Wanderers: A History of Women Walking by Kerri Andrews | Book Review | Preface by Kathleen Jamie | Reaktion Books

 

[Review originally published on Bookmunch: View Post]

How many female writer-walkers can you name? We think of Dorothy Wordsworth (though we also instantly think of her brother); we think of Nan Shepherd (mostly thanks to her sudden popularity over the last few years); perhaps we think of Cheryl Strayed or Raynor Winn. But how can these women compare to the fame of the Lake Poets, the flâneurs, D. H. Lawrence, John Muir or Henry David Thoreau?

Wanderers: A History of Women Walking by Kerri Andrews (introduced by Kathleen Jamie) makes a strong case for remembering that there is a reason behind the history of walking coming to us from an overwhelmingly male perspective.

In this collection Andrews rounds up some of the most well-known (and some less well-known) writer-wanderer women who, for one reason or another, were passionate walkers throughout their lives. So much more than an anthology, each chapter is dedicated to a single woman and a meditation on the role that walking played in their lives. Through their walking habits (and what these habits inspired), Andrews paints vivid characters rather than presenting biographies, yet gives plenty of insight, and shows intimate knowledge of the backgrounds and output of her chosen examples.

The curated selection is colourful and exciting, and their reasons for walking varied. There are those we expect to be included, and those we get to know, perhaps for the first time. Elizabeth Carter, the whimsical vagrant, walked each day for inspiration and health, ideally also enjoying a good drench in a thunderstorm; Dorothy Wordsworth used walking as a way of ‘experiencing both her new-found independence and her new home’ after moving into Dove Cottage. Harriet Martineau, after a prolonged illness that confined her to a single room, rediscovers the joy of living in the act of walking, roaming the Lakes for ten glorious years and rivalling the Lake Poets as a writer-walker in her time. Virginia Woolf paces her novels into existence, while Anaïs Nin – diarist and writer – explores her sexual desires and creativity on the streets of Paris and New York.

What becomes clear from these essays is that walking can be a lifeline or a source of creativity; it can be a form of memory, and can transform a city or landscape into a vast spider web of lives lived in parallel.

Andrews also explores the limitations on women’s walking – not everyone is permitted, or is able to walk, and not freely in any case. Most women in this collection have some reason to fear, whether that’s judgement, assault, or household and family duties that husbands historically extricated themselves from. These women didn’t have the liberty to walk where and when they might have wanted and, arguably, women today often still don’t. With these essays, Andrews raises a rallying cry against giving up on a pastime that, as Rebecca Solnit writes, is a ‘portion of our humanity’.

Each chapter is bookended by a short piece by Andrews – some recounting personal experiences of walking, and some offering reflections on these extraordinary women. It’s a perfect balance, and the structure works very well in tying all the chapters together.

It’s not so much a history of walking as a historical tracing of a line, a trend often overlooked. It is a much-needed case to be made, and Wanderers sits proudly unique amongst the many walking anthologies that give a mostly male perspective.

Overall, Wanderers is more than history, more than anthology: with an excellent selection of case studies, it is a love letter to walking, and highlights time and again how this simple act can be true freedom.

Cairn by Kathleen Jamie | Book Review | Sort of Books | Author of Findings, Sightlines and Surfacing

 

Cairn by Kathleen Jamie

What a delight to be reading Kathleen Jamie again. Her return with her new book, Cairn, is masterful – in this new collection of short pieces and poems, she exceeds herself, the format enabling her to chisel each piece to perfection until what is left of a rough stone (though beautiful to begin with) is its shimmering centre. She brings all of her grace and poetic mastery to this collection, one that deserves reading and rereading often.

The introduction sets the scene with a somewhat bittersweet tone and self-mocking note, gently making fun of Kathleen's own earnestness of youth – now writing to us from the other side of a threshold of age, where one becomes 'more hander-on of the world than its inheritor'. How lucky for us to have honest notes from someone who observes and sends letters, to let us know what it's like. This handing over, this changing of the guards runs through the book like an undercurrent, through climate protests and summit trips. Her fear for the future, and future generations is palpable throughout. But it is also a sort of taking us by the hand, pulling us forward, gently into action.

Her short-form writing is beautiful, like a collection of trinkets on one's windowsill, and on my first read I already read everything twice. In fact, I pick up other books to intentionally slow my pace. I don't want to read it all at once, and I know it's not enough, anyway; I return to reread it all, not in order this time, in and out of sentiments and snapshots of images beautifully conjured in such few words. 

A sense of mourning lingers in these fragments, farewells to the departed and especially to one's young self. Kathleen is such a wonderful weaver, connecting with ease the muddy hillside springs ('if even they had run dry, what then?') to an all-encompassing sense of loneliness, 'like a five years bairn again, blythly venturing toward the edge of the known, but with no-one left alive to call me home.' 

She mourns and fears for the future and the planet, and writes tender reminiscences of an age where this mourning didn't yet penetrate our every waking thought. 'Envy us, infants in an undisfeatured world.' In phone wires and raindrops, she sees our entire past and future, and this is what makes her writing so exceptional. Her perspective, too; in 'Peregrines', she becomes the predator, her eyes zooming into the small detail and zooming out again, experiencing being the one with the threatening aura. In 'The Mirror', from a fallen mirror, to a Pictish stone, to a lakeside, back to the mirror again in one fell swoop, somehow changed. 

Every description is worth cherishing, and I enjoy them immensely for their singularity, their rejection of sentimentality: 'The flash of gold is the same blaze of winter sunset mirrored in a puddle. The flare and die, the feathering dark.' And, often, a wry smile, an aside firmly rooting us back in reality: 'Suddenly we're stood watching a big fat metaphor.' Her tone of darkness and humour, so well intertwined, is what makes me love her even more. She raps her own knuckles. The truth is, no one out there writes quite like this.

There are pieces of poetry too, which add to the feeling of the cairn: the placing of stones of various shapes and sizes, on our way to somewhere. They complete the collection that reflects Kathleen deeply, personally.

This book feels as much a piece of literary mastery as a plea or prayer or warning. Kathleen doesn't want to settle comfortably in beauty. A piece about a simple flint, another about avian influenza makes me well up. 'What use is the summer sunlight, if it can't gleam on a gannet's back?'

'We can't stand around like innocents, slightly unsettled, scrolling on, wishing things were "back to normal"', she warns. So, perhaps, Cairn is a marker of a path, an invitation to follow on – or even just to set out and peek around the next bend.

Bothy: In Search of Simple Shelter by Kat Hill | Book Review | William Collins

 

'And come I may, but go I must, and if men ask you why,
You may put the blame on the stars and the Sun and the white road and the sky.’
(Gerald Gould: Wander-Thirst)

My first bothy experience was Dubs Hut in the Lake District. I was hosting a group of women as part of a hike organised by Gutsy Girls, and after a day of relentless rain (and I mean relentless), we arrived to Dubs Hut soaked, but delighted. There was a fire, and so warmth to dry our drenched clothes; there were hot drinks and boil-in-the-bag dinners, and extreme pride for having walked who knows how many miles in the pouring rain. I didn’t end up sleeping inside, though; having carried my tent all the way up, I figured I might as well use it.

