Library Checkout: September 2016

I’ve been powering through the public library books, even as I keep amassing owned books – including from local charity shops and the bargain shelves at Poundland and Waterstones.

I’ve given ratings for all the books I finished, and added links to Goodreads reviews for those I managed to write about. A few of these books were truly remarkable, so I’ll probably pull them out to highlight in a future post.

The stack I currently have on loan, plus the ones on reserve, should easily see me through the autumn and into winter! (* = poetry books)

LIBRARY BOOKS READ

• Not That Kind of Girl: A Young Woman Tells You What She’s “Learned” by Lena Dunham 
• The Malarkey by Helen Dunmore* 
• Late Fragments: Everything I Want to Tell You (about This Magnificent Life) by Kate Gross 
• The Reason I Jump: One Boy’s Voice from the Silence of Autism by Naoki Higashida 
• Hot Milk by Deborah Levy 
• Keeping Mum by Gwyneth Lewis* 
• Winter by Christopher Nicholson 
• Letter Composed during a Lull in the Fighting by Kevin Powers* 
• How Snow Falls by Craig Raine* 
• The Last Act of Love: The Story of My Brother and His Sister by Cathy Rentzenbrink 
• The Complete Maus by Art Spiegelman 
• Golden Hill by Francis Spufford 
• The Wallcreeper by Nell Zink 

CHECKED OUT, TO BE READ

• Ozone Journal by Peter Balakian*
• Open City by Teju Cole
• The Course of Love by Alain de Botton
• Mend the Living by Maylis de Kerangal
• The Library of Unrequited Love by Sophie Divry
• Let Me Tell You about a Man I Knew by Susan Fletcher
• The Lie Tree by Frances Hardinge
• Man Walks into a Room by Nicole Krauss
• The House at the Edge of the World by Julia Rochester

ON HOLD, TO BE PICKED UP

• Keeping an Eye Open: Essays on Art by Julian Barnes
• The Most Perfect Thing: Inside (and Outside) a Bird’s Egg by Tim Birkhead
• Thrice the Brinded Cat Hath Mew’d by Alan Bradley
• Thirteen Ways of Looking by Colum McCann
• Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeleine Thien
• The Painted Bridge by Wendy Wallace

IN THE RESERVATION QUEUE

• The Crime Writer by Jill Dawson
• The Man Who Wouldn’t Get Up and Other Stories by David Lodge
• Nutshell by Ian McEwan
• The Many by Wyl Menmuir
• Fingers in the Sparkle Jar by Chris Packham
• The Tobacconist by Robert Seethaler
• Autumn by Ali Smith

RETURNED UNREAD

• Aftermath: On Marriage and Separation by Rachel Cusk [I sampled the first few pages and found it flat and affectless; perhaps I’ll try her fiction instead.]
• Kid Gloves: A Voyage round My Father by Adam Mars-Jones [I decided an interest in the subject matter couldn’t overcome my frustration with the author’s style.]

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(Thanks, as always, go to Shannon of River City Reading for the great blog idea and template!)