Thanks to Eleanor, Laila, Laura and Naomi for posting about their recent library reads! Everyone is welcome to join in with this meme that runs on the last Monday of the month.
My library system’s delivery van has been unreliable recently, so the branch transfers have really stacked up. Last week I had to stay nearly an hour longer than usual for my volunteering to get through all the requests. Some of my holds had been stuck in transit and arrived all at once, so I will have a bunch to pick up tomorrow, including Land of Milk and Honey by C. Pam Zhang for the Carol Shields Prize longlist. I’ve been dipping into other prize lists as well, as I recounted in Saturday’s post.
Since last month:
READ
- Sleepless: Discovering the Power of the Night Self by Annabel Abbs
- Self-Portrait as Othello by Jason Allen-Paisant
- The Home Child by Liz Berry
- Mrs March by Virginia Feito
- Howards End by E.M. Forster (a reread for book club)
SKIMMED
- Doppelganger by Naomi Klein
CURRENTLY READING
- The Paris Wife by Paula McLain (rereading for book club)
- The Bee Sting by Paul Murray
- The Song of the Whole Wide World: On Grief, Motherhood and Poetry by Tamarin Norwood
- Come and Get It by Kiley Reid
- How to Raise a Viking: The Secrets of Parenting the World’s Happiest Children by Helen Russell
- The Collected Stories of Carol Shields
- Before the Light Fades by Natasha Walter
- Lunar New Year Love Story by Gene Luen Yang
CURRENTLY READING-ISH
(set aside temporarily)
- Death Valley by Melissa Broder
- The Year of the Cat by Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett
- King by Jonathan Eig
- Babel by R.F. Kuang
CHECKED OUT, TO BE READ
- After Dark by Haruki Murakami
- Jungle House by Julianne Pachico
RETURNED UNFINISHED
- A Sign of Her Own by Sarah Marsh: I was intrigued enough by the premise – the story of a deaf pupil of Alexander Graham Bell’s – and the fact that the author is surgeon Henry Marsh’s daughter to put this on my Women’s Prize wish list. However, the writing just wasn’t there in the first chapter, when it’s imperative to draw a reader in, nor has Marsh been well served by her publisher, who allowed this to go to press with three glaring errors within the first 10 pages: a missing period at the end of a sentence on p. 5, “he’ll being saying” [for he’ll be saying] on p. 6, and “tthere” on p. 8.
RETURNED UNREAD
- Peach Blossom Spring by Melissa Fu
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.
Bookish Beck = Rebecca Foster. American transplant to England. Freelance proofreader and book reviewer.
Bookish Beck 
Three such errors is very offputting. It’s a book which has had a great deal of hype surrounding it, too. You’d think someone would have picked that up.
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It seems even larger publishing houses don’t necessarily have dedicated proofreaders. I’m available for hire!
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Oh, I hope you enjoy the Zhang, Reid and Pachico! The blurb of the Marsh didn’t draw me in but that many errors is pretty rubbish.
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I’d give the Reid a 3.5. I’ll start the Zhang (plus A Council of Dolls) as soon as I’ve finished my two current CSP reads.
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Publishing errors are a real bugbear. As ever, I have a pile out which I may or may not get through, but cataloguing them here and now is beyond my Monday morning self when I’m just about to go out for my library shift!
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Is it old-fashioned to expect immaculate text? Sigh.
Hope it was a good shift. A bit less busy for me this week than last, but still 92 reserved books to search for.
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And finding children’s reservations is pure nightmare, isn’t it? Especially if picture books.
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Absolutely! I often give up on them. Because those sections get ransacked regularly, our attempts at alphabetization can only ever be rough.
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Good haul this month! Glad the delivery van is back in commission. Slightly shocked by the three mistakes in the Marsh—that’s bad (and not explicable by AI proofreading, surely). I’m so glad you enjoyed the Howards End reread, though; Forster was my favourite author for about eight months in my teens, and Howards End is definitely one of the best.
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AI proofreading? Say it ain’t so! I already have insufficient work.
I appreciated the Forster much more at 40 than in my 20s. I’ll have to reread some others after I’ve read Maurice and his short stories for the first time.
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I don’t know, I just assume that at some point someone is going to try AI proofreading. Terrible idea, as is AI text translation.
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Call me a romantic, but I think the human touch is needed at every stage of producing a book.
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At least at this point, some of the specifics that catch up the language models are precisely the kind of details that a good copy editor would address. Context errors and certain agreement situations remain problematic for the large language models. So people are still required for this kind of detailed accuracy. But the mistakes you’ve described would be flagged in Word, with the grammar feature, so this suggests a rushed schedule. How very disappointing for the author! (Unless it’s a very small press and the onus was on the author, with the publisher merely coordinating the printing.)
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Not a particularly small press, no…
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I have a HUGE stack from the library at the moment – almost all Stella Prize longlisted books. Trying to get through as many as I can before the shortlist is announced on April 4. Because they’re longlisted, they nearly all have reserves on them, so there’s no renewing the loan – pressure is on!
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Library holdings are a boon when following prize lists. Alas, my library tends to act reactively and buy the longlists when announced, which means they don’t arrive into circulation until well after shortlist stage.
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I saw Mrs March in the library last week and was tempted. You’ve given it four stars so that’s persuaded me to give it a go 🙂
I also have a copy of The Paris Wife which I bought after enjoying the Naomi Wood novel Mrs Hemingway.
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It was our Literary Wives read this month. Very unusual; lots to think about. https://bookishbeck.com/2024/03/04/literary-wives-club-mrs-march-by-virginia-feito-2021/
I’m not enjoying The Paris Wife quite as much on a reread. Mrs Hemingway was better for the view of all the wives.
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What did you think of the Kiley Reid?
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I just finished it yesterday evening. I didn’t like it as much as Such a Fun Age, but still enjoyed (3.5 stars). It’s again concerned with race, class and privilege, specifically as indicated by money, but different in terms of how she researched and wrote it (I only found out through the acknowledgments at the end), so maybe not quite as cohesive a story.
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Good to know!
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Keen to read Doppelganger and the Kiley Reid
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Great choices!
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Interesting to read your thoughts on the Kiley Reid – you liked it more than I did!
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I think I missed that you read it! Her debut was a much more coherent statement, but I did enjoy this one too.
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I didn’t review it as such so easy to miss, instead I put this in my February State of the TBR post: “I am not reviewing Kiley Reid’s Come and Get It as I was so disappointed by it, structurally so messy and I found it impossible to engage with, I would have been interested in the theme of money but it was sort of clumsily treated and as far as I could see at least two characters didn’t have consistent motivations and actions, and that’s all I can really say about it.”
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Ah! I fully understand your response. The origin in interviews shows. Maybe it needed a few more drafts to become a fully functioning novel.
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I’ve already shared up my library pic, so you’ve seen my CSP and WFP selections. Like Kate, I’ll not be able to renew any of them, so we’re all slightly panicked I guess (what a delicious reason to panic, though, really).
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A measly four books, I’m sure you’ll cope 😉
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Haha Those were only last week’s pick-ups. There is a shadow looming that’s rather alarming. (Although all the older ones can be renewed, only these four and three others that aren’t up for prizes cannot. So I’m probably still whining for no reason. /snorts)
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I started listening to Doppelganger on audio a few weeks ago, but decided to move on to another book. Not because it was boring, but because it seemed to be taking a long to time to get to a point that I could see where the book was going. Should I continue?
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I’m not surprised you felt that way. I only skimmed it as it was too much detail for me to take in and I’m not very politically minded.
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I’ll try listening to one of her other books instead!
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