Library Checkout: October 2016

I continue to power through public library books at the same time as I keep acquiring books – including the ones below that I bought with birthday money from my sister: two novels I’ve been keen to read, a book of poetry, and two bibliomemoirs (one of them a signed copy but still stupidly cheap!).

I also have this gorgeous trio of blue-hued books to be reviewing for The Bookbag.

I’ve given ratings for all the books I finished, and added links to reviews for those I managed to write about.

LIBRARY BOOKS READ

• Ozone Journal by Peter Balakian (poetry) 
• Thrice the Brinded Cat Hath Mew’d by Alan Bradley 
• The Crime Writer by Jill Dawson 
• The Library of Unrequited Love by Sophie Divry 
• Let Me Tell You about a Man I Knew by Susan Fletcher 
• The Man Who Wouldn’t Get Up and Other Stories by David Lodge 
• Nutshell by Ian McEwan 
• The Many by Wyl Menmuir 
• Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeleine Thien 

CURRENTLY READING

• Keeping an Eye Open: Essays on Art by Julian Barnes
• Open City by Teju Cole

CHECKED OUT, TO BE READ

Many familiar titles still hanging around from last month, plus a few new ones…

• A Chinese street food cookbook to browse for ideas
• Hag-Seed: The Tempest Retold by Margaret Atwood
• The Course of Love by Alain de Botton
• Mend the Living by Maylis de Kerangal
• The Lie Tree by Frances Hardinge
• Man Walks into a Room by Nicole Krauss
• Thirteen Ways of Looking by Colum McCann
• The Tobacconist by Robert Seethaler
• The Painted Bridge by Wendy Wallace

IN THE RESERVATION QUEUE

• Poetry Notebook, 2006–2014 by Clive James
• Dear Mr. M by Herman Koch
• Squirrel Pie by Elisabeth Luard
• Cure: A Journey into the Science of Mind over Body by Jo Marchant
• Autumn by Ali Smith
• The Pursuit of Happiness: Why Are We Driving Ourselves Crazy and How Can We Stop? by Ruth Whippman

RETURNED UNREAD

• Two for Joy by Dannie Abse – I read about a third of these poems; not a single one stuck out for me.
• The Most Perfect Thing: Inside (and Outside) a Bird’s Egg by Tim Birkhead – requested; I’ll have to get it back out another time.
• Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine – Skimmed. Kudos to Rankine for revealing overt/casual racism in America – Lord knows we still need it in the public eye. (Ditto to Paul Beatty’s The Sellout winning the Booker Prize.) But is this poetry? Not even a quarter of the book is composed of what I would call poems, even prose poems. It’s more like a book of essays, which I wasn’t in the mood for. Best lines: “because white men can’t / police their imagination / black men are dying.”
• The House at the Edge of the World by Julia Rochester – also requested.

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