Whether you sleep in them or around them, bothies are really quite magical: the crudest of shelters in secluded spots, just enough of a roof over one’s head to feel a little bit safer, a bit more out of the elements than in a tent. What Kat Hill does very well in her new book, Bothy: In Search of Simple Shelter, is to evoke all the feelings that a bothy awakens. Comfort, community, the simple joy of shelter (the smell of drying socks).

But Bothy is a strange book: it's not history, it's not really travel narrative. Instead, each chapter is an essay on a theme linked to bothies, be it how to live a good or simple life; romanticism and mythology; conservation or the concept of wilderness. And Kat's writing is meditative. As soon as we head into a chapter, I can settle, knowing that we'll ramble over literature and history, nature and philosophy. 

The book starts with a rather refreshing prologue: Kat is entirely conscious of the dangers of tipping into the romantic with her chosen topic. She sets the record straight, straight away. Bothies didn't 'heal' her. 'Wilderness' didn't 'heal' her. It's a process, gradual, where bothies are 'a place to start'. And isn't that just enough?

Initially, she shares quite a lot of personal details about her life in quick succession, but these are barely revisited later in the book. It feels like she has unloaded her reasons in her prologue, and thus freed, moves on. Instead, she meditates on simple questions like what do we need (in a bothy or otherwise); what constitutes adventure; our need for hideaways, even as adults.

In her writing, she wanders; on her Penrhos Isaf trip in Wales, for example, she starts out by recounting the history of gold mining in the Welsh hills (something I've never read about) before winding her way to meditating on the marks we make as humans, on leaving no trace – or what to do with the traces we do leave. 'Humanity,' she writes, 'is now grappling with the problem of how to cover the tracks of our existence where we have already caused damage.' This kind of meandering, or weaving, works most of the time, though in some chapters I question the relevance of some of the explorations. We often get quite far from the bothy itself, and it must be said that the link back at the end doesn't always work. Her in-depth research as an academic and historian is laudable, of course, and the book is full of learnings, from the history of the Mountain Bothy Association to Highland clearances and climate change. I just question if it all builds a cohesive narrative. 

A stand-out chapter for me, Maol-bhuidhe (chapter six) considers the freedom of walking. Kat finds and highlights the childish joy in just putting one foot in front of the other, and crafts a beautiful love letter to walking. This is the part of the book that really makes my feet itch, lyrically exploring how walking can be hope, freedom, distraction; how walking can make talking easier, and how, at least temporarily, it can move anxieties a step further away.

So what is this book really about? It's difficult to say. Bothies form a vague structure – each chapter a trip to a different one – but I would struggle to sum it up. It's meditation. That's the best I can think of: as if the author wrote down each thought following the next as she treads. So it's not travel writing, not completely nature writing either. A strange mix of research and personal narrative, though the author's personal life stays somewhat at arm's length. It’s less of a connection to the author than seeing through her eyes, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. But if nothing else, it’s certainly a warm invitation to seek out a bothy, if you haven’t done so yet.

An Alphabet for Gourmets | M.F.K. Fisher | Book Review | Daunt Publishing | Introduced by Ella Risbridger

'There must, for me at least, be a faint nebular madness, dignified no matter how deliberate, to a dinner that is exquisite.' 

Reading M.F.K. Fisher's books is like taking a plunge into some non-existent nostalgia, memories I've never had. Perhaps better referred to as daydreams: friends sat around tables heaped with exquisite food, good wine that's matched perfectly, perhaps on a French hillside (or Swiss, like Fisher's), overlooking a French (or Swiss) sunset, orange rays painting the vines, seemingly endless across the green hills, ripe grapes sagging. Rituals: a drink before dinner, perhaps a dry Martini or a 'rye', Scotch and soda for the men; starters, soups, salads (never after main), dessert, coffee – not too strong so as not to lift the post-dinner reverie. 

Or perhaps feasting on a tray of oysters in Manhattan (or are we crossing over to Consider the Oyster?), at some swanky restaurant with velvet booths and dimmed lighting, where the maitre d' comes to say hello, tops up our Champagne (which has been carefully chosen, the perfect age and would never overpower the food). 

Or even enjoying a 'rained-on burger', as Fisher puts it, but still with a cinematic quality somehow – perhaps we've had a horrendous day, and just on the verge of desperation, a burger truck shimmers in the half-darkness, the pouring rain. Salvation by a sloppy patty.

Oh, I love spending time with M.F.K. Fisher – from the first pages she is unashamedly her; an almost forceful grab of my hand, and we're off. By the time we reach 'C' for Caution in this alphabet, we're exploring Calf's Head à la Tortue, which is by and by the most complicated and terrifying dish I've ever heard of. There are oysters, of course, 'en caisses', though neither her nor me know what that means. Oysters, nevertheless, and buttered paper in pots to keep the steam in, and 'whole peas fragrant as flowers'. And sauces! So many sauces in one dinner, and wines paired with each dish. That, as I say, before we've even passed 'C'.

And oh, to have a meal in such style, pre-ordered, as it is, by this gourmet of gourmets, whom people are too afraid to entertain in their own home, lest their simple tastes offend her (though it breaks one's heart to read how much, in fact, Fisher pined for such invitations. Although whether she would actually enjoy the meal, or just the romanticism of it, remains unanswered): 'smoked salmon, a small rack of lamb, potatoes Anna, Belgian endive salad, and a tray of Langlois Blue, Rouge et Noir Camembert, Wisconsin Swiss, and Teleme Jack cheese; Scotch or sherry first, and then Louis Martini's Gamay Rosé.' 

I relish and revel in the atmospheres she evokes, though I've never experienced them myself – therein lies the power of her writing. Of an egg sandwich, prepared by neighbour Aunt Gwen (not an aunt at all), the recipe makes one drool; but she also lists physical and spiritual ingredients ('equal parts of hunger and happiness'), and under Prescription, she directs the egg sandwich 'to be eaten on top of a hill at sunset', and 'preferably before adolescence and its priggish queasiness set in'. 

In this abcedaria, she touches on all the crucial aspects of life, from wooing someone with food (and whether that's even possible), to being hosted by good-willed but incompetent cooks, to Xanthippean gastronomy (i.e.  food served at home with an unhealthy dose of complaining, whining or accusing by a sour wife). There is also the question of squabs (young pigeons), how food can taste better on an Atlantic cruise, how to best cook trout, and a long treatise on the value of salt. Just to name a few.

So now, reader, hand me a sizzling casserole so that I may toss hot buttered spaghetti in it, topped with humble parmesan and generous gratings of black pepper! A bottle of Zizerser, to be opened at altitude, otherwise the pink champagne will not froth! Or even just bread and 'sweet' butter (as she always calls it – doesn't it sound much better than just 'butter'?), a simple omelette cooked with care for half an hour, or anything cooked in consommé and fat, 'for hungering people who have had no fat at all for too long a time become moody, shiver easily, and grow sick.'

God forbid!

Arrangements in Blue: Notes on Love and Making a Life | Amy Key | Book Review | Vintage

 

Is Arrangements in Blue a memoir? Is it poetry? Is it a free-flowing meditation? Perhaps all of those, and none. Using Joni Mitchell's album, Blue, as her starting point, Amy Key opens up her heart and mind about what life feels like when romantic love has eluded you. The gushing reviews on the cover suggest a seismic shift in modern-day thinking about romance; a book that will resonate, no question. I would argue that they hinder the beauty and art of this hard-to-classify book.

