and rainy November dusk are about to break, that such a lake of light may be over the clouds that rest above the street”.

For me he has brought a sense of wonder back to commercial flight, something that can seem tedious and constrained.  I feel transported, refreshed, and ready to pay attention.  A lovely book.

Review by Bethan

Carl Cattermole, H.M. Prison: A Survival Guide

Carl Cattermole’s short, sharp, shockingly good guide to life on the inside is without a doubt one of the best books I’ve read all year. Unlike so many of the squillions of things that get ushered into print each month, H.M. Prison: A Survival Guide is a book that feels like it urgently needed to be written, and equally urgently; needs to be read. It’s the upshot of a truly generous impulse; to demystify the prison experience and to offer pragmatic help to a huge amount of people who are often vulnerable, confused and scared. It should also, of course, be required reading for anyone and everyone on the outside.

Eschewing the lurid tales and grim machismo that characterize so many prison memoirs, 20-something Londoner Cattermole’s nifty book is a straight-talking, utterly no-nonsense account of what life is like if you get sent down. It’s beautifully and wittily written, and indeed beautifully and wittily illustrated; by Private Eye’s very own ‘Banx.’

The ‘Survival Guide is eye-opening, at times eye-watering, and thoroughly educational in every sense. Like all the best books; it works as a kind of empathy generator. It’s also dirt-cheap (£4!). And it’s not-for-profit. And it looks and feels great. What more could you want? This is that rare kind of book that actually helps to make the world a better place.

Review by Stuart