Reading and walking – our great escapes during the Covid Crisis. Which made us think it was the perfect time to revisit our interview with writer and journalist Emily Rhodes. Since 2012, Emily has been running her successful Walking Book Club on Hampstead Heath, a wild park of woodland and meadows, not far from central London. We met up one windy day and Emily told us more about the joys of walking and talking about books.
This also gave us the perfect excuse to come up with some handpicked book club recommendations on the theme, from past podcast favourites such as Peter Matthiessen’s epic Snow Leopard to hot-off-the-press release The Well Gardened Mind by Sue Stuart-Smith. We have books to enrich the mind and restore the soul.
Booklist
Books on Emily’s list:
- The True-Deceiver by Tove Jansson
- West with the Night by Beryl Markham
- Westwood by Stella Gibbons
- All Passion Spent by Vita Sackville-West
- The Living Mountain by Nan Shepherd
- As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning by Laurie Lee
- Someone at a Distance by Dorothy Whipple
- Brodeck’s Report by Philippe Claudel
Kate and Laura recommend:
- Black Narcissus by Rumer Godden
- The Salt Path by Raynor Winn
- The Gift by Alison Croggon
- The Snow Leopard by Peter Matthiessen
- The Old Ways by Robert Macfarland
- Flâneuse by Lauren Elkin
- The Well-Gardened Mind by Sue Stuart Smith
Don’t miss…
Find out what we really thought about Peter Matthiessen’s Snow Leopard.
Listen in to find out our favourite fantasy novels and why we read them.
Notes
Emily wrote about her Walking Book Club for The Spectator.
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