It's not what I expected, but perhaps I wasn't sure what I expected anyway. I am not single, yet this book called to me: maybe because I was instantly drawn to Amy's courage to open up in this way. Arrangements in Blue is no manifesto: what it is instead, thankfully, is a brutally honest exploration of one person's innermost life – a license to spend time inside someone's head. That this person is Amy Key is lucky for all involved, because her thoughts are elaborate, honest, personal and curious. I revel in the fact that the book has no obvious structure: it is loosely centred around a certain theme in each chapter (more precisely, a lyric from Blue) but they all read like streams of consciousness, freely following each line of thought, wherever it may lead. It's the type of book one genuinely needs to get lost in, give over the controls to the author. I did so with pleasure.

Amy recounts, in uniquely crafted language, the ups and downs of her life; romantic involvements (some harrowing, some just like any other teenage romance), friendships, loves and losses; and works through them forensically. It's a sort of evaluation, overthinking, unpacking, asking questions. But the thoughts and events that do resonate, the moments where I find the connection, are powerful. She made me remember the joy of moving into a flat by myself, making decisions and being completely in control of my happiness; but then I remember I was already buoyed by having had a couple of dates with my now-husband. To be perfectly candid, her book made me smug, and I apologise whole-heartedly. No, perhaps not smug, because it's not at the expense of anyone else that I feel this way – perhaps she just reminded me of my luck, and I'm grateful.

Is it self-indulgent? Sure. Sometimes overly so. Perhaps it could have been edited down slightly. But perhaps that's the point. Amy often takes us through her emotional cycles, feeling joy, then empathy, then suddenly anger, jealously, resentment – and it's something like that to be her reader. You cycle through emotions, most often empathising, sometimes thinking you would never do what she did, how terrible, how embarrassing. But ask yourself: wouldn't you? And if, like me, sometimes you sigh in annoyance while reading – 'get over yourself' – notice if you're talking to her, or yourself. If you wrote down your innermost thoughts for a week, a month, a year, wouldn't they look just like this?

I salute the publisher who put this book out, because it is needed in a world of polished things. It isn't a novel, it isn't a self-help book, it isn't a wildly revealing biography: it's quiet meditation on life, happiness and self-worth. And if you're anything like me, and spend at least 60% of your waking hours thinking about your worth, your future, your next steps, it'll be just as comforting to you as it was for me. This book is a companion, a friend you can sit with and have a glass of wine while ruminating.

I admire Amy's courage to put these notes out into the world. I feel it somehow creates a psychic connection with every reader so that, even though we've never all met, we feel connected somehow. 

Perhaps we should organise a big Amy Key meet-up. Imagine the buckets of tears, the empathy, the comraderie. What a world it could be.

Four Mountaineering Books Everyone Should Read | Dorothy Pilley, Catherine Destivelle, Helen Mort & Alison Hargreaves | Rock Climbing Book Reviews

I want to tell you about the four mountaineering books I've read recently. This chain of events wasn't intentional, quite haphazard in fact; but the outcome, and this thread that I've followed (and can hopefully keep following) have been very satisfying indeed.

They're all about, or by, women; again, not planned, but I'm quite happy it turned out this way. They are all heroes in their own right, who broke unimaginable limits and went way beyond expectations. Whether you're a climber, hiker, walker or armchair traveller, these books, I believe, are full of inspiration and evocative landscapes that will delight you. 

I'll go chronologically.

Climbing Days by Dan Richards

I reviewed Climbing Days earlier on my blog, but this was the book that started me off on a quest for mountaineering literature. Its focus on a pioneer of British mountaineering, who also happens to be a woman, was a great hook. I loved reading snippets of Dorothy Pilley's adventures and those of the author, Dan Richards – both transported me, as a reader, to the places I dream of. The Lakes, the Alps, Welsh crags, the great outdoors, powerfully evoked throughout.

The upshot of reading Climbing Days was a short trip to Wasdale Head, where climbing as a sport first began (at least in the UK), with Walter Parry Haskett Smith's solo ascent of the Napes Needle. It is also the home of the Barn Door Shop, supplier of all the gear that hikers have forgotten to pack, as well as plenty of great literature of local interest. I came away with my next two reads...

Rock Queen by Catherine Destivelle

I started reading Rock Queen by the lounge fire of our cosy Wasdale Head B&B, whisky in hand, legs aching from a full day of hiking. It was perfect, and Catherine's no-nonsense, straight, driven narrative was a pleasure to read from the very start.

I didn't know it then, but Catherine is something of a legend in climbing and mountaineering circles, having completed first (often solo) ascents of some of the hardest rock faces and routes in the Alps and beyond, as well as being climbing world champion at a time that was the very beginning of competitive climbing. She began her climbing career while still at school, escaping to Fontainebleau and beyond each weekend. After she became world champion, she realised it wasn't what she wanted: her true passion lay in mountaineering, and so she turned her back on competing once and for all. It is so brilliant to read how she gave it all up to follow her own path.

It's hard to believe a bigger publisher didn't snatch this book to put out in English. My copy is from Hayloft Publishing, and albeit the translation and spell-check falter a little towards the end of the book, it is still a fascinating read about Catherine's life and genuinely jaw-dropping achievements. It made me want to try trad climbing for the first time in my life (the discipline where you place your own protective gear as you progress up a rock face).

A Line Above the Sky by Helen Mort

This was my second purchase at the Barn Door Shop, for a mixture of personal reasons, and also having seen Helen's name many times before. I felt it was time. 

This book is beautifully written, and is a poetic reflection of Helen's journey into motherhood. She is a climber and a fell runner, and although she yearned for it, being a mother didn't immediately feel natural for her. From the beginning, it made me sad.

A 'glass moth, a metal butterfly ': the first stirring of a new life in her. If I wanted reassurance that in motherhood, one can still have it all, I was disappointed – but Helen writes beautifully of the duality of a need for freedom and an even more desperate need to cling to her newborn. 'This is the purgatory of motherhood – perhaps of the human condition altogether – to want or need something else and then, as soon as you have it, to need the opposite.'

Throughout the book, she also traces the life of Alison Hargreaves, also a mother and accomplished climber who, six months pregnant, climbed the notorious North Face of the Eiger. She looks to her like her own mother figure, an example to her like I'd hoped Helen might be for me. In fact, the title of the book is that of a climb named by Alison's son, Tom Ballard. Which led me onto my next read, of course.

Regions of the Heart: The Triumph and Tragedy of Alison Hargreaves by David Rose & Ed Douglas

Reading Alison Hargreaves' biography was a very different experience from Helen's tender reflections, but perhaps that's a good thing. Alison was a driven, outstanding mountaineer and climber who struggled against the unfair cards that had been dealt to her all her life. It was another heartbreaking read, this time because such a brilliant talent was being kept down by an abusive husband and her isolation from the climbing community. (Catherine Destivelle often crops up in the narrative as Alison jealously read about her achievements in the press.) She was never quite able to break out and make a name for herself to the extent that she wanted to.

Nevertheless, Alison's achievements are mind-blowing, though one may not appreciate their full force on paper: perhaps the most oustanding one worth mentioning here is being the first woman to climb Everest unsupported, carrying all her gear and without bottled oxygen. By this time, she had two children.

