Thank you to Eleanor (here and here) and Skai for posting about their recent library reading.
On a brief trip to Tilehurst last week for a podiatry consultation, I popped into its library (part of Reading Borough, where I’ve lived at various points) and liked how they designated subgenres with 3D paper letter names above the bays along with a suitable spine sticker on the books themselves. Action is to the right of romance here; they also give Family Sagas and Historical Fiction their own sections.
My library system recently made a slight change to our classifications. Now, instead of a monolithic Crime designation (red circular sticker on spine) there will be a white square spine label with either a magnifying glass and CRI or a gun target with THR for thriller; both will be shelved in the Crime section. Likewise, the SFF section (previously, green circular sticker) will have two subdivisions, FAN with a unicorn and SCI with a ringed planet. I can see why the new subgenres were perceived to be more helpful for readers, but I predict that the shelving, which is almost exclusively done by volunteers, will go haywire. Even with the very clear coloured stickers, books are frequently mis-shelved. (During each of my sessions, I probably reshelve 10 to 15 books.) Now there will be a mixture of coloured and white labels, the latter of which must be read carefully to not end up on the wrong trolley or shelf…
My library use over the last month:
(links are to books not already reviewed on the blog)
READ
- Don’t Forget We’re Here Forever: A New Generation’s Search for Religion by Lamorna Ash
- To the Edge of the Sea: Schooldays of a Crofter’s Child by Christina Hall
- Shattered by Hanif Kureishi
- Ripeness by Sarah Moss
- Three Weeks in July: 7/7, The Aftermath, and the Deadly Manhunt by Adam Wishart & James Nally
CURRENTLY READING
- The Most by Jessica Anthony
- The Interpretation of Cats: And Their Owners by Claude Béata; translated by David Watson
- The Honesty Box by Luzy Brazier
- Bellies by Nicola Dinan
- The Homemade God by Rachel Joyce
- The Mermaid Chair by Sue Monk Kidd
- The Secret Lives of Booksellers and Librarians: True Stories of the Magic of Reading by James Patterson & Matt Eversmann
CHECKED OUT, TO BE READ
- I Think I Like Girls by Rosie Day
- Fragile Minds by Bella Jackson
- Enchanted Ground: Growing Roots in a Broken World by Steven Lovatt
- Wife by Charlotte Mendelson
- The Forgotten Sense: The Nose and the Perception of Smell by Jonas Olofsson
+ various children’s books
(the other books pictured are for my husband’s stack)
IN THE RESERVATION QUEUE
- Helm by Sarah Hall
- An Eye on the Hebrides by Mairi Hedderwick
- Albion by Anna Hope
- The Names by Florence Knapp
- The Eights by Joanna Miller
- The Dig by John Preston
- Birding by Rose Ruane
- Opt Out by Carolina Setterwall
RETURNED UNFINISHED
- The Husbands by Holly Gramazio – I read the first 28 pages or so. A fun premise, but I felt I’d gotten the gist already and couldn’t imagine another 300 pages of the same.
- The Summer I Turned Pretty by Jenny Han – This was requested off me before I could get halfway. So annoying! I’ve placed a hold but don’t know if it will come back into my hands in time to actually finish it during the summer. Harrumph.
- Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid – I read about 18 pages. I always like the idea of her novels, but since Daisy Jones haven’t gotten far in one.
- Boiled Owls by Azad Ashim Sharma – This poetry collection was not for me.
RETURNED UNREAD
- Fulfillment by Lee Cole – Requested off me before I could start it. I’m back in the queue.
- Adam by Gboyega Odubanjo – This poetry collection was not for me.
- The Artist by Lucy Steeds – Requested off me before I could start it. I’m back in the queue.
- The Sleepwalkers by Scarlett Thomas – Ditto!
