Love Your Library, January 2023
Elle has been reading loads from the library (and discovering the freedom of DNFing or not reading the library books you borrow; this is not a problem in the least, and it still helps the library’s statistics!). Naomi always finds interesting books to read and review from her library system. Margaret’s “My Life in Book Titles 2022” almost exclusively featured books she’d borrowed from libraries. Through Twitter I saw this hilarious TikTok video from Cincinnati Library about collecting book holds. If only I could be so glamorous on my Tuesday volunteering mornings. Washington Post critic Ron Charles’s weekly e-newsletter is one of my greatest bookish joys and I was delighted to see him recently highlight an initiative from my hometown’s local library system. Whenever I go on the cross trainer, I read library books or my e-reader so exercise time isn’t ‘lost’ time when I could be reading.
Since last month:
READ
- A Night at the Frost Fair by Emma Carroll
- Bournville by Jonathan Coe
- A Heart that Works by Rob Delaney
- The Weather Woman by Sally Gardner
- Leila and the Blue Fox by Kiran Millwood Hargrave
- Standard Deviation by Katherine Heiny
- Our Missing Hearts by Celeste Ng
- Born a Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood by Trevor Noah
CURRENTLY READING
- Once Upon a Tome by Oliver Darkshire
- Martha Quest by Doris Lessing (for our women’s classics book club subgroup)
- How to Be Sad by Helen Russell
- Lucy by the Sea by Elizabeth Strout
- City of Friends by Joanna Trollope (for February’s book club)
- Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner
My library system has a ton of new books on order – I set up an alert so I would be e-mailed a weekly digest of all 2023 adult fiction and nonfiction releases added to the catalogue – so my reservation queue is nearly full now with all kinds of tempting stuff, including a new biography of Katherine Mansfield and a bereavement memoir by Blake Morrison, whose And When Did You Last See Your Father? was my favourite nonfiction read of 2018. In fiction, I’m particularly excited about The New Life by Tom Crewe, How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water by Angie Cruz, and Maame by Jessica George.
What have you been reading or reviewing from the library recently?
Share a link to your own post in the comments. Feel free to use the above image. The hashtag is #LoveYourLibrary.
Love Your Library, December 2022
The UK has just experienced its coldest week since 2010, so it’s no wonder we’ve been freezing here in our drafty old house. It’s turning milder (and rainy), so we hope to have it habitable for hosting my parents-in-law on Christmas day, and my sister the week after.
Margaret sent me a link to this charming story about a public library in Poland that moved its entire collection 350 meters down the road using a human chain of over 600 volunteers. Marcie sourced many of her graphic novel and poetry reads, as well as various globe-trotting stories, from the library this year. And Eleanor has been reading loads of print and e-books from her library: everything from Dickens to sci-fi. Thank you all for your contributions!
Earlier in the month my library closed to the public for two days to complete a stock take (which happens once every three years). I helped out for my usual two hours on the Tuesday morning, scanning children’s chapter books with a tiny device about the size of two memory sticks put together. We scanned the library’s nearly 50,000 on-shelf items in the equivalent of just over one working day.
All of my remaining reservations seem to have come in at once. There’s no hope of me reading all the big-name 2022 releases (such as the Booker Prize winner, and Celeste Ng’s new novel) before the end of the year, but I will see if I can manage to finish a few more that I have in progress.
Since last month:
READ
- Pages & Co.: The Treehouse Library by Anna James
- Heat and Dust by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
- Maureen Fry and the Angel of the North by Rachel Joyce
- Everything the Light Touches by Janice Pariat
- Leap Year by Helen Russell
- The Family Retreat by Bev Thomas
- Another Brooklyn by Jacqueline Woodson
CURRENTLY READING
- Horse by Geraldine Brooks
- A Heart that Works by Rob Delaney
- Leila and the Blue Fox by Kiran Millwood Hargrave
- Standard Deviation by Katherine Heiny
- Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner
RETURNED UNFINISHED
- Lessons by Ian McEwan
- Liberation Day by George Saunders
What have you been reading or reviewing from the library recently?