Alison died on K2, way too young. She had already completed the ascent and was on her way down when a storm enveloped her. The narrative of the book is sorrowful: it felt as though she was finally ready to leave her husband, to start a new life with her children, somewhere new. But it was not to be.

It is a deep look at the life, drive and passion of an excellent mountaineer who deserved so much more recognition than she got. I am surprised and somewhat outraged that I had to buy this book second-hand from some dodgy website.

I'm currently reading The White Spider by Heinrich Harrer – where shall I go next? Please leave your best mountaineering or climbing recommendations in the comments, so that I may continue my escapist reading frenzy...

Consider the Oyster | M. F. K. Fisher | Foreword by Felicity Cloake | Book review | Daunt Books

 

My edition of Consider the Oyster by M. F. K. Fisher found me on an aimless stroll in Hove, when I came across Cookbookbake, an independent specialist cookbook shop (& demonstration kitchen!). It's a gem, focusing on all things food, so besides cookbooks, they sell food writing and travel writing (best when combined), food-themed knickknacks and gifty things. In other words, bookish foodie heaven.

M. F. K. Fisher's name was familiar from Felicity Cloake's writing (who happens to be my culinary muse since her perfect recipe for a French ratatouille), and she in fact wrote the foreword to this beautiful, shiny, iridescent edition from Daunt Books, which I obviously couldn't leave. And then we haven't even discussed that it considers the oyster.

The thing about reading American food writing from the 20th century, but even contemporary pieces, is there is a glorious admiration, suggestion of expertise (that needn't necessarily be there), and most of all, love, that makes all these books feel like a hug. (I'm especially thinking Julia Child here, but consider of course Anthony Bourdain or even Stanley Tucci.) Could it be that, especially because most foods in US supermarkets are over-processed, over-sugared and mono-flavoured, American foodies assign a dreamy quality to all things proper food in their books? I live in the UK, where things are slightly better with the occasional farmer's market offering beautiful bounty, but where generally the ready-meal dominates, and even I can relate to this pedestal-placing of all things good food.

This collection of essays considers everything from oyster eating (and drinking) etiquette; the life of an oyster; anecdotes and remembered snippets of childhood. Much like her essay on oyster loafs that her mother used to eat at 'midnight feasts' at boarding school ('Those Were Happy Days'), reading Fisher's words, one feels as if these were one's own memories. 'There are stories that in their telling spread about them a feeling of the Golden Age,' she writes, 'so that when you listen you forget all but the warmth and incredible excitement of those other farther times'. And so, although I've never eaten a 'steaming buttery creamy oyster stew' with crackers in wintertime, those mellow flavours linger on my tongue as if I grew up with Fisher in California, and not landlocked Hungary, where oysters were more likely to be a metaphor than actual shellfish. 

Another nostalgia-infused essay, A Lusty Bit of Nourishment, touches on the restaurant to eat Oysters Rockefeller, Antoine's in New Orleans, and the 'inescapable charm of that simple, almost austere room, with mirrors for walls; with the blue gas lamps flickering through all the evening' where 'Huitres en Coquilles a la Rockefeller appear magically, prepared with loving patience for each eager diner as if he were the first and only gastronome' and may I just say, Anotine's still exists and is still serving Rockefellers and is now on my bucket list.

Look at that shine

Perhaps my favourite piece, My Country, 'Tis of Thee, amuses by looking at the various drinks we should or could have with oysters. Pouilly-Fuissé? Guiness? Whiskey? (Absolutely not whiskey, according to Fisher.) But 'Whether they were correctly drunk or not, I was.'

The book does contain recipes, and Daunt have kindly included a conversion table for British readers, and an index for recipes (which, if I may voice a complaint, was seriously needed in Taste by Stanley Tucci), but I don't see myself cooking up an oyster gumbo requiring two dozen (!) of these friendly bivalves, nor taking '300 clean oysters and throw into a pot filled with nice butter . . . ' as a quoted old recipe instructs – as much as I would love to.

Look, I could quote the entire book, because there is a lyrical quality to Fisher's writing that makes a simple supper of bread with sweet butter sound exquisite, and the whaft of oysters simmered in a white sauce reaches me through the pages. Her love of food, knack for writing, experience and indulgence makes this a delightful read, and especially if you like oysters. Note:

'The flavour of an oyster depends upon several things. First, if it is fresh and sweet and healthy it will taste good, quite simply . . . good, that is, if the taster likes oysters . . . Myself, since I was seventeen I have expected all oysters to be delicious, and with few exceptions they have been.' 

Strangers by Rebecca Tamàs | Essays on the Human and Nonhuman | Book review

Strangers by Rebecca Tamàs first grabbed my attention when I saw it exhibited as part of The Nature Library at one of their locations in Glasgow. Our shared Hungarian background immediately obvious from her name, I was pleased to recognise a writer who, despite coming from my much-despised and begrudgingly admitted to birth country, creates and thinks in English. What's more, it was clear from a variety of aspects - the design of the book, the first few pages, the location where I was encountering it - that she wrote deeply, interestingly, informed. 

Strangers is a collection of essays, pleasingly formatted and designed throughout this short book, with a focus on the connection between human and nonhuman entites, the climate crisis, nature and existence. In a nutshell. (Naturally, from the very beginning of the book wakes a lurking feeling of guilt for having given up my vegetarianism.) But it is also a book that reaches further than its covers, inspiring thought without piling you with information. 

The first three essays in the book - On Watermelon, On Hospitality and On Pansychism - are very strong. They set the mind buzzing immediately.

On Hospitality, for example, discusses a novel, The Passion According to G.H. by Clarice Lispector, regarding an encounter between a human and a cockroach. 'What G.H. reaches in her experience with the cockroach is an understanding that human ideas of reason and progress are only casings around the unspeakable purposelessness of existence. ... Purposeless, but not pointless. Into this ambient purposelessness comes an understanding of our radical interdependence and intimacy with nonhuman forces; viscerally and urgently alive in a space of constant becoming.'

What is interesting about this recurring idea of the interdependence of human and nonhuman beings is that only one side is consciously aware of it, and this same side is consciously trying to suppress the other's existence. Is the bargain then equal? Or rather than trying to simply accept our interdependence with all living ('living' the key word) beings, should we also be aiming to become guardians, leaders for a positive coexistence? Or is that too 'blue sky'?

'Can anyone really deny that thought and thinking comes from the outside as well as the inside? That when the outside is terribly damaged, the inside will be also?'

Simple idea, yet reading On Pansychism, I feel the metal bands of my mind popping as they expand. The image of a lake driven insane, or the simple fact, presented plain and simple, that the world isn't just a bakcdrop to our lives: it is part of them, influences them, drives them. And yet, nonhuman beings exist on the outside of our infinite feedback loop. This idea reminds me of Robert Macfarlane's thoughts about the indifference of mountains to our struggle to climb them, similar to the river is quoted in this book, not as a metaphor to the author's feelings, but as an indifferent, cool entity - and it is that detachment that ultimately helps soothe the author's soul.

Then follow two essays which are more deeply art criticisms or analysis, introducing the artworks of Ana Mendieta and a poetry collection by Ariana Reines. The latter feels slightly weaker in that it gives less insight, I felt, into the work, but Mendieta's work, upon Googling, is hauntingly beautiful. An essay on climate grief versus climate despair quietly meditates on the difference. And the final essay, On Mystery, remains just that - it feels like reading a stream of consciousness, surprisingly well crafted nevertheless.

