Christina Riley

We’re so looking forward to this event! The perfect cosy, hopeful, wintry vibe that we all need ❄️

Tickets available here: www.theportobellobookshop.com/events/chris...

Looking Down at the Stars is out a week today! Launching at @portybooks.bsky.social in Edinburgh on Nov 13 and Mount Florida Books in Glasgow on the 22. Hope you can come hear about anemones etc.

Edinburgh www.theportobellobookshop.com/events/chris...
Glasgow mountfloridabooks.com/products/loo...

Underwater artist Christina Riley captures marine life of Argyll coast Christina Riley snorkels in shallow waters, her eyes trained on pink and yellow tinged coral reefs and an ocean floor carpeted with starfish.

"Underwater artist captures beautiful and rare marine life of Argyll coast" 🪸

Thank you Sally McDonald and the @sundaypost.com for this lovely feature with @christinariley.bsky.social

www.sundaypost.com/fp/christina...

#Booksky
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A photograph of a postcard with details of our autumn offer: 15% discount, using code LTB15G. Use this code at checkout before November 1st to redeem your offer. www.littletoller.co.uk

A little autumn offer for this week! 15% off books bought on our website until 1st November. Use code LTB15G at the checkout. Maybe try Edward Thomas' Icknield Way, Caro Giles' Unschooled or Peter Hahn's memoir of life on a vineyard...
www.littletoller.co.uk/shop/

After you’ve purchased it, I mean.

It’s also the perfect size for slipping into your winter coat pocket.

Arrived home to a surprise! Looking Down at the Stars is here. I personally think it looks great but then I love the sea and coral pink. I hope you do too.

Out from @saraband-books.bsky.social on Nov 6 and available to preorder www.waterstones.com/book/looking...

Today @sundaypost.com called Looking Down at the Stars “a poetic reflection on the urgency of protecting our oceans”, which is really nice. Unless you’re near a shop tonight you can have a read of it online.

close up of bulbous fluff of open milkweed pod

close up of a milkweed pod newly burst open

milkweed pod half open against a yellow ochre wood panelled house

Newly obsessed with milkweed pods.

Lovely to see an extract from Looking Down at the Stars by @christinariley.bsky.social included in the latest @booksfromscotland.bsky.social issue!

booksfromscotland.com/2025/10/look...

#booksky
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The launch is Nov 13 at @portybooks.bsky.social, in conversation with weaver of words and light Roxani Krystalli. More events to come and if you want to plan something, get in touch.

www.theportobellobookshop.com/events/chris...

Truly can't wait to put these stars and worms into the world.

You can preorder it from places like
Waterstones: www.waterstones.com/book/looking...
Portobello Bookshop: www.theportobellobookshop.com/9781916812550
Bookshop UK: uk.bookshop.org/p/books/look...

or ask your favourite independent bookshop or library to order it in.

Somehow Looking Down at the Stars is out in less than two weeks from @saraband-books.bsky.social. I’ve been on holiday and not promoting it much but maybe I should! It’s about my time as an underwater artist in residence in Argyll. Non fiction plus imagined realities of sea slugs and barnacles, etc.

Christina Riley in conversation with Roxani Krystalli, The Portobello Bookshop on the 13th November 2025, 7:00pm.

A signed and dedicated copy of Looking Down at the Stars by Christina Riley, published by Saraband and available to pre-order at The Portobello Bookshop.

We're excited that @christinariley.bsky.social will be launching Looking Down at the Stars at the lovely @portybooks.bsky.social, in conversation with @rkrystalli.bsky.social ✨

🗓️ Thursday 13th November, 7pm

🎟️ Tickets available here: www.theportobellobookshop.com/events/chris...

#Booksky
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I’m just throwing this out there.

The f*&%ing library.

Beautiful modernist Category A-Listed Bernat Klein Studio amongst the trees, ready to be saved and restored.

I know there’s a lot going on and people’s attention, care and money are spread thin, but Scottish heritage and design orgs are trying to save this beautiful A-Listed Bernat Klein Studio which is going to auction, despite hopes of a private sale, if you can help www.crowdfunder.co.uk/p/saving-pet...

thank you, ha it has been a busy summer! That’s me for a while though, no more books planned just the two.

Thank you! 🌊✨

Thank you! 🌊

Here’s the cover. Wild. And if you’re keen and really do like water and light here’s the link to pre-order, or you could ask your favourite independent bookshop.

www.waterstones.com/book/looking...

Wild to share that I have a book coming out with the brilliant @saraband-books.bsky.social! It stars the sea slugs, serpulid worms, scallops and other gleaming and gelatinous life I met underwater on Scotland’s coast.

It’s out on November 6 and available to pre-order! Hope you like water and light!

Look at you doing so well! So good at living!

Apparently they might have just bathed in rusty water but that’s two days in a row I’ve seen, in the same spot, for sure, a very yellow magpie. fao @peediepuss.bsky.social

I need an adaptation of The Sea, The Sea with Hugh Grant as Charles Arrowby more desperately with each passing day.

Poster for Scales of the World, a performance, street procession and book launch from Oceanallover and Juju Books. Saturday 12 July, meeting at The Nature Library at 2pm for the performance at the Maritime Museum at 2.30.

Performance photo of Oceanallover.

Photograph of hand bound Scales of the World book by Juju Books.

I’m bad at Bluesky but here’s something cool happening at the weekend I want to share. A dance-theatre-book collaboration from Oceanallover and Juju Books, mythical reptiles and sailmakers, hosted by The Nature Library and the Scottish Maritime Museum. Free!

www.thenaturelibrary.com/locations/th...

stack of books — a sand county almanac by aldo leopold, motherhood by sheila heti, small rain by garth greenwell, destination limbo by ithell colquhoun, there are rivers in the sky by elif shafak, family and borghesia by natalia ginzburg, my brilliant friend by elena ferrante, the italian girl by iris murdoch, threshold by ursula k le guin

Books I read in spring. Some of the best covers of the season are also the best books but not all of them.

Thank you so much! It is such a beautiful process, to me the perfect balance of being challengingly tedious while offering moments of almost magical instant gratification.

Here it is! An Index of the Colour of Water, limited edition of 30 handmade books pairing photos of water with descriptions of the colour of water found in books within The Nature Library.

This was a delight to make. I love water and colour and indexes. And using an electric guillotine apparently.

and oh Garden Physic by Sylvia Legris?