Library Checkout: January 2020

December into January has been a big library reading month for me. I made it through most of the Costa Awards poetry shortlist plus two from the fiction shortlists and enjoyed some YA and middle-grade fiction (not my usual reading comfort zone) and graphic novels. As we head into February, I’m reading lots of ‘Love’-themed titles for a Valentine’s Day post, and starting the reading for some other projects: Bellwether Prize winners, past Wellcome Book Prize long- and shortlistees, and Annabel’s Paul Auster reading week.

You’ll notice that I also had a lot of unfinished library books this month. Some I’d read 20‒30 pages of; others I dropped after just a few pages (or barely made it past the first page). I need to get better at doing this few-page sampling before I even borrow a book so I don’t bother hauling things I’m not going to read to and fro. Often, though, I show up to the library on a Friday afternoon with a long list of books to borrow and just 10 minutes to get to my bookshop volunteering, so I grab and go without opening them up. Next month I’ll try to do better.

As usual, I give links to reviews of books I haven’t already featured. I had three very high ratings this month!

What have you been reading from your local libraries? Library Checkout runs on the last Monday of every month. Feel free to use this image and leave a link to your blog in the comments if you’ve taken part.

 

READ

• The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood [graphic novel adaptation by Renée Nault]
• City of Glass [from The New York Trilogy] by Paul Auster
• On Love and Barley: Haiku of Bashō [poetry]
• Kindred by Octavia E. Butler
• Flèche by Mary Jean Chan [poetry]
• The Confessions of Frannie Langton by Sara Collins
• The Envoy from Mirror City by Janet Frame
• Confession with Blue Horses by Sophie Hardach
• The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse by Charlie Mackesy
• Reckless Paper Birds by John McCullough [poetry]
• The Imitation Game: Alan Turing Decoded by Jim Ottaviani [graphic novel]
• The Nine-Chambered Heart by Janice Pariat
• Mr Dickens and His Carol by Samantha Silva
• A Good Enough Mother by Bev Thomas
• Frost by Holly Webb
• The Snow Cat by Holly Webb
• Everything, Everything by Nicola Yoon [for February book club]

SKIMMED

• The Body Lies by Jo Baker
• The Making of Poetry: Coleridge, the Wordsworths and Their Year of Marvels by Adam Nicolson
• Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men by Caroline Criado Perez
• The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper by Hallie Rubenhold

 

CURRENTLY READING

• Winter Journal by Paul Auster
• Running the Rift by Naomi Benaron
• Literary Values by John Burroughs
• Shotgun Lovesongs by Nickolas Butler
• Mr Loverman by Bernardine Evaristo
• When All Is Said by Anne Griffin
• Meet the Austins by Madeleine L’Engle
• Jazz by Toni Morrison
• Bizarre Romance by Audrey Niffenegger

 

CHECKED OUT, TO BE READ

• The rest of The New York Trilogy by Paul Auster
• Love Is Blind by William Boyd
• Whatever Happened to Margo? by Margaret Durrell
• The Night Brother by Rosie Garland
• Speak No Evil by Uzodinma Iweala
• The Golden Age by Joan London
• The End of the Ocean by Maja Lunde
• Run by Ann Patchett

IN THE RESERVATION QUEUE

• Disobedience by Naomi Alderman
• Dear Life: A Doctor’s Story of Love and Loss by Rachel Clarke
• Childhood by Tove Ditlevsen
• This Is How It Always Is by Laurie Frankel
• Miss Austen by Gill Hornby
• The Giver of Stars by Jojo Moyes
• The Warlow Experiment by Alix Nathan
• Motherwell: A Girlhood by Deborah Orr
• A Short History of Medicine by Steve Parker
• Nemesis by Philip Roth
• Oligarchy by Scarlett Thomas
• Pine by Francine Toon

 

RETURNED UNFINISHED

• Surge by Jay Bernard [poetry] – I read the first 20 pages. Protest poems in various voices. I enjoyed one in pidgin – reminiscent of Kei Miller.
• Short Short Stories by Dave Eggers – I read 22 out of 55 pages. These flash fiction stories appeared in the Guardian in 2004. Of the first 10 stories, a few were amusing (a man’s current earworm spells the demise of his relationship; guessing how water feels to fish; a flight attendant has fun with his routines) but the rest were slight or gratuitously sexual, and the style is repetitive throughout.
• Under the Camelthorn Tree: Raising a Family among Lions by Kate Nicholls
• The Botanist’s Daughter by Kayte Nunn
• Shadowplay by Joseph O’Connor
• The Ice by Laline Paull
• Bad Mothers, Brilliant Lovers by Wendy Perriam
• The Paper Lovers by Gerard Woodward
• My dear, I wanted to tell you by Louisa Young

 

RETURNED UNREAD

• Winter Garden by Kristin Hannah – Not a fan of the prose style.
• Consolations by David Whyte – Not what I thought it would be.

 

Anything that appeals in my stacks?