My copy of Strangers happened to be an uncorrected proof, which meant I had to contend with typos and guesses throughout - something that added to the strangeness, perhaps. It was a pleasure to come across a book that discusses unusual questions around the climate crisis, and offers a completely fresh perspective on human and nonhuman existence on Earth. Somehow this book manages to inspire without sounding the doom alarm too much, and it left me with fresh thoughts and feelings about my own role in changing the world a tiny bit.

I certainly look forward to reading more from Rebecca Tamàs.

Eating to Extinction: The World's Rarest Foods and Why We Need to Save Them | Dan Saladino | Book review

 

Ah, glorious food. Living on a sailboat with a fridge that is currently out of order, food is indeed a key consideration from day to day. Fresh vegetables go mouldy quickly, so I have a list that I update daily, prioritising what needs eating first. Tinned things - pulses, beans and the occasional fruit - last forever, so are a godsend. Rice, bulgur wheat and the recently discovered giant couscous are all staples.

To be honest, I think about food most of the time anyway, don't you? So does Dan Saladino in his book Eating to Extinction: The World's Rarest Foods and Why We Need to Save Them. He goes in search of some of the most ancient staple foodstuffs on Earth, and presents them here as case studies for a trend that is taking over our food chain globally - namely, that traditional values, methods and food varieties are being supressed in favour of productivity, coupled with global homogeneity. 

Eating to Extinction is divided into ten sections, such as Vegetables, Meat, Cheese or Fruit. Ten?, you might ask. Indeed - because although Saladino has dug admirably deep and traveled the world in search of these rare foods, and has carried out in-person research that is hugely valuable, there is a lot of ground being covered here. Each of the ten sections is further divided into at least two, more often three varieties: four cereals, six sea-based foods, and the stranger categories - such as stimulants or cereal - also include at least two varieties each. 

Each individual item is covered in a chapter, including the author's experiences, as well as covering local food-based traditions, personal histories, or initiatives to save said food. This, unfortunately, does mean that the pace of the book is a bit slow. In the first few sections, lots of short chapters cover a wider variety of grains and pulses than my brain can't store (unlike the fascinating grain stores we meet along the way), and the snippets of various people trying to salvage heritage breeds often doesn't give a deep enough insight to make us care. Later, a chapter about bison especially stood out for me as not really finding its place in this book, barely touching on the topic of food. These chapters read almost as if the author is trying to meet the minimum of three varieties per section.

Among the many varieties of not-so-interesting grains and cereals I trudged through, however, there were a lot of interesting nuggets of information in other parts of the book. I never knew oyster stout was called that due to brewers plopping oysters into their dark porters for added flavour; and reading about Georgian wine and its mystical fermenting in clay pots underground felt like reading fantasy. Black Ogye Chicken is a breed exclusively found in Korea, and is black from beak to toe, absolutely worth a look. Most fascinating to me was a chapter about fermented, wind-dried meat (Skerpikjøt) produced on the Faroes as a delicacy, painting vivid images of meat hanging in sea-wind battered wooden sheds called 'hjallur', and providing a fantastic glimpse into island culture and history.

By the end of the book, a picture does build up slowly, as the patterns too often repeat: a depressing present time of traditional values and methods disappearing in favour of globalised, homogenous food supplies. Chapters do tend to finish on a somewhat hopeful note that the individual forerunners and preservers might be able to hang onto, or bring back, traditional methods and varieties once again.

After all that, I feel I sound quite negative about this book. I can only praise the author's effort and knowledge that has gone into such a wide-ranging, colourful collection of stories. I do think it could have done with some trimming down here and there, but on the whole it is a fascinating discussion of what we eat, how much of it is our decision, and how these choices influence the planet and us as people. It's less of a foodie book, more of a food book - if that makes any sense at all - but the message comes through loud and clear.

Horizon | Barry Lopez | Book Review

 

When the film 'A Life on Our Planet' with David Attenborough came out in 2020, it was signposted as his witness statement. Horizon by Barry Lopez is very much in a similar vein.

I first came across Lopez's writing through Robert Macfarlane, who considers Lopez a 'friend and inspiration', and through buying a copy of Arctic Dreams. Of similar length to Horizon at over 500 pages, it is a beautiful exploration in the Arctic, and any and all life within it. It reads, indeed, like a dream, covering so much territory and offering beautiful, intimate glimpses into this remote world. Lopez was always drawn to the most remote places of the planet, and held a special place in his heart for Arctic landscapes - something that is crystal clear from his writing, whichever page you happen to open Arctic Dreams on.

Horizon is slightly different in that it seems to carry a warning that cannot be ignored. Its deep dive into certain places, peoples or histories all look to the same issue - of climate change and the imminent threats we are facing if we don't change our ways. And yet it still offers respite every now and again through its lyrical, often tongue-in-cheek but always humble descriptions of breath-taking scenery and sights. 

I am nowhere near qualified to review, let alone completely understand all the deep ideas and thoughts that have gone into the creation of this book. But I hope I can give you a glimpse, and hope that you come away from reading this piece with at least one reason why you might pick up Horizon.

"To triumph. To win."

In this last message to us, Lopez doesn't circumvent difficult topics. He questions governments, our constant drive towards betterment, our refusal to stop and consider. He asks whether progress really is the only, the ultimate and at the same time unachievable aim for humanity - whether there's not so much more that we should be, and need to be, focusing on. "... are these questions now thought to be anachronistic, questions no longer relevant to our situation?" he asks. 

There is often a desperation that comes through his writing, grown out of many years of travelling the world - over 80 countries in his lifetime - getting to know its peoples, and observing first-hand the hand- and footprints that humans are leaving on the environment. Cultures disappearing, knowledge evaporating, and the value of those he refers to as 'elders' no longer taken into account. "History tells us," he writes, "that with every great empire comes great barbarism, that the two are inseparable ... This forces the question of what, really, civilization brings to people that they did not already have. And why is civilization so hard on the people who turn it down?" This is a recurring idea throughout the book, from observing the forced extinction of certain species on the Galápagos Islands to revisiting the prisons of Port Arthur and considering its living history that many would be all to happy to bury and label as 'of the past'. Lopez, on the other hand, makes the connections that are too uncomfortable to point out - those to modern-day concentration camps, of arms sales, of how little we have changed on certain fronts to this day. History, he argues, isn't to be buried. It is - and this, I think is the central plea of the book - to be learnt from.

The humility in his writing is comparable to none, and it inspires reckoning within ourselves too. He is all too conscious, at all times, of his privilege, his outsider status, and tries to handle this with as gentle a hand as possible. He never exempts himself from the philosophy he is exploring. And this connectedness, the idea of us forming part of one large community rather than being islands on our own, cuts especially deep during his time spent camping near the Turkwel River in Kenya, looking for fossils in the ground. Where his team, five Kamba men and himself, meet representatives of the Turkana people, ancestral inhabitants of the land. The clash of the modern and of ancestry come into sharp focus during a short exchange about the team's right to camp. "He [a member of Lopez's team] listens patiently while the other man explains the tenets of traditional hereditary land ownership among the Turkana people ... One senses he and his ancestors have been losing this argument for more than a hundred years now." He finishes the section: "The only ethics I really needed to probe in this situation, anyway, were my own. What were my own reasons for not asking permission? For not having knocked?"

