Thanks so much to Elle, Laura, and Skai for joining in this month!
READ
All children’s books this time!
- Every Wrinkle Has a Story by David Grossman – A sweet story about how experiences make us who we are, so ageing is a good thing.
Dexter Procter: The 10-Year-Old Doctor by Adam Kay – A fun if overlong book that will appeal to readers of Roald Dahl and David Walliams. It has bullying, a mystery and gross-out humour as well as some age-appropriate medical content. - Apple Grumble by Huw Lewis-Jones – There’s a grumpy apple. And that’s it.
Constance in Peril by Ben Manley – So cute! Edward finds his favourite doll, Constance Hardpenny, in a bin. She’s dressed like a Victorian spinster and each day for a week she suffers a new near-calamity (her blank doll eyes somehow still conveying her alarm), only to be saved by Edward’s big sister. 
- The Big Bad Bug by Kate Read – Nice to see invertebrates featured. The message is about selfishness.
- Books Aren’t for Eating by Carlie Sorosiak – Starring a goat bookseller who learned to read books, not eat them, and passes on his enthusiasm to others. Other than the sudden ending, this was great.
- The Planet in a Pickle Jar by Martin Stanev – Intricate drawings and a touch of folklore (the author is Bulgarian) in this story of a grandmother who preserves the natural world and wants her grandchildren to continue her good work.
- Old Macdonald Had a Phone by Jeanne Willis – Updates the song for the tech age with a lesson that smartphones are useful tools but we mustn’t get addicted.
- Grandad’s Camper & Grandad’s Pride by Harry Woodgate – A little girl learns about her grandfather’s activist past with his partner and initiates a Pride parade in their little town. /
CURRENTLY READING
- Myself & Other Animals by Gerald Durrell
- The Black Bird Oracle by Deborah Harkness
- The God of the Woods by Liz Moore
- Poetry Unbound: 50 Poems to Open Your World by Pádraig Ó Tuama
(+ the set-aside ones I mentioned last time)
CHECKED OUT, TO BE READ
(Everything from last time +)
- Travels in the Scriptorium & Baumgartner by Paul Auster
- The Coast Road by Alan Murrin
- Half Arse Human by Leena Norms
IN THE RESERVATION QUEUE
(Everything from last time +)
- Confessions by Catherine Airey
- Deep Cuts by Holly Brickley
- Bellies by Nicola Dinan
- I Am Not a Tourist by Daisy J. Hung
- Bookish: How Reading Shapes Our Lives by Lucy Mangan
- When the Stammer Came to Stay by Maggie O’Farrell
ON HOLD, TO BE PICKED UP
- Maurice and Maralyn: An Extraordinary True Story of Shipwreck, Survival and Love by Sophie Elmhirst
- Black Woods, Blue Sky by Eowyn Ivey
- The Forgotten Sense: The Nose and the Perception of Smell by Jonas Olofsson
- Long Island by Colm Tóibín (for March book club)
RETURNED UNREAD
- The Mischief Makers by Elisabeth Gifford – I’ve enjoyed one of her books before, and a different biographical novel about Daphne du Maurier, but this seemed very bland at first glance.
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 
Lovely focus on kid’s books here! Mine is up now: https://ellethinks.wordpress.com/2025/01/22/loveyourlibrary-january-2025/
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Thanks so much! I had a volunteering day where I was hunting down reserved books in the children’s section and kept coming across cute picture books I wanted to read. C and I passed them all back and forth one morning over tea, it was fun.
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Ahhh, adorable!
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I loved both The Coast Road and Confessions, and I’m tempted by Deep Cuts.
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I also really enjoyed Confessions. Have not read the others yet though!
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A book to lose yourself in!
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‘There’s a grumpy apple. And that’s it’ hahahaha love it. I also love the synopsis of Books Aren’t For Eating.
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Kids’ books can be so delightfully random!
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I just got Poetry Unbound in on a hold today. I look forward to checking it out.
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It’s a really nice way to be introduced to new poets. I hope you enjoy it. I have been reading it slowly, just one essay per sitting.
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This is such a neat prompt! I had to try for myself on my blog. https://inspirationalskai.blogspot.com/2025/01/love-your-library-january-2025-hosted.html
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Thanks so much for joining in!
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You’re making me envious with all your lovely children’s books! And I”m loving the idea of you and C passing them back and forth at breakfast. What a treat.
I had a really unpleasant encounter with a librarian on my most recent library visit (which has been just once a month since the snow stuck) so I’m now even less inclined to walk that far while it’s beastly cold (-28 this morning with a high of -14 this afternoon, warm enough to snow more-gorgeous!) but I do have a new small stack of ILLs to help with a review of a Guyanese-Canadian writer’s work in February (to coincide with reviewing his new short fiction collection). This shouldn’t overshadow all the nice library staff encounters, but somehow it does?
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It was a lovely way to pass a mid-morning tea break.
Oh dear, I can’t imagine what went wrong between you and the librarian. They must have been having a very bad day to pick on one of their star patrons! I also can’t imagine those temperatures; when we were hovering around 0 here it was bad enough (because so damp, yet not delivering snow!).
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I don’t do well with the temperature around zero either, but just four or five degrees lower and all that clears up (and the layers pile on, but that’s a nice problem to have). It’s -14 today and bright and blue sky: lovin’ it!
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