Lit with Charles

My guest today is Tom Ayling, a rare and antiquarian bookseller and cataloguer at Jonkers Rare Books. Jonkers was founded in 1994 and is currently located in Henley on Thames, an idyllic town in England. Their mission has been to source and locate rare and unique books for their clients, some of whom are foremost collectors and institutions in the world. So what makes a book rare? What factors might influence its value? How does one find a rare book? Those were all questions that I wanted to ask Tom and dive a bit deeper into this fascinating business which many book lovers dream about.

Find Jonkers Rare Books:

Website: https://www.jonkers.co.uk/

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In today's episode, I'm speaking to Matthew Campbell, the author of a book called Dead in the Water, which was published in 2022. It's a riveting true story investigation, weaving an unbelievable tale between Yemen, the city of London and Athens. It's a page turner which has the added bonus of making the world of oil shipping completely mesmerizing. For those of you that are yet to read the book, quickly provide you with some context.

In July 2011, an oil tanker called The Brilliant Virtuoso was attacked by a group of Somali pirates off the coast of Yemen, which is a fairly frequent occurrence in those dangerous waters. During the attack, the crew were evacuated off the ship and the ship was set on fire and eventually abandoned as part of the insurance claim process, which was being managed in London. A British investigator living in Yemen was dispatched to the ship to assess the damage, but he immediately detected that something about the pirate narrative rang false before he could investigate further. He was killed by a car bomb in Yemen. This left many questions unanswered, such as was his death connected to the attack or who might have been responsible for either event. In this book, Matthew Campbell tries to untangle a criminal web in an industry known for its secrecy.

Buy the book: https://amzn.eu/d/5Pjz8cX

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Today’s guest is Elizabeth Semmhack, the director of a Museum, and not just any Museum but one that I hold particularly close to my heart: The Bata Shoe Museum in Toronto, Canada. 

The reason it’s close to my heart is because it was founded by my late grandmother Sonja Bata. In 1946, she married my grandfather who was rebuilding his family’s footwear business. Together, they travelled the world and through these travels, she developed a passion for collecting historic shoes that best represented their cultures and environments. After decades of travelling, she’d accumulated a collection of shoes and as one does, in 1995, she founded this museum.

If ever you’re in Toronto, I really recommend the Bata Shoe Museum, it’s an amazing institution and today the Museum has a collection of over 15,000 pairs, with footwear from all eras and regions. One of my grandmother’s passions was the Arctic regions of northern Canada, and so there’s an amazing collection of circumpolar footwear from local indigenous groups from that region, with whom the Museum works regularly to maintain, preserve and showcase that shoe-making heritage. 

Elizabeth Semmelhack has published several excellent coffee-table books that show the Museum’s collection. In this interview, I discuss with her the role of footwear in societies, as shown through the great books that she’s put together. In this episode, we discuss sneakers, circumpolar boots, virtual footwear and many others.

In this episode, we talked about the following books:

Out of the Box by Elizabeth Semmelhack

The World At Your Feet: Bata Show Museum, 2019

Future Now by Elizabeth Semmelhack

A Taste for China by Eugenia Zuroski Jenkins

Precious Bane by Mary Bane

Visit the Bata Shoe Museum: https://batashoemuseum.ca/

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Today's guest is Nina Freudenberger, a Los Angeles-based interior designer and the author of a superb coffee table book called Bibliostyle: How We Live at Home With Books, where she has documented and photographed some of the most gorgeous home libraries in the world, including those of major writers. Many book lovers have a strong desire to house their books in a way that cherishes and highlights them. On my Instagram account, I occasionally post content featuring beautiful libraries from around the world, and the reaction is immediate: people love a good library, and I’m definitely no exception.

In this episode, we talk about the role of books within homes and why we’re all so obsessed with beautiful home libraries. I really do recommend this wonderful piece of work and it's yet another great book to add to any library. 

Buy "Bibliostyle: How We Live at Home With Books": https://amzn.eu/d/bPeM0gh

Instagram: @ninafreudenberger

Website: https://www.freudenbergerdesign.com/

Follow me @litwithcharles for more book reviews and recommendations!

Today's episode was actually the first one I recorded a little while ago. I first came across the Book Club Review podcast hosted by Kate and Laura about a year ago, and I was always really impressed by the books they were discussing and the friendly, approachable tone they adopted during those discussions. Last year they contacted me to do an interview on the anniversary of the publication of Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, and we recorded the interview in Tavistock Square, where Virginia Woolf used to live and where she is commemorated with a statue. The interview was a lot of fun and I was very glad I got the opportunity to continue the conversation. 

Both Kate and Laura share some excellent book recommendations so make sure to have a pen and paper at the ready! 

Find more information: 

Website: https://www.thebookclubreview.co.uk/

Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-book-club-review/id1215730246

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bookclubreviewpodcast/?hl=en

Follow me @litwithcharles for more book reviews and recommendations!

On today's episode I am joined by author, Alice Sherwood about her book "Authenticity: Reclaiming Reality in a Counterfeit Culture". We live in a world where it is increasingly difficult to make the difference between what’s authentic and what’s fake. Whether we are talking about counterfeit fashion or Tinder swindlers making up identities, inauthenticity is a force that seems to be taking over. Alice's book is thought-provoking – and an often humorous look at the concept of realness and fakeness across many topics, ranging from 17th century forgers to contemporary technology, and how the challenges to authenticity have evolved over time. This book and our conversation was profoundly illuminating and I hope it will be for you too.

