Thanks to Eleanor and Skai for posting about their recent library reading! Marina Sofia also recently posted about public libraries in China.
My library had a display coinciding with Dying Matters Awareness Week (5–11 May), an initiative of Hospice UK. I read a lot around illness, death and dying and am pleased to see books on these topics featured. I hadn’t heard of this weeklong celebration before, but I hope that it and the library display will get people talking.
I appreciated this quote from Women by Chloe Caldwell, whose narrator works in a library: “Books are like doctors and I am lucky to have unlimited access to them during this time. A perk of the library.” Bibliotherapy works!
My library use over the last month:
(links are to books not already reviewed on the blog)
READ
- Case Histories by Kate Atkinson (for book club)
- Women by Chloe Caldwell
- All Fours by Miranda July
- The Cafe at the Edge of the Woods by Mikey Please
- Stoner by John Williams (a reread for book club)
SKIMMED
- Spring Is the Only Season: How It Works, What It Does and Why It Matters by Simon Barnes
CURRENTLY READING
- Good Girl by Aria Aber
- Bellies by Nicola Dinan
- May Day by Jackie Kay
- Spring: The Story of a Season by Michael Morpurgo
- The Secret Lives of Booksellers and Librarians: True Stories of the Magic of Reading by James Patterson & Matt Eversmann
CHECKED OUT, TO BE READ
- The Honesty Box by Lucy Brazier
- Day by Michael Cunningham
- Looking After: A Portrait of My Autistic Brother by Caroline Elton
- Rebel Bodies: A Guide to the Gender Health Gap Revolution by Sarah Graham
- Period Power: Harness Your Hormones and Get Your Cycle Working for You by Maisie Hill
- Self-Portrait with Family by Amaan Hyder
- Adam by Gboyega Odubanjo
- The Forgotten Sense: The Nose and the Perception of Smell by Jonas Olofsson
- Horse by Rushika Wick
- Top Doll by Karen McCarthy Woolf
ON HOLD, TO BE PICKED UP
- Is a River Alive? by Robert Macfarlane
- The Persians by Sanam Mahloudji
IN THE RESERVATION QUEUE
- The Most by Jessica Anthony
- Don’t Forget We’re Here Forever: A New Generation’s Search for Religion by Lamorna Ash
- The Interpretation of Cats: And Their Owners by Claude Béata; translated by David Watson
- Fulfillment by Lee Cole
- A Sharp Scratch by Heather Darwent
- I Think I Like Girls by Rosie Day
- The Husbands by Holly Gramazio
- To the Edge of the Sea: Schooldays of a Crofter’s Child by Christina Hall
- The Blue Hour by Paula Hawkins
- Normally Weird and Weirdly Normal: My Adventures in Neurodiversity by Robin Ince
- The Homemade God by Rachel Joyce
- Shattered by Hanif Kureishi
- Enchanted Ground: Growing Roots in a Broken World by Steven Lovatt
- Whisky Galore by Compton Mackenzie
- Wife by Charlotte Mendelson
- Ripeness by Sarah Moss
- The Age of Diagnosis: Sickness, Health and Why Medicine Has Gone Too Far by Suzanne O’Sullivan
- Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid
- Three Weeks in July by Adam Wishart & James Nally
The top four books are from the Jhalak Poetry Prize shortlist.
RETURNED UNFINISHED
- The Meteorites: Encounters with Outer Space and Deep Time by Helen Gordon – I enjoyed her previous book well enough, but found I wasn’t interested enough in the subject matter here.
RETURNED UNREAD
- I Am Not a Tourist by Daisy J. Hung – The writing style was not enticing.
- Of Thorn & Briar: A Year with the West Country Hedgelayer by Paul Lamb – This was requested off of me but I will get it out another time.
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 
What an excellent initiative from Hospice UK. Did you notice anyone looking at the display?
Impressive list, as ever. I loved Ripeness. One of her best yet!
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Well, I noticed the display. It would be interesting to ask staff if they noticed people engaging with it. The word “Dying” is probably enough to turn anyone off, unfortunately.