And why don't we, dear reader, tend to knock?

"We are darkness as we are, too, the light."

Besides the philosophy, of course, the scenery is breathtaking. Lopez travels from near his own home at Cape Foulweather to the Canadian High Arctic, to Africa and Australia, to the Arctic circle and the Galápagos. He dives under sea ice, assists in archelogical efforts, visits zircon crystals dated as over 4.27 billion years old, and lays eyes on an immense emperor penguin colony on a polar expedition. These unbelievable sights, sounds and experiences are carefully intertwined with his musings on human history, often taking the examples of well-known explorers - Cook, Amundsen, Scott and Darwin, to mention but a few. His extensive reading and knowledge of these lives gives a deeper shade of colour to the ideas and images presented to us, helping to leave a lasting impression.

A long-term view

"What if the perspective you could imagine for yourself, the foundation for your ethics and your politics, was not the condescending now of right now?" Lopez asks. This is what this book can do for you, what it did for me - it looks forwards and back, it brings the then into the now to give a better perspective on today. Why is the history of our species' development relevant here? How does an encounter with a bear, observed through an indigenous perspective, give us better insight into the knowledge we are losing?

Lopez helps shift our focus and questions the obvious to change our priorities. It's as if he's placing a virtual reality lense on our eyes, giving us sight, sound, experience as if we were in it - and in reality, we're reaching into the void around us, helplessly. 

This is a vital call to action, a stark reminder of our place in the universe, written in gorgeous, lyrical language and composed almost like a piece of music. 

It is best read slowly.

I Feel Bad About My Neck by Nora Ephron | Introduced by Dolly Alderton | Book Review | Transworld

How does one discover that Nora Ephron was, and is, the queen of pretty much everything?

Perhaps it starts on a lonely evening, when one craves one of those classic romantic comedies that alone have that special power of cheering one up at any given moment. I have to admit I was hugely behind on this education. The first time I saw When Harry Met Sally... was when an American friend of mine forced her will on a small group of us and put it on to play on my laptop, propped on the tiny student dorm room desk.

I'm sad to say we were all baffled by it and soon rebelled against her will, forcing her to turn it off.

Years later (specifically, this year) I came back to it, by now having found out about its cult standing, not to mention that it was written by the one and only Nora Ephron, along with films so dear to my heart, such as Bewitched (controversial), You've Got Mail and Julie & Julia.

By now, I've also read Heartburn, in turns hilarious, heartbreaking and educational - I've learned the ultimate secret to mashed potatoes, for example (cutting cubes of butter into it as you go, spooning it from the bowl in bed), and other life lessons.

And so we come to I Feel Bad About My Neck, a short collection of writings from Ephron that take on topics such as wrinkles, parenting, ageing, beauty regimes and falling in love. Oh, and crucially, reading.

Observation power

If you've seen any of her films, you instinctively have a familiarity with the tone of voice of her writing too. Nora has eyes on the back of her head and all over her body, in fact: she sees and points out things we, ordinary people, might disregard or take no notice of or perhaps are just lazy to point out. It's a personal victory to read her thoughts on women's handbags - finally someone gets it! "In a modern world, your arms have to be free. ... That's one of many reasons why you don't see the guys-with-purses trend catching on." It's a shame that she didn't settle with the backpack solution, like yours truly, though clearly she had a preoccupation with fashion that I, fortunately, don't have or have to have.

I still hold true that the way she writes about food makes you want to drop everything and rush to the kitchen with an armful of fresh herbs, quail's eggs and with a rock-solid determination to make hollandaise sauce from scratch. Her words make food come alive, and as she writes about her imaginary conversations with food mentors, of Julia Child's 'nicer and more forgiving' directions than 'sterner and more meticulous' Michael Field's, you can't help but start your own imaginary conversations with Nora.

But the essay that spoke to me the most, of course, is On Rapture, which is a brief piece on the joy and pleasures of reading - of getting lost in a book utterly and completely, of its escapism and of surfacing again after a deep plunge into extraordinary worlds and ideas. She talks about remembering sofas and rooms as the setting for each beloved book and all too well I recall my own kingdom of imagination in our first home: my room with blue cupboards, glow-in-the-dark stars and an extremely bouncy bed that I'd have to strip from any bedding each day, to be tucked into the inside compartment and taken out again at the end of the day to remake the bed. I'd lie there engrossed in treasure hunts, cowboy and Indian tales, teenage detectives and a girl with a horse. And I know all too well that most annoying feeling of all, of having to put a book down for such ridiculous reasons as having to go down for dinner or, in more modern times, having to make said dinner.

Timing is everything

I'm so lucky to have picked up this book in my youth, because it is full of advice. I can now avoid Nora's deep regret of not having worn a bikini for the entire year she was twenty-six ("If anyone young is reading this, go, right this minute, put on a bikini, and don't take it off until you're thirty-four.") and I can heed all her points in What I Wish I'd Known - some free tips from her to you include:

• Write everything down.
• You never know.
• You can order more than one dessert.
• There's no point in making piecrust from scratch.

If you want my advice though, get yourself a copy of this book, whatever your age, state of mind or state of your kitchen.

9/10

How I Got Into Publishing – Part 3: To infinity!

This is part three of the story of how I got into publishing - a rocky road, for sure, but in this final episode it all comes to a happy conclusion. Click here to read part one or here for part two, if you're not up to date.

Welcome to August 2018 - the final push with which I finally managed to break through the iron door that guards the world of publishing.

Week after week after week, I’d been pouring my heart into cover letters to amazing publishers – the big ones, the small ones, the obscure ones… Each cover letter took up a few hours, and I tried everything, from talking about all the great things I’d achieved at work to how big a Christmas cake I could bake. (I’m not kidding. I genuinely wrote that into a cover letter.) Have I gone a little insane? Maybe, reader. Maybe.

But finally, in early August, I got invited to interview for a role in marketing, and this sounded just great. So I did what I’d become an expert at at this point:

• I followed the company on all social media accounts, and I Googled all the people in the marketing team. I followed them on Twitter too, I looked them up on LinkedIn, I checked the company website for bios. (Top tip: my now-manager mentioned how I had been the only applicant to have followed them on Twitter, and this definitely won me some brownie points.)
• I learned the company history inside out. Their mission, their development, the main topics they publish on; I collated definitions of even the most basic things. I searched through countless articles on The Bookseller website and was totally up to date.
• I read through the job description about a hundred times, underlining key things to mention in the interview – and lined up specific examples to demonstrate how I met those requirements.
• I collated at least four questions to have on hand because everyone knows you simply must ask questions in an interview – and not lame ones, but actual, factual questions. Use this to demonstrate all the research you’ve done. But also, think of it this way: they’re interviewing you as much as you’re interviewing them.
• I identified and researched their main competitors.

On this occasion, I got my interview mojo back, fortunately; and the interviewers were very friendly and accommodating too. We had a great talk, and I was soon invited back for a second round. This involved collating a full-blown marketing plan for a specific book on a topic I knew absolutely nothing about.

Note that I arrived to this round with four copies of the marketing plan printed out – one for each interviewer, one for me and an emergency copy, should one of them rip on the way there. Over the top? You may think so, but guess who got the job? Me. I did.

