Thanks so much to Eleanor, Laura and Marcie for posting about their recent library reads! It’s been a light library reading month for me, but I’m awaiting many holds of recent releases, including a coincidental gardening-themed trio that I fancy reviewing together if the timing works out.
Marcie also gifted me a New York Times article so that I could go through their list of the 100 Best Books of the 21st Century so far and see how many I have read. The answer is 53 (+ 6 DNFs), with another 23 on my TBR. I pulled some awardees off my shelves and might try reading them later this year (below right) – let me know if you’d like to buddy read any of them with me. I was pleased to see that the article first encouraged readers to reserve books from their local library before giving links to places where they can be bought.
It was fun to find libraries mentioned in a couple of library books I’ve been reading recently:
- Thanked in the Acknowledgements to Soldier Sailor by Claire Kilroy: “The librarians of Howth and Baldoyle who are part of the village that raises the child”.
- From Late Light by Michael Malay:
[When I was] a boy in Australia, my mother often took me to a library near our house, a small concrete building that stood across the road from a chicken shop and a video rental store. … the front door was slightly warped, making it difficult to pull open, while the carpet had been worn bare by years of footfall – and yet, to my fourteen- or fifteen-year-old self, it was a kind of palace. I would go there once or twice a week, roam the shelves on my own, gather all the books that appealed to me, and then take home as many titles as our library account would allow. I don’t think the books I chose were ever to my mother’s taste – at that time, I was obsessed with comics and fantasy novels – but she encouraged my enthusiasm anyway. … looking back now, I see that these books did other things for me – that they fed my curiosity, made time move in different ways, and opened up portals to other worlds. In all those years, I can’t remember my mother ever encouraging me to read more ‘serious’ or ‘literary’ books, and I continue to love her for that.
I’ve seen this Peanuts comic before and I love it. Isn’t library borrowing a brilliant concept?! All the more astounding when you step back to think about it anew. This was shared on Facebook by the library in the village where we go to church. Threatened with closure, it went independent. It has a building on peppercorn rent from the council and is run by volunteers. I don’t borrow books there because I can rarely visit during their limited opening hours (and I have plenty of other library books on my plate), but I do try to get to their book sales at least once or twice a year – particularly useful for stocking up on 3/£1 books for the book swapping game I run at our book club holiday social each year.
Tomorrow at 2 p.m. (if you’re in the UK, that is), the Booker Prize longlist will be announced. No doubt I’ll be baffled at all the books I’ve never heard of, or read. It happens every year. Perhaps I’ll be tempted enough by two or three nominees to place library holds on them right away.
My library use over the last month:
READ
- Fortunately, The Milk… by Neil Gaiman
SKIMMED
- Rites of Passage: Death and Mourning in Victorian Britain by Judith Flanders
CURRENTLY READING
The Cove: A Cornish Haunting by Beth Lynch (I enjoyed her previous memoir)- Groundbreakers: The Return of Britain’s Wild Boar by Chantal Lyons (Wainwright Prize longlist)
- Late Light: Finding Home in the West Country by Michael Malay (Wainwright Prize longlist)
- The Song of the Whole Wide World: On Motherhood, Grief, and Poetry by Tamarin Norwood (resuming this after it went out to fulfil an interlibrary loan)
CURRENTLY READING-ish (more accurately, set aside temporarily)
- Death Valley by Melissa Broder
- The Tale of Despereaux by Kate DiCamillo
- King: A Life by Jonathan Eig
- Mother’s Boy by Patrick Gale
- Learning to Think: A Memoir about Faith, Demons, and the Courage to Ask Questions by Tracy King
- Unearthing: A Story of Tangled Love and Family Secrets by Kyo Maclear
- Late Light: Finding Home in the West Country by Michael Malay
- Mrs Gulliver by Valerie Martin
- After Dark by Haruki Murakami
- Excellent Women by Barbara Pym
- Stowaway: The Disreputable Exploits of the Rat by Joe Shute
- Mrs Hemingway by Naomi Wood
CHECKED OUT, TO BE READ
- Wasteland: The Dirty Truth about What We Throw Away, Where It Goes, and Why It Matters by Oliver Franklin-Wallis
IN THE RESERVATION QUEUE
- Private Rites by Julia Armfield (I read 43% on Kindle and stalled so I’ll try again in print)
- One Garden against the World: In Search of Hope in a Changing Climate by Kate Bradbury
- The Painter’s Daughters by Emily Howes
- The Garden against Time: In Search of a Common Paradise by Olivia Laing
- The Accidental Garden: The Plot Thickens by Richard Mabey
- The Burial Plot by Elizabeth Macneal
- This Is My Sea by Miriam Mulcahy
- The Echoes by Evie Wyld
ON HOLD, TO BE PICKED UP
- Parade by Rachel Cusk
- Nature’s Ghosts: A History – and Future – of the Natural World by Sophie Yeo
RETURNED UNREAD
- Hungry Ghosts by Kevin Jared Hosein – A glance at the first few pages was enough to put me off.
