'Beach objects in the sand begin to read like words on a page, fragments of stories ready to be pieced together.' Read an extract from @christinariley.bsky.social’s ‘Looking Down at the Stars’ — our November Book of the Month (@saraband-books.bsky.social) www.caughtbytheriver.net/2025/11/look...

Looking Down at the Stars by @christinariley.bsky.social is published today! A beautiful collection of essays and reflections on life underwater, inspired by Scotland's rocky coast 🌊💙 Take a look: uk.bookshop.org/a/2456/97819... #NatureWriting #booksky

Wild wild wild. Looking Down at the Stars surfaces today. If you buy it thank you I hope you like it 🪸

An update on book and Nature Library things, should you want one open.substack.com/pub/thenatur...

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 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 📚💙

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/

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.

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 📚💙

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.

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 📚💙

I’m just throwing this out there.

The f*&%ing library.

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...

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.

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...

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

Hi! The last thing I shared here was daily pictures of the sea. They’re now a book called An Index of the Colour of Water, accompanied by descriptions of the colour of water from writers such as Iris Murdoch, Kathleen Jamie and Nina Mingya Powles. thenaturelibrary.bigcartel.com/product/an-i...

great opportunity share a great essay by Heather Parry open.substack.com/pub/heatherp...

"To be nonpolitical is not, as one might suppose, evidence of a passive psychic condition, but of a highly active attitude, a defense against the awareness of social responsibility." - Wilhelm Reich, The Mass Psychology of Fascism

I imagine this is how it would look if the sky fell to earth and shattered like glass then, somehow, was again made molten.

Mid-morning, pastel sky melting into the sea like a sigh.

The surface turned milky as the wind stilled and the sun set, deep ink dappled with warm pinks and baby blues.

The sun tried its hardest to beat the blue out. Blinding.

A bright brushed blue today, the sea ran parallel to the shore like a river.

The water was lime jello today, with some blue Hawaiian punch spilled in. When a breeze came along it was as if some great hand was scattering diamonds across the surface like seeds.

In the water today I wondered where the word ‘scintillating’ comes from.

Why? I want transcripts from whatever meetings came to the conclusion that this is what people who buy books about anything let alone about ~nature~, that filthy fresh living breathing thing, want. And if no one wants this, then the decision to give them it anyway.

Latest letter from The Nature Library on crusty paint and algae after a rosy afternoon at Ingleby Gallery with a friend. Also attention to beauty and care, but mostly crust. You can read it here thenaturelibrary.substack.com/p/the-calcar...

New riso print available from The Nature Library! Written in response to my time as a snorkelling-artist-in-residence at the Argyll Hope Spot. A4, two colour, two sides, limited run of 100. All sales go towards the running of the library, thank you x thenaturelibrary.bigcartel.com/product/seag...

New riso print available from The Nature Library! Written in response to my time as a snorkelling-artist-in-residence at the Argyll Hope Spot. A4, two colour, two sides, limited run of 100. All sales go towards the running of the library, thank you x thenaturelibrary.bigcartel.com/product/seag...

The woman in the charity shop said “You must really like birds”.

Keep libraries open, support librarians to be able to buy in more requests and recommend books to their visitors, which many don’t have capacity to do due to cuts. What books are being taught in school? Do they actually make students want to pick up another one? www.theguardian.com/books/2025/m...

Not the most relevant title for a library in Irvine (Ayrshire, not California) but I’ll never not buy a book with ephemera nestled in its pages, and wildflowers in the wildflower book is perhaps one of the most prized.

you’ve heard of a barnacle goose, but may I interest you in a barnacle owl

The Nature Library received fantastical snail mail from the Learning Something New About Nature Club today and I learned that in Czech, caddisflies are known as ‘potocniky’, ‘stream legs’. In Finnish it’s ‘Vesiperhonen’, ‘water butterflies’. (@adamcsharp.bsky.social, if you weren’t already aware)

The light did this to the peaks of Arran this morning, which obviously looked better, warmer, frankly sparklier, in person. I’m not sure how people who live amongst mountains get anything done other than looking.

In celebration of world seagrass day.

La cathédrale engloutie by Ithell Colquhoun

I found it, I found it, I was ignoring all those articles pitting comb jellies and sea sponges against each other and there it was (also apparently very possibly not true but maybe true, apparently nobody knows, who are we to say)

Thank you, Iain! 🐚

I know I read somewhere that sea sponges devolved, in the sense that they made themselves less complex in order to better their evolutionary success. But I can’t find it anywhere. Did I dream it? Who knows their sponges? Shares appreciated, I lost so many sea people in the move over here.

two days left ✨ go tell ‘em ✨

Have a wee vote, folks! Be assured it's not me, Liz Lochhead and Jackie Kay in competition with each other - god forbid! It's you choosing a line by each of us to be carved on the Parliament Wall. www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk/2025/02/publ...