So now that you know all the pains of my publishing journey, here is a summary of resources, tips and links that I found particularly useful in my search.

If you're still at uni, get yourself a part-time job at a book shop, because publishers will absolutely take note. You'll be learning about books all the time, you'll know all the new releases and be up to date with the industry.

Buy the Writers' and Artists' Yearbook. It is a fantastic resource and will get all the relevant publishers on your radar. And by all means, send unsolicited emails to publishers that you like - just make sure that, unlike me, you tailor them to each company. Yes, it's a b*tch - but it might just get you a response. Have a look at their catalogue and name-drop a few authors and titles. Mention some factoid you found on The Bookseller.

Subscribe to The Bookseller. This ad is not sponsored by The Bookseller. Also, you'll only need to pay for it until you get a job; most publishers have a corporate subscription so you'll get it for free. Win.

Go to all the publishing events. London is constantly buzzing with great opportunities, so get out there, talk to people – without intimidating them – and connect. I once simply walked up to a speaker following a panel discussion at an event, introduced myself, asked them about their company/job/thing they just mentioned (having done my research of who would be on the panel!) and obtained a business card. Bosh.

My best sources for finding relevant events were and are:

• Waterstones events

• Eventbrite - search for 'publishing' or 'book' or 'book launch'

• BookMachine

• Social media

When applying for jobs, don’t be picky. Don’t go in with an ‘editor or nothing else’ mindset. That’s what I wanted originally, but then I learnt more, I got into marketing, and now I actually prefer it to editorial.

Here are some of the sites I used to search for jobs:

• IPG

• The Bookseller

• Hachette Careers

• Penguin Careers

Besides these, it's worth checking individual publisher websites; some of them might post jobs on there before sending them anywhere else. I regularly checked Pan Macmillan, Profile, Unbound and Egmont as their job pages seemed to update regularly.

Get yourself on Twitter. The publishing community lives and breathes Twitter - not only will you be able to connect, self-promote and get free advice, but you can also find smaller events directly recommended by marketers, publishers, editors and more. 

A note on recruitment agencies

There are two major recruitment agencies that specialise in publishing in the UK: Inspired Selection and Atwood Tate. They didn’t really know what to do with my overly colourful CV, but they’re free to register with and you’ve got nothing to lose, so do it.

Their criteria for forwarding CVs to employers is very strict and unless you meet the job description to the letter, you probably won’t get shortlisted. But, sadly, as everyone and their mums is constantly emailing them to see if there are any jobs going, it’s no wonder they can’t always help. If you’re the right person for the job though, they’ll find you and put you forward for sure.

Cover letters

Research is key. Here's the opening paragraph of my cover letter:

"Ever since I read about the piece of recent news late last year, I have been closely following the company’s activities. Company’s impressive 30 years of consecutive growth and its target to publish over 260 new titles in 2017 alone showed a robust and successful business. I am especially interested in the variety of company’s lists and the uniqueness of certain imprint. I am an avid reader of the company blog as well."

Remember: specific. Examples. Always. Use case studies. Demonstrate what you can do. Example:

"Having completed an introductory certificate in marketing at the Cambridge School of Marketing on my own initiative, I was able to rely on my knowledge to build our reputation, and within a year I succeeded in raising our readership from this number to this number, collaborating closely with our sales and marketing teams."

Money makes the world go around. Publishing is a business. Its ultimate aim is not necessarily to change the world with great books (although that too, hopefully) but to make money. In your cover letter, think about how YOU can help the company make money. Such as:

"What especially draws me to marketing is the widening range of channels marketers can use today to manage campaigns, and the challenge of making the most of a set budget in the smartest ways possible. I was especially keen on reading about company’s cool initiative in 2016 – it seemed to me a completely unique and engaging idea. I believe further cool idea would be an excellent initiative going into the Christmas peak period, for example."

For interviews

The job description is an actual goldmine. That's the stuff they want to hear, so focus on that. Learn the key things by heart. Genuinely.

At interview stage, arrive to the location 20 minutes early - no more, no less. But don't go bothering your interviewer yet. It honestly shocks me that some people think it's okay to arrive to an interview an hour early. It's so incredibly rude.

20 minutes gives you enough time for a security pee, to fix your hair and to read through your notes one last time. Hide out on the street and only enter the premises/ring the doorbell three to four minutes before the scheduled interview time. This shows that you're early, but not too early. Trust me. 

Remember to have questions at hand to show interest and demonstrate your research.

Finally…

If you have any questions – I mean it, any at all – ask away. Ask me, ask the person you meet at the next event, ask on Twitter. There’s a whole, friendly publishing world out there ready to help.

Good luck, you guys.

How I Got Into Publishing - Part 2: The Interviews

This is the second part of my publishing journey - an account of the peaks and many, many, many troughs that finally got me my role at a publishing house; one that I love. Click here to read part one and click here to read part three.

Stage three: The First Breakthrough

You know how it is with job hunting: nothing happens for months, and then it all happens at the same time. I got my first publishing interview invite from a massive publisher for a six-month position in the sales operations team, and I was over the moon. Meanwhile, another massive publisher emailed me back after an application for a sales assistant position, double-checking whether I was happy with the pay they were offering. I emailed back seconds later to confirm (note: sales was not what I’d set out to do. Sales was an opportunity. Be picky later.) ... and never heard from them again, sadly.

I'm normally very confident at interviews and, having prepared for hours, I am not lying when I say this was probably the best interview I’d ever done. Not only did I connect immediately with the people interviewing me – they were nice, in a good mood and very welcoming – but I had done my prep right. 

I left on a high. Super high. But guess what? I didn’t get the job. I cried for 20 minutes when I found out, and it pretty much shattered any confidence I had built up. Here’s the feedback I got:

“It was a real pleasure to meet Vera and she interviewed really well. Unfortunately the successful applicant had slightly more directly relevant experience for the role. We felt that Vera was a great candidate and would love to keep her CV on file should any future opportunities arise…”

Fair enough, right? Even though I was already pretty experienced in several fields, this was unfortunately not one of them. Still, it stung pretty bad.

Lesson: It's all about the prep. From LinkedIn pages through company ethos and history to frontlist and backlist, look at anything and everything. It's better to go over the top than under-prepare. (Even if, in the end, it turns out someone had more experience, you will have left a great impression.)

Stage four: Interviews - the bad ones
After the first breakthrough, I managed to secure three interviews that all went downhill, for different reasons. They all had a lesson for me in the end, but getting there cost me a lot of money, time and effort, and they all came with a large cup of disappointment, obviously.

The video interview
You know how I said I’m really confident at interviews? This doesn’t, unfortunately, apply to videos. You don’t get direct feedback from the person opposite you, so you’re just talking to yourself; you have no idea how you’re doing, really. There’s a little timer in the corner showing how many seconds you have left and, worst of all, you have to watch it back right afterwards. I found it very difficult to get into an interview mindset while at home, despite having showered, dressed and put on make-up. I babbled. And I was insanely nervous for no reason at all - I actually had shaky hands.

The worst thing about this though was the feedback:
“There were a huge number of applicants and the few shortlisted candidates have more relevant experience for this particular role.”
This is fair enough feedback too, but notice how they say 'huge number of applicants' - to me this sounds like almost everyone who applied got invited to the video stage. So, the pride I felt for being invited to interview (if only virtually) was shattered, and it sounds like they could have potentially just taken a better look at my CV instead of putting me through all that.

