Thanks, as always, to Elle for her faithful participation (her post is here).

Today happens to be my 10th freelancing anniversary. I’m not much in the mood for celebrating as my career feels like it’s at a low ebb just now. However, I’m trying to be proactive: I contacted all my existing employers asking about the possibility of more work and a few opportunities are forthcoming. Plus I have a new paid review venue in the pipeline.

Tomorrow the Booker Prize longlist will be announced. I haven’t had a whole lot of time to think about it, but over the past few months I did keep a running list of novels I thought would be eligible, so here are 13 (a “Booker dozen”) that I think might be strong possibilities:

Old God’s Time, Sebastian Barry

The New Life, Tom Crewe

Fire Rush, Jacqueline Crooks

The Wren, The Wren, Anne Enright

The Vaster Wilds, Lauren Groff

Enter Ghost, Isabella Hammad

Hungry Ghosts, Kevin Jared Hosein

August Blue, Deborah Levy

The Sun Walks Down, Fiona McFarlane

Cuddy, Benjamin Myers

Shy, Max Porter

The Fraud, Zadie Smith

See also Clare’s and Susan’s predictions. All three of us coincide on one of these titles!

Back to the library content!

I appreciated this mini-speech by Bob Comet, the introverted librarian protagonist of Patrick deWitt’s The Librarianist, about why he loves libraries … but not people so much:

“I like the way I feel when I’m there. It’s a place that makes sense to me. I like that anyone can come in and get the books they want for free. The people bring the books home and take care of them, then bring them back so that other people can do the same. … I like the idea of people.”

I recently added a new regular task to my library volunteering roster: choosing a selection of the month’s new stock (30 fiction releases and 9 fiction) and adding them to a PDF template with the cover, title and author, and a blurb from the library catalogue or Goodreads, etc. The sheets are printed out at each branch library and displayed in a binder for patrons to browse. I was so proud to see my pages in there! There are three of us alternating this task, so I’ll be doing it four times a year. My next month is October.

On my Scotland travels last month, I took photos of two cute little libraries, one in Wigtown (L) and the other in Tarbert.

I’m currently on holiday again, with university friends in the Lake District for a week (Wild Fell, below, is for reading in advance of a trip to, and on location in, Haweswater), and you can be sure I brought plenty of library books along with me.

My reading and borrowing since last time:

READ

• The Happy Couple by Naoise Dolan
• Yellowface by Rebecca F. Kuang
• Death of a Bookseller by Alice Slater
• The Archaeology of Loss by Sarah Turlow
• The Legacy of Elizabeth Pringle by Kirsty Wark
• Sunburn by Andi Watson
• How Much of These Hills Is Gold by C. Pam Zhang (for book club)

 + 3 children’s picture books from the Wainwright Prize longlist:

• Blobfish by Olaf Falafel: Silly and with the merest scrape of an environmentalist message pasted on (the fish temporarily gets stuck in a plastic bag).
• The Zebra’s Great Escape by Katherine Rundell: Loved this super-cute, cheeky story of a little girl whose understanding of animal language allows her to become part of a natural network rescuing a menagerie held captive by an evil collector.
• Grandpa and the Kingfisher by Anna Wilson: Nice drawings and attention to nature and its seasonality, but rather mawkish. (Adult birds don’t die off annually!)

SKIMMED

• A Life of One’s Own: Nine Women Writers Begin Again by Joanna Biggs – The backstory is Biggs getting divorced in her thirties and moving to NYC. Her eight chosen female authors are VERY familiar, barring, perhaps, Zora Neale Hurston (thank goodness she chose two Black authors, as so many group biographies are all about white women). Do we need potted biographies of such well-known figures? Probably not. Nonetheless, it was clever how she wove her own story and reactions to their works into the biographical material, and the writing is so strong I could excuse any retreading of ground.

CURRENTLY READING

• One Midsummer’s Day by Mark Cocker
• King by Jonathan Eig
• Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett
• Milk by Alice Kinsella
• Wild Fell by Lee Schofield

CHECKED OUT, TO BE READ

Lots of lovely teal in this latest batch.

RETURNED UNFINISHED

• Undercurrent by Natasha Carthew – This was requested after me. I read 21% and will either pick it up on my Kindle via the NetGalley book or get it out another time.
• The Gifts by Liz Hyder – I’ll try this another time when I can give it more attention.
• Music in the Dark by Sally Magnusson – I loved The Ninth Child, but have DNFed her other two novels, alas! I even got to page 122 in this, but I had little interest in seeing how the storylines fit together.
• The Five Red Herrings by Dorothy L. Sayers – I’m awful about trying mystery series, usually DNFing or giving up after the first book. I just can’t care whodunnit.

What have you been reading or reviewing from the library recently?

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