The harvest moon has come!
The harvest moon is a few days old and starting to wane, but yesterday evening before the clouds rushed into the night sky, the slightly deflated ball of orange briefly lit the horizon and looked quite spectacular. The fading memory may not be getting the timing quite right, but I still associate the harvest moon with potato picking. A schoolboy gaggle of boisterousness cycling through the lanes from town to country, a friend’s farm our destination for some hard labour – back breaking work, shuffling after his dad’s tractor, sack slowly filling, mugs of sugary tea (from the biggest teapot I’d ever seen!), spongecake, laughter and a little extra pocket money. It’s flippant to call it character building, but it must have registered in an increasingly moth-eaten memory, a life lesson was learnt which wasn’t of the homework type. Who knew all these years later such labours could still crack a smile. Do kids still go potato picking? If not, they don’t know what they’re missing!
The Harvest Moon by Ted Hughes
The flame-red moon, the harvest moon,
Rolls along the hills, gently bouncing,
A vast balloon,
Till it takes off, and sinks upward
To lie on the bottom of the sky, like a gold doubloon.
The harvest moon has come,
Booming softly through heaven, like a bassoon.
And the earth replies all night, like a deep drum.
So people can’t sleep,
So they go out where elms and oak trees keep
A kneeling vigil, in a religious hush.
The harvest moon has come!
And all the moonlit cows and all the sheep
Stare up at her petrified, while she swells
Filling heaven, as if red hot, and sailing
Closer and closer like the end of the world.
Till the gold fields of stiff wheat
Cry ‘We are ripe, reap us!’ and the rivers
Sweat from the melting hills.
Wonderful titles seem to be all around currently! This week we’ve chosen to discount Rick Stein’s Food Stories, usually £28, this is now £20. Stein always has a brilliant way of encapsulating the British taste bud, and he doesn’t fail to here either, with a new collection of classics that celebrate modern Britain. We also have Nexus by Yuval Noah Harari; the cover price is £28, but we’ve dropped this to £18. Harari uses his talent to explain our history and relationship with AI, and where it will take us in the future.
New in non-fiction, Gemma Styles captures the insecurities of a generation and gives voice to those feelings that feel unexplainable in her new book about neurodivergence in Why Am I Like This?; Erin Niimi Longhurst provides mental and physical advice on how to survive the cold winter months in The Joy of Wintering; Annie Zaleski charms us with a large and beautiful coffee table book all about the nation’s favourite, in Harry Styles: A Sign of the Times; and Fred Sirieix has written a love letter to the grey, dreary, boring and bland island we call Britian, in Seriously British.
In fiction, one of the greatest modern writers of all time, Roddy Doyle, returns with The Women Behind the Door, the story of a mother/daughter relationship; Lissa Evans gives us a heartwarming and witty tale of life after World War 2 in Small Bomb at Dimperley; for those who crave the gothic, Immortal Dark by Tigest Girma is the story of a breed of vampires that can only drink blood from a few, elite human bloodlines; and The Little Coffee Shop of Terrors by Hazel Graves is an uplifting and funny romance set in a haunted coffee shop – perfect for Halloween (which is closer than you think)!
And lastly, for little ones, Ben Hoare and Jasmine Floyd present The Incredible Pop-Up Bug – the perfect book for gifting – this has amazing pop-ups throughout, alongside interesting creepy-crawly facts. Great for kids aged 7 and up. For the same age, Pet Selector by Russell Kane is the funniest way to work out which pet will suit you best, packed with facts about all kinds of animals, by the biggest animal lover of all!
As always, if there’s something you need help with, or a book you need ordering, please call or email us!
From Amber
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