Share a link to your own post in the comments. Feel free to use the above image. The hashtag is #LoveYourLibrary.
Love Your Library, November 2022
Eleanor got loads of her R.I.P. reads from the library last month. Several of my novellas for this month have come from the public library, and before long it’ll be time to gather up a few holiday-appropriate reads.
I cut down my library volunteering from four hours a week to two, to claw back a little more time for work and for myself – between adjusting my meal times and walking there and back, it felt like I lost the whole of my Thursday afternoons, and already I enjoy having them free.
Early next month the library will close for two days for a complete stock take. I’ll go in on my usual Tuesday morning to help out with that for a few hours. I know to expect a lot of standing and repetitive work, but we’ve been promised tea and cake at break time!
Since last month:
READ
- Strangers on a Pier: Portrait of a Family by Tash Aw
- Fair Play by Tove Jansson
- The Magic Pudding by Norman Lindsay
CURRENTLY READING
- Standard Deviation by Katherine Heiny
- Pages & Co.: The Treehouse Library (Pages & Co. #5) by Anna James
- Heat and Dust by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala
- Everything the Light Touches by Janice Pariat
- Leap Year by Helen Russell
- The Family Retreat by Bev Thomas
- Another Brooklyn by Jacqueline Woodson
- Crying in H Mart by Michelle Zauner
What have you been reading or reviewing from the library recently?
Share a link to your own post in the comments. Feel free to use the above image. The hashtag is #LoveYourLibrary.
Love Your Library, August 2022
Edited: Belatedly adding in links to this month’s posts by Eleanor and Marcie, with a huge thank you for participating!
And here’s my haul from today. A few short story collections there because in September I always try to focus a bit more on stories.
Naomi has also been reading a lot from her local libraries, and Laura stocked up before heading out on holiday:
Normally my library system would be busily buying up the Booker Prize longlist, the Wainwright Prize shortlists, and big-name upcoming releases by the likes of John Irving and Ian McEwan. I have a file on my desktop with a list of 29 author names I periodically check for, as any on-order titles from them will show up at the top of the results. But there’s been a huge slowdown on acquisitions, and I know exactly why: the librarian who orders and processes new books experienced a family tragedy this summer and has been on compassionate leave for a while already. Were I not a library volunteer who also vaguely knows her socially, I’d have no idea and might be simmering with impatience right now. Instead, I’ll be patient, read what I already have out, and address my review book backlog.
Since last month…
READ
- Where the Wildflowers Grow by Leif Bersweden
- Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy by Helen Fielding (for book club)
- My Life in Houses by Margaret Forster
- Black Narcissus by Rumer Godden
- Julia and the Shark by Kiran Millwood Hargrave
- The Summer Book by Tove Jansson
- From the Hedgerows by Lew Lewis
- The Last Wild Horses by Maja Lunde
- Golden Boys by Phil Stamper
- The False Rose by Jakob Wegelius
Also a children’s book I spotted while shelving – who knew it existed?!
- River Rose and the Magical Lullaby by Kelly Clarkson; illus. Laura Hughes
CURRENTLY READING
- Brief Lives by Anita Brookner (for book club)
- Case Study by Graeme Macrae Burnet
- Nightcrawling by Leila Mottley
- State of Wonder by Ann Patchett (a reread)
- Oh William! by Elizabeth Strout
- The Young Accomplice by Benjamin Wood
A few of these are from the Booker Prize longlist, in advance of the shortlist announcement on 6 September.
And from the university library:
- Summer by Edith Wharton
Still lots around that I’ve borrowed and not gotten into yet:
And various new releases on hold or awaiting me on the reservation shelf.
What have you been reading or reviewing from the library recently?
Share a link to your own post in the comments. Feel free to use the above image. The hashtag is #LoveYourLibrary.
