Thanks to Eleanor, Marcie, and Naomi for posting about their recent library reads!
The library is the place with all the answers, as the below passage from When the Stammer Came to Stay by Maggie O’Farrell has it. The illustrations place this children’s book in a timeless past, perhaps somewhere between the 1920s and 1950s.
A major character in Every Day Is Mother’s Day by Hilary Mantel also heads to a library when looking for important information, but she is dismayed to find how much it has modernized (this is set in 1974):
“The library had changed a good deal, she noticed. The old wooden desks had gone, and the newspapers in racks. There were low vinyl seats that an elderly person could not get in and out of comfortably. There were modern pictures on the wall, sunbursts of yellow and orange, and a part marked ‘Children’s Play Area’. Children did not play in it, but ran about, loud and healthy. Fluttering notices on a cork board advertised yoga classes and Community Welfare Programmes, play-groups and Councillor’s Surgeries. People talked quite unashamedly in ordinary voices; there had only been an odd subdued whisper in the past”
We did actually have an anonymous complaint in the library comments book the other week about it being pretty loud for a library. I can only shrug. We don’t have any rules against phone use; patrons come to use the wi-fi and often do Zoom calls or interviews. I, too, would miss the silence if I came for a place to study.
My library use over the last month:
(links to books not already reviewed on the blog)
READ
- Mama’s Sleeping Scarf by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
- Old Soul by Susan Barker
- Every Day Is Mother’s Day by Hilary Mantel
- When the Stammer Came to Stay by Maggie O’Farrell
- Long Island by Colm Tóibín
- Three Days in June by Anne Tyler
CURRENTLY READING
- The Alternatives by Caoilinn Hughes
- We Do Not Part by Han Kang
- The Leopard in My House: One Man’s Adventures in Cancerland by Mark Steel
CHECKED OUT, TO BE READ
- Day by Michael Cunningham
- The Meteorites: Encounters with Outer Space and Deep Time by Helen Gordon
- Period Power: Harness Your Hormones and Get Your Cycle Working for You by Maisie Hill
- The Forgotten Sense: The Nose and the Perception of Smell by Jonas Olofsson
+ a bunch of London guides for advance planning for my sister’s visit in July
IN THE RESERVATION QUEUE
- Case Histories by Kate Atkinson (for book club)
- Raising Hare by Chloe Dalton
- Time of the Child by Niall Williams
- Rebel Bodies: A Guide to the Gender Health Gap Revolution by Sarah Graham
ON HOLD, TO BE PICKED UP
- The Honesty Box by Lucy Brazier
- Deep Cuts by Holly Brickley
- Sarn Helen: A Journey through Wales, Past, Present and Future by Tom Bullough (to take to Hay-on-Wye)
- Maggie Blue and the White Crow by Anna Goodall
- Broken Country by Clare Leslie Hall
- I Am Not a Tourist by Daisy J. Hung
- Bookish: How Reading Shapes Our Lives by Lucy Mangan
- The Walking Cure: Harness The Life-Changing Power of Landscape to Heal, Energise and Inspire by Annabel Streets
RETURNED UNREAD
- Autocracy, Inc. by Anne Applebaum – Too close to reality right now.
- Homesickness by Colin Barrett – Borrowed as a potential Reading Ireland Month book, but I couldn’t get into it.
- I Want to Talk to You: And Other Conversations by Diana Evans – Requested off me plus (this will sound really shallow) her spoken delivery was so bad on the Women’s Prize longlist announcement video that I was put off reading her.
- After a Dance by Bridget O’Connor – Same as for the Barrett.
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 
Mine’s up now! https://ellethinks.wordpress.com/2025/03/31/loveyourlibrary-march-2025/
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The only one of your choices that I’ve read is The Meteorites, which I really enjoyed. Back in the real world, our library has just changed its whole system, cataloguing books, users, loans, requests … you know the sort of thing , and both staff and volunteers are getting Total Immersion (and sometimes drowning) into the mysteries of Spydus. We’re … slowly …. getting there, and the readers are being astonishingly patient with us. Bring back rubber stamps and cardboard ticket wallets eh?
