A somewhat lighter month, but with lots of skimming of books on topics that interest me: happiness, nature, mental health and self-help. The set of books that I’m currently reading is absolutely fantastic. (As usual, I’ve added in star ratings and links to Goodreads reviews where I haven’t already featured the books on the blog in some way.)

LIBRARY BOOKS READ

• Silence in the Snowy Fields by Robert Bly [poetry]
• The Golden Tresses of the Dead by Alan Bradley
• Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi
• A Light Song of Light by Kei Miller [poetry]

SKIMMED

• The Happy Brain: The Science of Where Happiness Comes From, and Why by Dean Burnett
• The Nature of Winter by Jim Crumley
• The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
• Take Courage: Anne Brontë and the Art of Life by Samantha Ellis
• Lost Connections: Uncovering the Real Causes of Depression – and the Unexpected Solutions, Johann Hari
• The Four Tendencies: The Indispensable Personality Profiles that Reveal how to Make Your Life Better (And Other People’s Lives Better, Too) by Gretchen Rubin

CURRENTLY READING

• Boy Erased: A Memoir of Identity, Faith, and Family by Garrard Conley
• Faces in the Water by Janet Frame
• East of Eden by John Steinbeck
• Absent in the Spring by “Mary Westmacott” (aka Agatha Christie)

CURRENTLY SKIMMING

• To Obama: With love, joy, hate and despair by Jeanne Marie Laskas

CHECKED OUT, TO BE READ

• Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats by T.S. Eliot [poetry]
• Injury Time by Clive James [poetry]
• Taking the Arrow out of the Heart by Alice Walker [poetry]
• Everything, Everything by Nicola Yoon

Along with the rest of a new batch of university library books:

• An Angel at My Table by Janet Frame
• A Pocket Mirror by Janet Frame
• Becoming a Man by Paul Monette

IN THE RESERVATION QUEUE

• Seven Signs of Life: Stories from an Intensive Care Doctor by Aoife Abbey
• Hired: Six Months Undercover in Low-wage Britain by James Bloodworth
• 21st-Century Yokel by Tom Cox
• Everybody Died, So I Got a Dog by Emily Dean
• Murmur by Will Eaves
• Also Human: The Inner Lives of Doctors by Caroline Elton
• Dream Sequence by Adam Foulds
• Outsiders: Five Women Writers Who Changed the World by Lyndall Gordon
• The Recovering: Intoxication and Its Aftermath by Leslie Jamison
• Lost and Found: Memory, Identity, and Who We Become when We’re No Longer Ourselves by Jules Montague
• Lanny by Max Porter
• The World I Fell Out Of by Melanie Reid
• The Secret Barrister: Stories of the Law and How It’s Broken
• Feel Free: Essays by Zadie Smith
• The Face Pressed against a Window: A Memoir by Tim Waterstone

RETURNED UNFINISHED

• Louis & Louise by Julie Cohen – The prose is fine – easy to read, but nothing special. Though Cohen says she was inspired by Alderman’s The Power and Woolf’s Orlando, I don’t have faith that significant points will be made about gender identity.
• The Binding by Bridget Collins – I didn’t even make it through the first chapter. I was getting Diane Setterfield-lite vibes, but couldn’t imagine reading 400 pages of this.
• Orchid Summer: In Search of the Wildest Flowers of the British Isles by John Dunn –The writing is great; no question about that. But the book is so dense: so many words on a page, in such small type. Unless you’re a botany nut, I wouldn’t recommend it.
• Milkshakes and Morphine: A Memoir of Love and Loss by Genevieve Fox – Fox has some amusing turns of phrase when talking about her throat cancer and treatment, but this is way too long at over 370 pages of small print.

RETURNED UNREAD

• Daphne by Will Boast – I liked the voice in the first couple of pages and will definitely get this back out at another time.
• The Way of the Hare by Marianne Taylor – This felt more detailed and technical than I was looking for in a species overview.

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

I don’t have an official link-up system, so please just pop a link to your blog in the comments if you’ve taken part in Library Checkout this month. (Feel free to use the image in your post.)