Love Your Library, July 2022
Margaret posted about books picked at random while volunteering at the library, and the way a certain type of cover can draw you in or fit your mood. I’ve certainly experienced this, too!
I’ve noticed that, lately, my library system has been making an effort to cover gaps in its holdings, purchasing books to boost its collections of LGBTQ and postcolonial literature: reissues of novels by Caribbean and Indigenous (e.g. Maori) authors, more by trans people, Black British authors from the Virago Modern Classics series, etc. They also tend to buy up writers’ back catalogues, especially if reprinted as a uniform series – I keep hoping they’ll do this for Sarah Hall. Though I volunteer at the library twice a week, I don’t have insider knowledge; it’s still a mystery to me how and why some books get ordered and some don’t.
Since last month…
READ
- Orchid Summer by Jon Dunn
- Lessons in Chemistry by Bonnie Garmus
- Secrets of the Sea House by Elisabeth Gifford
- This Is Not a Pity Memoir by Abi Morgan (for book club)
- The Summer of the Bear by Bella Pollen
- Transitions: Our Stories of Being Trans, ed. Juno Roche et al.
- Stormy Petrel by Mary Stewart
- Madwoman by Louisa Treger – reviewing for Shelf Awareness
And from the university library:
- The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey
From whence this amusing quote about library books:
“No T. More in any of the bookshops, so tried Public Library. Can’t think why one never thinks of Public Libraries. Probably because books expected to be soupy. Think this looks quite clean and unsoupy. You get fourteen days. Sounds like a sentence rather than a loan.”
(I sometimes get perfume-y books, but not soupy ones. How about you?)
I’ll zero in on one of these, Lessons in Chemistry, because there are 50 reservations after me in the queue – that must be a record for my small library system! Bonnie Garmus made her authorial debut at age 64; you can be sure she’ll be in the running for the next Paul Torday Memorial Prize (awarded by the Society of Authors to a first novel by a writer over 60). Elizabeth Zott is a scientist through and through, applying a chemist’s mindset to her every venture, including cooking, rowing and single motherhood in the 1950s. When she is fired from her job in a chemistry lab and gets a gig as a TV cooking show host instead, she sees it as her mission to treat housewives as men’s intellectual equals, but there are plenty of people who don’t care for her unusual methods and free thinking. I was reminded strongly of The Atomic Weight of Love and The Rosie Project, as well as novels by Katherine Heiny and especially John Irving what with the deep dive into backstory and particular pet subjects, and the orphan history for Zott’s love interest. This was an enjoyable tragicomedy. You have to cheer for the triumphs she and other female characters win against the system of the time. However, her utter humourlessness/guilelessness felt improbable, the very precocious child (and dog) stretch belief, and the ending was too pat for me.
CURRENTLY READING
Continuing with my flora and summer themes; continuing to linger in Scotland; reading about the amazing birds filling our skies (and nesting in our eaves):
- Where the Wildflowers Grow by Leif Bersweden
- Bridget Jones: Mad About the Boy by Helen Fielding (for book club)
- Swifts and Us by Sarah Gibson
- Black Narcissus by Rumer Godden
- Tenderness by Alison MacLeod
- Where the World Ends by Geraldine McCaughrean
- Golden Boys by Phil Stamper
- The False Rose by Jakob Wegelius
- Summer by Edith Wharton
What have you been reading or reviewing from the library recently?
Share a link to your own post in the comments. Feel free to use the above image. The hashtag is #LoveYourLibrary.
Love Your Library, February 2022
We’re now onto the fifth month of the Love Your Library feature. A big thank you to…
- “The Fab Four of Cley,” who run a Little Free Library in their area. They found last month’s post and gave me a link to a bilingual piece they wrote about a book sale they ran at their local church, with the thousands of books they’d amassed. Heavenly!
- Margaret of From Pyrenees to Pennines for her lovely account (with photos!) of a visit to the Central Public Library of Valencia.
- Mary R. of Bibliographic Manifestations for her post on interlibrary loans.