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Ah yes, we use Spydus! The staff often bemoan its issues. I only use its basic functions. We still keep date stampers on the counter…
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We are battling with the lot – reservation seeking and satisfying, membership, cash handling etc. etc. And as most volunteers only come once a week, we forget all we’ve learnt from the week before!
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I’ll be interested to know what you think about The Alternatives which I’ve just finished. Have fun with your sister in London. I’m a member of the Art Fund who list lots of unusual museums in their guide. Possibly available online, although your pile suggest you’ll have plenty of options to choose from. One of my favourites is the Foundling Museum.
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I’d hoped to read The Alternatives in March but the paperback has such small type that I haven’t made much headway. The characters and dialogue are great, though.
I’ve always meant to go to the Foundling Museum.
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Highly recommend it and the Wellcome Collection, too, but you may have already been there.
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My mum tried to make us read Case Histories for family book club but I vetoed it because I disliked it so much the first time I read it! I really want to read the new Lucy Mangan, I loved Bookworm.
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That’s so fun that you have a family book club! Is it just you, your mum and your sister?
Uh oh … Can you remember what you hated about Case Histories? Someone suggested doing a Kate Atkinson and when someone else said why not a crime one I pounced on it (rather than have to reread Life after Life) and it seemed to make sense to read the first.
I didn’t necessarily think of Bookworm as a book that needed a sequel, but I’ll be interested to see what she covers in a second volume.
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Family book club happens on Zoom & has just recently been invented to check in on Grandad 🙂 It has a shifting attendance of me, Mum, my aunt and my sister, as well as Grandad obviously! Grandad reads a lot on his Kindle as he can make the font size big.
Tbf, I’m not a Kate Atkinson fan at all (except for Behind the Scenes at the Museum), I just don’t like the tone of her writing, so it may land very differently with others. It’s a VERY long time since I read it but I suspect I disliked the cozy crime feel.
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I’m sorry I wasn’t able to participate in March. I ended up being too busy, but I hope to do one again in April. In March I explored a few different genres at my library everything from children’s to, horror to, manga.
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No worries! You’re welcome to join any time. I always wonder what an outsider would make of my library borrowing history — quite the eclectic mix.
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Lovely!
In March, I read 8 books coming from my awesome public library: https://wordsandpeace.com/2025/03/31/2025-march-wrap-up/
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Great job!
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Love the images (including the Woolf quotation) here. And thanks for linking to my post too.
I think if one approaches Case Histories as a mystery it could be disappointing but, if one approaches it as a literary novel, it’s more satisfying. OOH it could feel like the sections of the story are treated unequally but OTOH this sense of unevenness reminds us how much can truly be known about different characters/times. I’ve actually read it twice (which is a rarity for me with mysteries) but I’ve not kept up with the series either (3, maybe?).
Zoom meetings are annoying in the library when you were hoping to read quietly but I think they’re even more annoying in a cafe…and nobody ever makes cafe patrons shut their lids (paying customers, etc.). It must be awkward to have to receive that complaint repeatedly though.
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Well, I’m not a mystery reader, so that’s a good thing as far as I’m concerned!
Most patrons seem to come prepared with (noise-cancelling?) headphones.
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I didn’t know Maggie O’Farrell had children’s books – I just put a hold on that one. What a sweet illustration.
We receive complaints about the noise level at our library, too, every once in a while. Mostly from older people who don’t like that libraries are not what they once were. We do, however, have one room that we designate as a quiet room and send people there when they don’t want any noise. I’m always surprised by the number of people who hold loud phone conversations at the library – we can hear everything both people are saying!
Thanks for linking to my post!
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I was so proud of myself for getting through Maggie O’Farrell’s complete oeuvre with the children’s books. Now it’ll just be a matter of rereading her work (I’ve reread two so far).
It would be good if we had a quiet area we could point people to. Unfortunately, I think it can be loud anywhere depending on who’s there and what they’re doing (English self-tutorials, one-on-one literacy training, Zoom calls), besides the ubiquitous phone calls!
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At our library, it’s the children’s section that is the loudest! Much more fun than overhearing adult phone calls.
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