Library Checkout: June 2018

I’ve read some terrific stuff from the library over the past month! As usual, I’ve added in star ratings and links to any Goodreads reviews if I haven’t already featured the books on the blog in some way.

Note: I’m going to skip the month of July because I’m spending three weeks of it in America helping my parents pack and move out of their house. My plan is to return all the public library books I still have out and cancel most of my reservation requests before I fly out. (I can always request them again as soon as I get back; for now I like the idea of a clean slate.)

 

LIBRARY BOOKS READ

• Anecdotal Evidence by Wendy Cope [poetry] 
• The Lie of the Land by Amanda Craig 
• The Unmapped Mind: A Memoir of Neurology, Incurable Disease and Learning How to Live by Christian Donlan 
• Leaving Before the Rains Come by Alexandra Fuller 
• The White Book by Han Kang 
• Cold Earth by Sarah Moss 
• The Long Goodbye: A Memoir of Grief by Meghan O’Rourke 
• The Reading Promise: 3,218 Nights of Reading with My Father by Alice Ozma 
• Never Mind by Edward St. Aubyn 
• The Hate U Give by Angie Thomas 

SKIMMED ONLY

• The Wonder Down Under: A User’s Guide to the Vagina by Dr. Nina Brochmann and Ellen Støkken Dahl 
• A Moment of Grace by Patrick Dillon 
• Morning—How to Make Time: A Manifesto by Allan Jenkins 
• When I Hit You by Meena Kandasamy 

CURRENTLY READING-ish (set aside temporarily)

• To the Is-Land: An Autobiography by Janet Frame

CHECKED OUT, TO BE READ

These university library books have been hanging around for a loooooooooooong time, and most likely will continue to do so for months to come:

• My Father and Myself by J.R. Ackerley
• The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay by Michael Chabon
• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz
• On the Road by Jack Kerouac
• The Cabaret of Plants: Botany and the Imagination by Richard Mabey (not pictured)
• Backwater by Dorothy Richardson
• The Sparrow by Mary Doria Russell
• The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
• The Magnificent Spinster by May Sarton

IN THE RESERVATION QUEUE

• Whistle in the Dark by Emma Healy
• The Stopping Places: A Journey through Gypsy Britain by Damian Le Bas
• The Secret Barrister: Stories of the Law and How It’s Broken
• Rosie: Scenes from a Vanished Life by Rose Tremain
• The Librarian by Salley Vickers

RETURNED UNFINISHED

• The Day that Went Missing: A Family Tragedy by Richard Beard
• The Trick to Time by Kit de Waal 
• Tender by Belinda McKeon 
• The Lido by Libby Page 

RETURNED UNREAD

• Places I Stopped on the Way Home: A Memoir of Chaos and Grace by Meg Fee
• That Was when People Started to Worry: Windows into Unwell Minds by Nancy Tucker

(I requested these from the publisher way back in November 2017 and was astounded when, 6.5 months later, copies turned up on my doorstep! I’d given up on them ever coming.)

• The Owl at the Window by Carl Gorham
• See What I Have Done by Sarah Schmidt

(I lost interest in these two and wasn’t drawn in by the first few pages.)

What have you been reading from your local libraries? Does anything appeal from my stacks?