London Review Bookshop Podcast

In her new book In Defence of Leisure (Cape), Akshi Singh presents Marion Milner as a writer for our times. In asking the simple question: how do I want to spend my free time? Milner developed a method for discovering her true likes and dislikes. As Singh follows Milner’s approach – from keeping a diary to painting, building a home to travelling to the sea – she discovers the importance of rest, creativity and play in all of our lives, and how it can open the door to achieving what we truly desire.

Singh was in conversation with Anouchka Grose, psychoanalyst, writer and climate campaigner whose books include Uneasy Listening: Notes on Hearing and Being Heard (Mack, 2022) and Fashion: a Manifesto (Notting Hill Editions, 2023).

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Geoff Dyer has written books on every subject under the sun; now, at last, he turns his hand to memoir. Homework is his account of his childhood and adolescence in provincial England, as the only child of a dinner lady and a sheet-metal worker, and the opportunities afforded by the postwar settlement in the 1960s and 1970s. Merve Emre describes it as being like ‘going for a long walk with a close friend, whose singular voice — inventive, absorbing, a little rakish, and wonderfully dry — will hold your interest for hours on end.’ Dyer was in conversation with curator, editor and writer Gareth Evans.

Francesca Wade’s biography, Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife, follows on from her acclaimed Square Haunting (Faber, 2020) to present a portrait of one of 20th century modernism’s most rowdy and confounding geniuses, in what Lisa Appignanesi has described as both a ‘discerning literary biography and a page-turning whodunit’.

Wade was joined by Lara Pawson, author of Spent Light (CB Editions, 2024).

More from the Bookshop:

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From the LRB:

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Since its founding, the online food and culture publication Vittles has sought to disrupt mainstream ideas of what food writing looks like. To mark its fifth anniversary, Vittles produced its first print issue – an engaging mix of newly commissioned articles and a selection of some of the best essays it published in the previous five years.

At the Bookshop, three contributors to Vittles Issue 1 – Robin Craig, Amy Key and Waithera Sebatindira – discussed what it means to write about food as a non-food writer with Vittles editor Odhran O’Donoghue.

More from the Bookshop:

Discover our author of the month, book of the week and more: ⁠https://lrb.me/bkshppod⁠

From the LRB:

Subscribe to the LRB: ⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/subsbkshppod

Close Readings podcast: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/crbkshppod

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Bags, binders and more at the LRB Store: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/storebkshppod

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To celebrate the Penguin Classics reissue of bell hooks’s Art on My Mind, Zarina Muhammad & Lola Olufemi discuss her work.

More from the Bookshop:

Discover our author of the month, book of the week and more: ⁠https://lrb.me/bkshppod⁠

From the LRB:

Subscribe to the LRB: ⁠⁠⁠https://lrb.me/subsbkshppod

Close Readings podcast: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/crbkshppod

LRB Audiobooks: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/audiobooksbkshppod

Bags, binders and more at the LRB Store: ⁠⁠https://lrb.me/storebkshppod

Get in touch: [email protected]