What have you been reading or reviewing from the library recently?
This meme runs every month, on the final Monday. 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 
I’ve had a small library month too, apart from the books you’ve linked to for 20 Bos! I have another reservation to pick up (Voss, by Patrick White) and got so nostalgic for Dickens after Demon Copperhead that I’ve reserved a copy of David Copperfield, too, which I almost certainly won’t actually need…
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How did you get on with Demon Copperhead? I mostly thought it unnecessary.
I’ve heard Voss recommended in so many quarters. I’ll be interested to know what you think.
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Actually I really enjoyed Demon Copperhead! More in my Superlatives post on Wednesday. I’m very excited for Voss, will report back.
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From your extensive list I’ve only read the Patrick Gale, though I think I’ll pick up the Jo Shute next time I’m in the library (should be on duty today, but life has got in the way). Currently I’m about to embark on Javier Marias’ Tomas Nevinson, having just finished Heather Rose’s The Museum of Modern Love and Paddy Crewe’s True Love. I only do one book at a time!
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Your library has a great selection! Shute is always a good read.
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We’re very lucky indeed with our library service, still fighting the good fight. Yes, Shute’s very readable.
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I’ve read the Richard Mabey and Olivia Laing books on your list. I can recommend How to be a bad botanist by Simon Barnes. It taught me so much!
I’ve just finished A Mudlarking Year by Lara Maiklem – I’m hundreds of miles from the Thames and I envy her finds!
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My husband read part of the Barnes but then it got requested off of him.
I really enjoyed Maiklem’s first book.
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I have hopes for the Booker after last year’s wish fulfilment but I’m fairly certain they’ll be dashed!
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We shall see! I’ll be hovering at my computer ready to request library or review copies of interesting longlist titles.
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Ah, you just beat me with the NYT list! I’ve read 51! Wasn’t v impressed by the list though…
I’m about to start Echoes. If you got almost halfway with Private Rites I think it does make sense to press on, I felt like it got better after the midpoint.
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No, it’s a strange list with a lot of repetition of pet ‘writers’ writers’. Still, I can never resist ticking off what I’ve read.
I hope the change of format will give me a good fresh start with the Armfield. I felt like the introduction to the sisters was quite slow.
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I want to read Heavy and Stay True also – if you want to do a buddy read of one of those this fall or winter I’d be game.
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Sure, that would be great! Is October a good time for you to read Heavy?
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Sounds good!
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Great! I think you like to correspond by Instagram message; let me know if different. I’ll be in touch about it probably in late September.
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I have Learning to Think TBR as I went to her book event here. I loved Late Light, so I hope you’re enjoying that.
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Enjoying both, yes. Malay writes so well. I hope he’ll be shortlisted at least.
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There are some books we’ve both yet to read from the NYT list that I think would be easier to focus on with company (Far from the Tree, the Hollinghurst, the Denis Johnson, etc.), mostly due to length, but I feel like the rest of my reading year is fairly set, with the recent announcement of the Ursula K. Le Guin fiction shortlist on top of other planned reading. I’d also love to reread that Munro (possibly my favourite) and was just, last night, thinking about rereading The Warmth of Other Suns too. Hmm, the Makkai, too. Ok, probably all of them. lol
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Hollinghurst is an author I’ve always meant to read but never quite managed. I have a copy of The Stranger’s Child so I suspect I’d start there. Some of the ones I’ve marked as TBR I don’t yet have a way to access.
Aren’t we silly, planning our reading months ahead!? I can offer you Hsu, Makkai, Roth (Stain) and Ward (Salvage) as potential buddy reads for January, then 🙂
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Hahah, right? It’s bananas. But it’s also fun. I’m not sure if I have any of the Hollinghursts anymore, and availability will be a challenge for most of them I suspect, but I have so enjoyed him in interview that I really do want to explore. Oh, yes, Roth is one that I’d like company with for sure. It’s a gap I want to fill but one which I’ve stubbornly resisted for so long that I find it hard to imagine breaking the habit now that my thinking has changed. This year I’ve been much more regimented about my reading than usual, and I’ve been toying with the idea of assigning books to months more often (sometimes, I just get lost in the act of choosing and never move on to reading) because it’s worked out well this year, when I find myself thinking “oh, but I can’t read that until August” which adds a quiet excitement to the idea. Maybe that’s silly too.
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The planning is the best part. The actually sticking to it? Bah. I assign books to months on Goodreads all the time and then change my mind. Only if there’s a firm external deadline am I likely to obey.
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I never paid attention to my shelves on GoodReads either, or any other electronic scheduling for reading. For me putting a stack in an uncomfortable place is a great motivator (I think you have more places on which to stack things, though, so that probably doesn’t help). But I quite agree, an outside reader or commitment (or having invested money in a particular copy) is the most likely to keep me on track.
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