Blogger Laila of Big Reading Life also mentioned ILLs recently. I know some states and provinces are able to offer this service for free. When I lived in Maryland, statewide ILLs were free and I took full advantage of it. It’s how I binged on books by Marcus Borg, Frederick Buechner, Jan Morris, and many others during the year between my Master’s degree and moving back to England permanently. For my thesis research I’d had the University of Leeds’ ILL team get me an obscure Victorian novel on microfiche all the way from Australia. I also cheekily put through a few university ILLs for myself while I worked for King’s College London’s library system. Where I live now in the UK, a public library ILL costs £3 per book, so isn’t worth doing; you might as well find a secondhand copy at that price. I do miss the freedom of knowing that I could borrow (almost) anything I want.
Two funny moments from my recent library volunteering: I found Mrs Dalloway shelved under D, and an M. C. Beaton “Agatha Raisin” mystery shelved under R!
Read from the library recently:
The Jasper & Scruff series by Nicola Colton: Having insisted I don’t like sequels or series … I do sometimes make exceptions, like I did for these early reader books (meant for, I don’t know, maybe ages 7 to 9?). I was drawn by the grey and white cat with a bowtie – that’s Jasper, a dapper fellow who likes the fine things in life and desperately wants to be admitted to the Sophisticats’ club, until he realizes they’re snooty and just plain mean. Whereas Scruff the puppy, though he makes life messy, is loving and fun. I liked the sequels more than the original because they build on each other, bringing back characters from the earlier books for a pirate-themed scavenger hunt, a reality TV-style talent show, and bookshop and diner ventures. There are good lessons about being honest and fair, even if others are cheating to outcompete you, and being yourself instead of putting on airs. I also like the menagerie of mammals: not just dogs and cats, but African megafauna, too. 
The Decameron Project: 29 New Stories from the Pandemic (originally published in The New York Times): Creative responses to Covid-19, ranging from the prosaic to the fantastical. I appreciated the mix of authors, some in translation and some closer to genre fiction than lit fic. Standouts were by Victor LaValle (NYC apartment neighbours; magic realism), Colm Tóibín (lockdown prompts a man to consider his compatibility with his boyfriend), Karen Russell (time stops during a bus journey), Rivers Solomon (an abused girl and her imprisoned mother get revenge), Matthew Baker (a feuding grandmother and granddaughter find something to agree on), and John Wray (a relationship starts up during quarantine in Barcelona). The best story of all, though, was by Margaret Atwood.
Allegorizings by Jan Morris: Disparate, somewhat frivolous essays written mostly pre-2009, or in 2013, and kept in trust by her publisher for publication as a posthumous collection, so strangely frozen in time. She was old but not super-old; thinking vaguely about death, but not at death’s door. The organizing principle, that everything can be understood on more than one level and so we must think beyond the literal, is interesting but not particularly applicable to the contents. There are mini travel pieces and pen portraits, but I got more out of the explorations of concepts (maturity, nationalism) and universal experiences (being caught picking one’s nose, sneezing).
The Priory by Dorothy Whipple (read for book club): A cosy between-the-wars story, pleasant to read even though some awful things happen, or nearly happen. Like in Downton Abbey and the Cazalet Chronicles, there’s an upstairs/downstairs setup that’s appealing. It was interesting to watch how my sympathies shifted. The Persephone afterword provides useful information about the Welsh house (where Whipple stayed for a month in 1934) and family that inspired the novel. Whipple is a new author for me and I’m sure the rest of her books would be just as enjoyable, but I would only attempt another if it was significantly shorter than this one.
Borrowed since last month:
My latest university library book haul. Paradise by Toni Morrison is to read with my women’s classics book club subgroup in mid-April. Findings is to reread just because Kathleen Jamie is amazing. The other three are in preparation for the 1954 Club coming up in April.
Do share a link to your own post in the comments, and feel free to use the above image. I’ve co-opted a hashtag that is already popular on Twitter and Instagram: #LoveYourLibrary.