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Unlike you, I DID enjoy the Helen Gordon, though not as much as her previous book. I was lucky enough to snaffle the Macfarlane before it got out onto the shelves: a perk of volunteering. But I’ve yet to make a start on it. As ever, I’ve only read a few of your other books mentioned.
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I’ll pick up the Macfarlane tomorrow and hope to make it through it in the three weeks given.
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Marvelous! Here’s my entry: https://ellethinks.wordpress.com/2025/05/21/loveyourlibrary-may-2025/ You and I had about the same response to Chloe Caldwell’s Women—there’s never any strong sense of why Finn is so attractive to the protagonist. Frustrating. Love the Death Matters Awareness Week display; when I got a little death-haunted, a few years ago, the library is exactly where I went.
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Caldwell’s forthcoming memoir was in a very similar style but it somehow worked better there.
I hope the display got through to some people.
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Thanks for the mention – alas, I’ve actually not been to the library this month, although I’d actually requested a book, but I was too busy to go and pick it up!
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No worries; it’s good to support the library in that way anyway!
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I’m going to the library later today to pick up a reservation so will check whether they are doing anything to mark dying matters awareness week. I suspect not – the librarians are lovely but not very imaginative….
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That finished a couple of weeks ago, but it would be interesting to know if they’d done anything to mark it.
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A shame about Meteorites and I Am Not a Tourist but we can’t all like the same things! I just read a cracking good novel that the people of NetGalley didn’t like as much as I did …
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If only there weren’t so many other appealing books out there…
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Yes, there is, of course, that!
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Excellent initiative by your library. We also have a dying awareness week – I might suggest my library do the same.
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Brilliant!
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I love your #LoveYourLibrary posts. Over the past couple of weeks, I did visit a couple of branches that are usually out of reach (we rented a car to gather some plants for spring/summer) but only borrowed a couple of books that I read and returned very quickly (a poetry collection and three graphic memoirs/novel); other than that, I’m still reading all the same books I photographed for last month’s LYL /hangshead but, of course, YOU know that that doesn’t mean I’m not reading, it’s only that the other books in the monstrous stack have been claiming more of my attention. I’m working on a post for spring reading, and enjoyed peeking at yours here. We actually have had a proper spring this year, for the first time in…oh, I can’t remember how long actually…a really long time. Also, all our little yard/neighbourhood critters seemed to survive the winter this year, so that has been an exceptionally lovely part of this spring. I would love to read the Jackie Kay and The Persians in your lists. Is your reservation queue even longer than ujj right now? When does your summer reading typically begin? I’m waiting for the weather…
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Many of my library books hang around for a looooong time before they get read (if they ever do) and there’s no shame in that! It’s only if there’s reservations after me that I tend to read a book within the initial three-week loan period.
I’m hoping to get my spring reading post together today, in fact! I had fewer seasonal reads than usual this year. We have had a very warm, dry and windy spring; not ideal for man or beast, but with its pleasant moments. Everything has appeared or flowered 2-4 weeks early. The start of June would be my perhaps arbitrary cutoff for starting on summer stuff.
My reservation list is almost always at its max (15 each on Chris’s and my cards).
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This is a great blog challenge! Here is my blog post for this month. I enjoy checking out these blogs from all over the world and reading about how different and similar our libraries all are. https://inspirationalskai.blogspot.com/2025/05/love-your-library-april-april-29-may-16.html
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Thanks so much for joining in again!
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I’ve also read Caldwell’s Women but remember very little about it; I turned up my Goodreads review and it looks like I had mixed feelings too. I have a list of books I’d like to borrow from my library once I reduce my TBR; it includes Sylvia Townsend Warner’s The Corner That Held Them and Colson Whitehead’s Harlem Shuffle.
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It was a quick read but didn’t particularly seem to justify its own existence.
That’s quite the disparate pair! I have 60-some books on my saved library list at the moment, but that’s in addition to everything I’ve placed a hold on. I get distracted by new acquisitions and rarely look out older stuff.
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