Find Alice Sherwood: 

Buy "Authenticity: Reclaiming Reality in a Counterfeit Culture": https://amzn.eu/d/d5DD6xx

Instagram: @alice.sherwood

Follow me @litwithcharles for more book reviews and recommendations!

On today's episode, I am interviewing James Crabtree, who is currently the executive director of the Asia branch of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in Asia. James was previously the bureau chief for the Financial Times in Mumbai and it was in that capacity that he wrote the fantastic book The Billionaire Raj, which I read and reviewed last year. India is very much at a political and economic crossroads at the moment, and the level of analysis that James Crabtree provides in his book is very enlightening. I was super excited to speak to James about the country and those massive changes. 

In fact, a lot has happened since I interviewed James in December 2022, not least of which the news in the last few weeks regarding Gautam Adani, an Indian billionaire and one of the richest men in the world, whose business empire came under unprecedented attack by short sellers in the market. This was prompted by a report issued by the investment research firm Hindenburg Research, which accused the Adani Group of fraud. Over a matter of days Gautam Adani's business empire lost around $100 billion in valuation. So it seems that the extraordinary wealth of this billionaire class can occasionally be accompanied by very rapid falls in wealth as well. 

Find James Crabtree: 

The International Institute for Strategic Studies: https://www.iiss.org/people/directing-staff/james-crabtree 

Twitter: https://twitter.com/jamescrabtree

Buy The Billionaire Raj: https://amzn.eu/d/1j1anpC

Follow me @litwithcharles for more book reviews and recommendations!

Today's guest is the author, Benjamin Moser, who is the biographer of not one, but two larger than life writers, one of them being the Brazilian novelist Clarice Lispector and the other being the American public intellectual, Susan Sontag. I came across Clarice Lispector when I read her last novel, The Hour of the Star, published in 1977, shortly before her death. It's got a really unusual style and a bit of a weird structure, but there was something quite fascinating about it. 

Benjamin Moser has not only written an excellent biography about Clarice called Why This World, but he was also appointed as the editor for a new English translation of the Complete Works by this author, which has been a major force in the revival of her work. Benjamin then went on to write a biography of Susan Sontag, published in 2019, which won the Pulitzer Prize for best biography. I'd only read one book by Susan Sontag called Against Interpretation, which is a collection of her cultural commentary essays in 1966, which firmly established her as a cultural high priestess in the U.S. for many decades. It's a brilliant book, but it has a certain prickliness. And as you will learn from Benjamin Moser's biography, Sontag: Her Life and Work, Susan, albeit brilliant and influential on public intellectual discourse was perhaps a tricky character in private. So having read both of those excellent biographies, I was curious to discuss the biographical process and genre with Benjamin Moser to understand more about how she worked, what the actual process was, and what motivated him to write these biographies. 

Find more information on Benjamin Moser books: 

Why This World: https://amzn.eu/d/9ycVJtR

Sontag: Her Life and Work: https://amzn.eu/d/8WCfviU

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This week's episode is with the British philosopher David Edmonds. Six months ago, I came across his book about Wittgenstein called Wittgenstein's Poker and I absolutely loved this book because it deals with an episode later in the life of Wittgenstein, which I found absolutely fascinating in 1946. Wittgenstein, who was by then a professor at Cambridge University, found himself in a room at the Moral Sciences Club Philosophy Club at Cambridge, where they had invited a young upcoming philosopher called Karl Popper. The conversation deteriorated very rapidly until the point where Ludwig Wittgenstein was seen as threatening Karl Popper with a fire poker. Like a detective novel, David Edmonds unpacks the circumstances behind this very unique incident. It's a truly fascinating book and I'm really delighted to introduce to you today this discussion that I had with David Edmonds about his fantastic book, Wittgenstein's Poker.  

Find more information on David Edmonds: 

Website: http://www.davidedmonds.info/

Buy Wittgenstein's Poker: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Wittgensteins-Poker-David-Edmonds/dp/057122735X/ 

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For the very first episode of my brand new podcast Lit with Charles, I wanted to interview an author whose work I’ve really enjoyed and admired. Caitlin Macy is a New York based author, she’s published two novels and two collections of short stories. Her first novel, The Fundamentals of Play, was published in 2000, which was followed by the short story collection Spoiled in 2009. Her second novel, Mrs., was published in 2018, and I connected with Caitlin when she published her second collection of short stories called A Blind Corner. 

Caitlin’s stories inhabit a world where discomfort and neurosis lurk behind the edges. The women who populate these tales always seem to be one step away from a major, self-inflicted social disaster. As the author pokes her finger into the areas of gender, class, race, money and so many others. Her stories are fun, humorous and true, but also thought provoking and unsettling. I was very excited at the prospect of having a conversation with Caitlin Macy about her books and as you'll see in this episode, I wasn't disappointed.

Links for Caitlin Macy:

Website: https://caitlinmacy.com/

Books: https://caitlinmacy.com/books/

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mrscaitlinmacy/

Follow me @litwithcharles for more book reviews and recommendations!