Here’s a reminder of my ideas of what you might choose to post (this list will stay up on the project page):
- Photos or a list of your latest library book haul
- An account of a visit to a new-to-you library
- Full-length or mini reviews of some recent library reads
- A description of a particular feature of your local library
- A screenshot of the state of play of your online account
- An opinion piece about library policies (e.g. Covid procedures or fines amnesties)
- A write-up of a library event you attended, such as an author reading or book club.
If it’s related to libraries, I want to hear about it!
Love Your Library, January 2022
We’re now on the fourth month of the Love Your Library feature. First, my thanks to Mary R. of Bibliographic Manifestations for her post on the libraries she has known and loved, and Naomi M. of Consumed by Ink for her reviews of recent books she’s read from the library. Karen of Booker Talk let me share this photo she took of a beautifully refurbished chapel-turned-library local to her.
Rosemary of Scones and Chaises Longues also sent me a photo of her latest library book haul.
I’ve been back to my library volunteering this month and am starting to amass borrowed books and hold requests. In keeping with my goal of prioritizing backlist books over brand-new ones, I’ve been picking up whatever catches my eye, including some releases from last year that I missed, and some older stuff, too. All volunteers were recently given this tote bag as a thank-you.
As to what I’ve actually read from the library recently, it’s mostly selections from the Costa Awards shortlists. I read the full poetry shortlist, two as review copies and two from the library. My preferred title was Eat or We Both Starve, but The Kids (a mixed-race author’s memories of kids she’s taught, and her own coming of age, and a potential antidote to the Kate Clanchy debacle?) won. I also read Free by Lea Ypi, a delightful memoir about growing up in Albania in the 1980s and 90s that has scenes and dialogue worthy of fiction, and Fault Lines by Emily Itami, a debut novel wryly narrated by a Tokyo housewife having an affair. I’m currently halfway through Maggie Blue and the Dark World by Anna Goodall, an enjoyable middle grade novel reminiscent of classic Madeleine L’Engle and C.S. Lewis fantasy but updated to cover bullying, mental health issues and same-sex attraction.
Do share a link to your own post in the comments, and feel free to use the image below. I’ve co-opted a hashtag that is already popular on Twitter and Instagram: #LoveYourLibrary.
Here’s a reminder of my ideas of what you might choose to post (this list will stay up on the project page):
- Photos or a list of your latest library book haul
- An account of a visit to a new-to-you library
- Full-length or mini reviews of some recent library reads
- A description of a particular feature of your local library
- A screenshot of the state of play of your online account
- An opinion piece about library policies (e.g. Covid procedures or fines amnesties)
- A write-up of a library event you attended, such as an author reading or book club.
If it’s related to libraries, I want to hear about it!
Library Checkout, March 2021
Loads of my reservations came in all at once this month, so I’ve had to put some effort into finishing the in-demand new releases so I can relinquish them to the next in line. I’m sorry/not sorry that a few much-hyped books ended up not being for me so that I could put them down and move on to other things (like requesting novels that made it onto the Women’s Prize longlist). On the other hand, some recent novels that I picked up more than lived up to my expectations, giving me the first few entries on my Best of 2021 list.
I resumed my regular volunteering hours at the library last week, and the building will reopen to the public on April 12th. It’s great to be back!
I would be delighted to have other bloggers – not just book bloggers – join in with this meme. Feel free to use the image above and leave a link to your blog in the comments if you’ve taken part in Library Checkout (on the last Monday of each month), or tag me on Twitter/Instagram: @bookishbeck / #TheLibraryCheckout & #LoveYourLibraries.
READ
- Can Bears Ski? by Raymond Antrobus (a children’s book)
- The Push by Ashley Audrain
- The Air Year by Caroline Bird (poetry)
- A Lie Someone Told You About Yourself by Peter Ho Davies
- The Living Sea of Waking Dreams by Richard Flanagan
- The Prophets by Robert Jones, Jr.
