John Richardson’s lino-cuts from ‘Words on Water’ join the hall of fame over at the Londonist website.

Afternoon chaps,

Caught by the River was in Sunday’s Independent! It was on their ‘Critical List’ pages – which is the ‘what’s hot in the Arts this week’ section.

Each week they get their favourite independent book retailers to recommend their favourite books in a Top Ten Hitlist. Caught by the River was in Sunday’s list and made number 6! I’ve attached a scan of it, we are on the 2nd page, they give it a lovely little review.

…I’m not quite sure why Wild Tea Cosies reached number 5…but f*ck it! HURRAH!!!

K xxx

Those sharp eyed amongst you may have noticed that Caught By The River has moved with the times and joined both Twitter and Facebook. To follow us or become our friend, just click on the icons at the top right-hand side of the screen or the links embedded above. We’re going to try to make the Twitter account more than just somewhere that new postings get pinged, hopefully document days out, beers tasted, special offers on the site, whatever.

Thanks very much to everybody who entered the CD competition we ran. We had an amazing response and the winners have now been informed. And finally, in a year that has largely involved us escaping the music industry for the tranquillity of Caught By The River, our book has actually ended up featuring in the NME’s end of year polls (it was in The Times’ books of the year too – it’s also still available in the shop…)

A few of you who came to see us (and our wonderful friends who performed) at the Port Eliot Festival last year might want to get early bird tickets for 2010′s event, now on sale here. If you didn’t make it down there, check the write ups we did on this site here , here and here to see what you missed out – snap up places now for Christmas presents or just to get you out of the mid-winter doldrums. It’s destined to be a hell of a show!

P.S. For all Benhamists and Benhamites out there, that’s the great man’s hat in the picture.

Really lovely email from the folks over at the lovely Dusty 7s blog. They’re the first people who’ve got in touch and tried to tackle their fear of nature with a copy of our book. They followed Bob Stanley’s Lea navigation, though probably got there a little after the ominous blue fence went up. If anyone else has tried to amble the pathways mentally mapped in the book, please let us know.

Sue Clifford reading ‘The Language of Rivers‘, with production by Chris Watson is now available to download from our iTunes page (here).

We’ve had a bunch of unique podcasts made to compliment the book and they are now available to download (for free) over at iTunes.

Click here to go to the CBTR page where you can hear Bill Drummond, Chris Watson, Hannah Hamilton, Gavin Pretor-Pinney and Chris Yates read extracts from their contributions. There is also the treat of hearing Robert MacFarlane reading Roger Deakins, ‘Jack Frost’ piece. All of these recordings have been produced by Chris Watson.

Sorry to keep chucking reviews of our book at you but we had to pass on this jaw-dropping review from last week’s Independent On Sunday. Also, The Guardian have run an extract from the book on their website today.

Really lovely plug for the book on brilliant music and arts site The Quietus – they’ve also got extracts from the Bill Drummond piece on the Penkiln Burn. Ace photo of Bill by Tracey Moberly who runs our favourite pub in London town.

here’s a few pics that Wendy took at Monday night’s book launch. There’s a lot more so we’ll archive them all in the ‘rivers book’ section of the site over the weekend.

Hannah Hamilton, reading from ‘River Man

Jon Berry, reading from ‘The River Alness’

Bill Drummond, reading from ‘The Penkiln Burn’