Lesson: I'm still recovering from the shock of video-interviewing, but practice probably would have helped here. Before the interview, you can always film yourself talking. 

The 'connection lost' interview
Soon after, I was invited to interview for a small, independent publisher – a part-time position, but a proper editor role. Exciting. I knew the team was going to be small and the job quite scary, but it sounded like my current role as a niche magazine editor – except with books.

Alas, they met me in a noisy café, were constantly looking at my CV on their phone, barely had any questions and essentially told me nothing about the role. They didn’t make eye contact, didn’t seem remotely interested; I was glad to be out of there. To be honest, I was sorry to have wasted my time, which clearly wasn't valued. A week later I got a generic email from one of the other team members telling me I didn’t get the job.

Lesson: An interview gone south is much like pizza. When it's bad, it's still pretty good (experience).
Luckily, right before this interview, I received another invite, so I wasn't too down after what happened. This was for a marketing role at an ex-indie, for a very niche topic, but still sounded challenging. And I like a challenge.

The disappearing act
Before approaching the finish line though, I had one last interview with another large publisher – this was for an international sales assistant position.

The person who interviewed me liked me well enough and a day later I was invited back for a second round with a director. We clicked immediately and I also got the feeling I was the only one up for the role; they clearly needed someone fast. I was confident I’d get it.

Unfortunately, as it turned out, some movement had been happening since the job posting went up; my original interviewer was leaving the company, so I’d be working with someone completely different. I waited to hear back, but... you guessed it. Never heard from them again.

Lesson: Sh*t happens.

See you soon for part three when things get better, I promise.

How I Got Into Publishing - Part 1

I'm taking a little break from reviewing books to share my journey of getting into publishing, for anyone who is on the same journey, or those hoping to be soon.

As most of those in this boat will know, getting into publishing is notoriously difficult, and I found it immensely useful to read other people's tips on it while working at it myself - there is no such thing as too much advice, and you can always filter out what you need. So here's the truth and nothing but the truth; hopefully, fresh graduates, career changers and anyone wanting to work with books will find this useful. Read part two here and part three here.

When I finished university, I had no idea what I really wanted to do, but despite having studied journalism and creative writing, I genuinely never considered that there was such a thing as 'working with books' (unless you mean being a bookseller in Waterstones, but that didn't seem relevant). So first things first: if you love books, YOU CAN work in publishing and help make books happen. Probs the most important lesson of all.

But I didn’t know and I wanted to get stuck in, so I applied for pretty much anything that came my way that involved writing. All the while, someone out there was publishing the books I bought every week, to be consumed in one or two sittings...

The first time it finally occurred to me that I could work in publishing, I was on my third job - all different things, from bid writing to editing a magazine, but all involving some sort of copy editing and writing. So finally, in March 2018, I decided that I would get into publishing. Easy, right?

➤➤➤➤➤➤➤➤➤

Stage one: Scattergun

I attacked this challenge just like my previous jobs: I looked for job postings, sent my box-standard CV and my cover letter, waited to be snatched up. It was a good letter, mind you; it had landed me employment every time before. But the difference was, this time I had a set aim. I wasn't just firing into the air, but was hoping that something would come back that I actually wanted. The letter covered all my skills - charm, wit, language skills, the lot - but it wasn't relevant. And when a month passed without any result, I knew I had to change tack.

So now, I started firing out unsolicited letters to publishers. I purchased the Writers' and Artists' Yearbook, and emailed any and all publishers based in London - still using a standard cover email though. In the meantime, I subscribed to The Bookseller - the single most important resource when you're trying to break into publishing. It's a literal literary goldmine. 

A month passed, and I'd had one rejection email (from an actual publishing giant, but still a rejection), and a one-liner saying I should check back in September. This from about 30 emails - I'm not exaggerating.

                                                                           ➤➤➤➤➤➤➤➤➤

Stage two: When you're living on your knees you... wise up

It's important to know that while I was chasing my dream job, I was stuck in a nightmare: in a degrading, toxic environment, desperate to break out and struggling increasingly not to leave. It made it all the harder to endure every rejection - although to be honest, I was happy if someone even bothered to tell me I didn't get the job.

March turned into May and I continued to apply for everything. What I understood now though was that there was going to be no workaround. I genuinely had to start from scratch for each application, and do my research, and tailor my letter to suit the publisher. So the scattergun approach turned into one application at a time, spending an hour or so collating notes on the publisher and then writing lots of drafts before I had a half-decent letter.

The secret I cracked here was this: use case studies in your cover letter. This was THE most vital lesson and once I understood it, it landed me my first interview after four months. Use specific examples – that time you led a focus group, that success you achieved, that campaign you devised, even that meeting you took minutes for. Specific. Examples. Always. Demonstrate your skill.

I also purchased The Professionals' Guide to Publishing by Gill Davies. It’s a good base text and I learned a lot about how those already in publishing see the business. It introduces the main parts of a company, how they interact, some case studies and the main elements of each role too. It’s definitely worth reading something like this to help clarify your goals.

Case study: Connecting

Publishing is truly about who you know. I'm not very good at networking though - it genuinely terrifies me. So here's what I tried: having found a publisher I liked in the W&A Yearbook, I looked up the staff. I picked someone who had an intriguing background, sort of similar to mine - it's called professional stalking and it's the good kind - and after a bit of digging, I found their direct email.

I emailed them, apologising for coming out of the blue, but telling them about my situation in a short paragraph and asking for any advice. And reader, they responded. Was it helpful? 

"Publishing is tight-knit and often about who you know so the best thing I can recommend is that you meet people by going to publishing and literary events, self-promoting and applying to whatever is available in hopes of catching a break."

So yeah, nothing I didn't already know - sadly, it's the truth. But hey, people in publishing are genuinely nice and they know all too well how hard it is to get into. (And, let's face it, they're mostly lovely ladies.) So don't be afraid. What's the worst that can happen? This person I hunted down on the dark web (LinkedIn and Google) didn't seem to mind too much, and we're still in touch. ↤

Following the above advice, I also decided to get out there and attend any and all literary events. You actually never know who you will meet, and if it's only people like you there, you will still have met a supportive community that's in the exact same boat as you. 

My crazy hunt for publishing professionals took me to the most random events, including:

• A tiny event in North London with Zadie Smith herself - publicised absolutely nowhere
• The Feminist Book Society's first ever event
• A talk with my favourite author, James Smythe, in the FT building (plus free wine!)
• The Edinburgh Book Festival, where I may or may not have fallen in love with Guy Gunaratne a little

Beforehand I would always look through Twitter to see who was going. 

The most important event of all though, the mothership that anyone young-ish trying to get into publishing should attend, is the Society of Young Publishers' publishing speed dating event. I believe they stage one every year and you have to be absolutely on the ball to get a ticket - it sells out pretty fast - but it was the most eye-opening event I went to, and it was immensely helpful. Basically, a bunch of industry professionals from all segments of the business - editorial, marketing, production and more - endure hours of questioning from starry-eyed youngsters. But this is your chance to find out everything you ever wanted to know, and also to consider which part of publishing you would be best fitted to. I couldn't recommend this event enough.

After this, my job-hunting horizon expanded significantly. We reached the merry month of June at this point though, and I still had no real progress to speak of.

To be continued...