- No One Is Talking About This by Patricia Lockwood
- The Lost Spells by Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris
- My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell
SKIMMED
- All the Young Men: How One Woman Risked It All to Care for the Dying by Ruth Coker Burks
- Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for Today by Eddie S. Glaude, Jr.
- Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed by Lori Gottlieb
- A Promised Land by Barack Obama
- Light Perpetual by Francis Spufford
- Square Haunting: Five Women, Freedom and London between the Wars by Francesca Wade
CURRENTLY READING
- Parable of the Talents by Octavia E. Butler
- Luster by Raven Leilani
- The Art of Falling by Danielle McLaughlin
- Becoming a Man: Half a Life Story by Paul Monette
- You’re Not Listening: What You’re Missing and Why It Matters by Kate Murphy
- How We Met: A Memoir of Love and Other by Huma Qureshi
- UnPresidented: Politics, Pandemics and the Race that Trumped All Others by Jon Sopel
- Asylum Road by Olivia Sudjic
- When God Was a Rabbit by Sarah Winman
CURRENTLY SKIMMING
- The Natural Health Service: What the Great Outdoors Can Do for Your Mind by Isabel Hardman
- The Librarian by Allie Morgan
CHECKED OUT, TO BE READ
- A Tall History of Sugar by Curdella Forbes
- Featherhood: On Birds and Fathers by Charlie Gilmour
- Deep Water by Patricia Highsmith
- Escape Routes by Naomi Ishiguro
- The Last Migration by Charlotte McConaghy
- Open Water by Caleb Azumah Nelson
IN THE RESERVATION QUEUE
- Who Is Maud Dixon? by Alexandra Andrews
- Under the Blue by Oana Aristide
- Espedair Street by Iain Banks
- Small Pleasures by Clare Chambers
- Heavy Light: A Journey through Madness, Mania and Healing by Horatio Clare
- Ten Days by Austin Duffy
- Lakewood by Megan Giddings
- After: A Doctor Explores What Near-Death Experiences Reveal about Life and Beyond by Bruce Greyson
- The Absolute Book by Elizabeth Knox
- Birdsong in a Time of Silence by Steven Lovatt
- Consent by Annabel Lyon
- Nothing but Blue Sky by Kathleen MacMahon
- His Only Wife by Peace Adzo Medie
- Skylarks with Rosie: A Somerset Spring by Stephen Moss
- Hot Stew by Fiona Mozley
- Acts of Desperation by Megan Nolan
- Life Sentences by Billy O’Callaghan
- The Ministry of Bodies: Life and Death in a Modern Hospital by Seamus O’Mahony
- Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters
- Many Different Kinds of Love: A Story of Life, Death and the NHS by Michael Rosen
- How to Be Sad: Everything I’ve Learned about Getting Happier, by Being Sad, Better by Helen Russell
- I Belong Here: A Journey along the Backbone of Britain by Anita Sethi
- Double Blind by Edward St. Aubyn
RETURNED UNFINISHED
- A Burning by Megha Majumdar – I read the first 34 pages. Interesting enough story, but shaky writing. Incessant use of the present continuous tense was going to drive me mad.
- A Crooked Tree by Una Mannion – The 1980s Philadelphia setting was promising; I read the first 28 pages and didn’t feel connected enough to any of the characters to keep going.
RETURNED UNREAD
- A Net for Small Fishes by Lucy Jago – The font and large cast list put me off. Maybe another time.
- How the One-Armed Sister Sweeps Her House by Cherie Jones – Women’s Prize longlisted. I knew to expect bleakness, but the writing didn’t draw me in.
- Death in Her Hands by Ottessa Moshfegh – Sounds too similar to Tokarczuk’s Drive Your Plow…
- Hurdy Gurdy by Christopher Wilson – I can’t remember now how I heard about this or why I thought it would be for me. Medieval settings are so not my thing!
What appeals from my stacks?
Library Checkout, December 2020
I resumed my twice-weekly library volunteering on the 3rd but had to stop again after the 17th because West Berkshire moved into Tier 4, which means people should stay at home except for essential activities (work and schooling). Who knows when I’ll be able to go back!
I managed to squeeze in a good few 2020 releases before the end of the year. I’ve started amassing a pile of backlist reads, but I’m also placing requests on 2021 releases that the library has on order. The usual limit for reservations is 15, but by commandeering my husband’s unused library card I’ve effectively doubled my allowance. I don’t expect I’ll be able to pick up any more books until this new lockdown is over, though, so I can start off the year by focusing on a neglected pile of university library books and especially my own shelves – always a good thing.
I would be delighted to have other bloggers – and not just book bloggers – join in this meme. Feel free to use the image above and leave a link to your blog in the comments if you’ve taken part in Library Checkout (on the last Monday of every month), or tag me on Twitter and/or Instagram: @bookishbeck / #TheLibraryCheckout.
I rate most books I read or skim, and include links to reviews not already featured on the blog.
READ
- Mr. Wilder & Me by Jonathan Coe
- Here Is the Beehive by Sarah Crossan
- Bringing Back the Beaver: The Story of One Man’s Quest to Rewild Britain’s Waterways by Derek Gow
- The Mercies by Kiran Millwood Hargrave
- Kay’s Anatomy: A Complete (and Completely Disgusting) Guide to the Human Body by Adam Kay
- To Be a Man by Nicole Krauss
- A Registry of My Passage upon the Earth by Daniel Mason
- Monogamy by Sue Miller
- First Time Ever by Peggy Seeger
SKIMMED
- Livewired: The Inside Story of the Ever-Changing Brain by David Eagleman
- Christmas: A Biography by Judith Flanders
- Growing Goats and Girls: Living the Good Life on a Cornish Farm by Rosanne Hodin
- Village Christmas and Other Notes on the English Year by Laurie Lee
- My Last Supper: One Meal, a Lifetime in the Making by Jay Rayner
- The Invention of Surgery: A History of Modern Medicine: From the Renaissance to the Implant Revolution by David Schneider, MD
CURRENTLY READING
- Leonard and Hungry Paul by Rónán Hession (a buddy read with Annabel)
- The Marriage of Opposites by Alice Hoffman (for January book club)
- The Dickens Boy by Thomas Keneally
CURRENTLY SKIMMING
- Hormonal: A Conversation about Women’s Bodies, Mental Health and Why We Need to Be Heard by Eleanor Morgan
CHECKED OUT, TO BE READ
- Mama’s Boy: A Memoir by Dustin Lance Black
- In Our Mad and Furious City by Guy Gunaratne
- Country Doctor: Hilarious True Stories from a Country Practice by Michael Sparrow
ON HOLD, TO BE PICKED UP
- The Idea of the Brain: A History by Matthew Cobb
- Big Girl, Small Town by Michelle Gallen
- Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter
IN THE RESERVATION QUEUE
- Things I Learned on the 6.28: A Commuter’s Guide to Reading by Stig Abell
- A Biography of Loneliness: The History of an Emotion by Fay Bound Alberti
- Can Bears Ski? by Raymond Antrobus
- The Cat and the City by Nick Bradley
- All the Young Men by Ruth Coker Burks
- Breathtaking: Life and Death in a Time of Contagion by Rachel Clarke
- The Living Sea of Waking Dreams by Richard Flanagan
- In the Woods by Tana French
- Begin Again by Eddie S. Glaude, Jr.
- Mrs Death Misses Death by Salena Godden
- Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed by Lori Gottlieb
- The Sealwoman’s Gift by Sally Magnusson
- A Burning by Megha Majumdar
- A Crooked Tree by Una Mannion
- A Promised Land by Barack Obama
- A Fire in My Head (poetry) by Ben Okri
- Love After Love by Ingrid Persaud
- How We Met: A Memoir of Love and Other Misadventures by Huma Qureshi
- My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell
- My US Election Diary by Jon Sopel
- The Mystery of Charles Dickens by A.N. Wilson
- How Much of These Hills Is Gold by C. Pam Zhang
RETURNED UNFINISHED
- The Girl with the Louding Voice by Abi Daré
RETURNED UNREAD
- Star Over Bethlehem and Other Stories by Agatha Christie
- The Mistletoe Murder and Other Stories by P.D. James
- Manchester Happened by Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi
- A Box of Delights by John Masefield
- The Mistletoe Bride & Other Haunting Tales by Kate Mosse
(I lost interest in all of these. I don’t gravitate towards crime or short stories, so shouldn’t have been surprised that once I had them in front of me they didn’t appeal. Also, I didn’t realize the Masefield was abridged, and I prefer not to read altered editions.)
What appeals from my stacks?
Library Checkout: July 2020
New books, at long last!! Earlier this month my public library system started an order and collection service. I have already gone to pick up two batches of reservations.
I also signed up to be a library volunteer starting in the first week of August – two hours on a Tuesday morning and two hours on a Thursday afternoon. To start with, I will mostly be helping with shelving and picking the reserved books off the shelves. It will be fun to be a part of this service, and once the library fully reopens perhaps I’ll have a little more customer interaction, too.
Have you been able to borrow more books lately, perhaps via a curbside pickup scheme? Feel free to use the image above and leave a link to your blog in the comments if you’ve taken part in Library Checkout (which runs on the last Monday of every month), or tag me on Twitter/Instagram (@bookishbeck, #TheLibraryCheckout).
READ
- Reading with Patrick: A Teacher, a Student and the Life-Changing Power of Books by Michelle Kuo
- Property by Valerie Martin
- Redhead by the Side of the Road by Anne Tyler
SKIMMED
- Death Is but a Dream: Finding Hope and Meaning at Life’s End by Dr. Christopher Kerr with Carine Mardorossian
CURRENTLY READING
- The Butterfly Isles: A Summer in Search of Our Emperors and Admirals by Patrick Barkham
- Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams
- Addition by Toni Jordan
CURRENTLY SKIMMING
- Dark, Salt, Clear: Life in a Cornish Fishing Town by Lamorna Ash
CHECKED OUT, TO BE READ
- The Girl with the Louding Voice by Abi Daré
- What Have I Done?: An Honest Memoir about Surviving Postnatal Mental Illness by Laura Dockrill
- Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston
- 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami
- Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 by Cho Nam-Joo
- How to Be Both by Ali Smith
- Adults by Emma Jane Unsworth
ON HOLD, TO BE PICKED UP
- Close to Where the Heart Gives Out: A Year in the Life of an Orkney Doctor by Malcolm Alexander
IN THE RESERVATION QUEUE
- Disobedience by Naomi Alderman
- A Traveller at the Gates of Wisdom by John Boyne
- Dependency by Tove Ditlevsen
- 33 Meditations on Death: Notes from the Wrong End of Medicine by David Jarrett
- Can You Hear Me? A Paramedic’s Encounters with Life and Death by Jake Jones
- Dear NHS: 100 Stories to Say Thank You, edited by Adam Kay
- Exchange by Paul Magrs
- Utopia Avenue by David Mitchell
- The Watchmaker of Filigree Street by Natasha Pulley
- Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid
- Sadler’s Birthday by Rose Tremain
- Water Ways: A Thousand Miles along Britain’s Canals by Jasper Winn
- The Wild Silence by Raynor Winn
- The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer
RETURNED UNFINISHED
- A Summer of Drowning by John Burnside – The prologue didn’t draw me in.
- The Motion of the Body through Space by Lionel Shriver – Kooky names, overwriting, obvious setup, racial stereotypes.
- Summer before the Dark: Stefan Zweig and Joseph Roth, Ostend 1936 by Volker Weidermann – Too niche a subject.
Bookish Beck = Rebecca Foster. American transplant to England. Freelance proofreader and book reviewer.
Bookish Beck 