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 
I have no idea who decides in our library system what counts as crime. The ones that are in that section are fine, but why are the normal library shelves also littered with detectives, guns and prone bodies? Don’t let ‘The Artist’ escape next time. It’s STILL high on my Books of the Year list. ‘Albion’, however, which started extremely well, was hugely disappointing in its ending, so you could hand that one back early, no problem.
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I guess that’s why they decided to throw the thrillers in with Crime, too. I foresee many complications for shelvers, though!
Anna Hope’s previous novel disappointed me; I think I DNFed. So I will consider carefully whether to commit to this one.
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Haha! Shelving Crime. What fun. Anna Hope seems to be a mixed blessing. Hope started so well, and ended in such a disappointing way, so I too feel wary. Lucy Steeds however has delivered a excellent first book, so I hae higher hopes for her after te success of The Artist
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Ooh, I hope you enjoy Bellies—I’ve been so impressed with Dinan. I’m with you and Margaret on the confusingness (and inefficiency) of the labels; in theory they ought to work better, but in practice I tend to find sci fi and fantasy on the main shelves as well as on the dedicated genre ones (and it’s especially sticky with speculative titles, like Julianne Pachico’s Jungle House—I’d call it sci fi, but it seems to be shelved with the other mainstream realist books).
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Oh, and my full #LYL post is up now! https://ellethinks.wordpress.com/2025/07/28/loveyourlibrary-july-2025/
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The categorizations can be quite crude: anything with spaceships on the cover is sci-fi; anything with swords or wizards is fantasy. I once found Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn falsely given a SFF sticker and suggested a rethink!
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Hahaha, brilliant!
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I can understand the idea behind the classification but the system seems confusing both to volunteers and borrowers. I loved Ripeness, enjoyed The Wife but not enough to be queuing for her next novel and would echo Margaret on The Artist. Unsurprisingly, I’ve added The Secret Lives of Booksellers and Librarians to my list.
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I saw that The Artist recently won the Waterstones Debut Prize; all the more reason to look forward to it.
The Patterson volume is pleasant to read bits from occasionally. It appears to be based on transcripts of interviews (and I’m sure Patterson himself had nothing to do with it apart from funding it or lending his name).
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When I had my Saturday job in the library as a teen, it was my and the other Saturday assistant’s job, when the check-in/out desk was quiet and there wasn’t much shelving to do, to systematically work our way around the library reshelving. Fiction was easy, but in non-fiction, the nuances of the Dewey decimal system when it went down to 100ths plus alphabetical order within that number made it certain that you’d find loads of books in the wrong place.
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The problem we have had is that some of the stickers are so similar that people confuse them, e.g. a silver circle means short stories (which are shelved with General Fiction) whereas a silver square is YA, which is shelved separately. Now add in these white labels that have to be read carefully and I predict mild chaos…
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Forgive me if you said this, but are the different genres on different sections/shelves? Or all interfiled by author with just the stickers to differentiate? We have a separate mystery section, but the other genres are all shelved in fiction. Thrillers don’t have a sticker or a separate section. I understand that other branches in our system have different shelves for different genres – It all depends on how much space we have!
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Thrillers (with that new label) will now be shelved in the Crime section, most of which has red spine stickers. It will be an adjustment for sure!
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I’m halfway through The Names and am enjoying it, but not as much as I thought.
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It has a huge queue in my library system so it must have gotten buzz from somewhere. I don’t know very much about it though I do remember it being on one prize list.
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100% agree that Ripeness could have lost the contemporary plot-line completely!
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After I wrote my review I went back and read yours and it was almost uncanny how we’d both picked that out!
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Great minds 🙂
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I have Bellies languishing in my Kindle from when Laura read it! The Husbands isn’t like that, actually, I thought the same but continued and it has some really interesting points (and funny bits) and gets more complex.
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Perhaps I’ll give it another try sometime.
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Hi Rebecca and bookish community, since the last few days have been busy, I was only able to get this finished and posted today. Inspirational Skai: Love Your Library July (July 1-July 28) Hosted by Bookish Beck I have enjoyed reading everyone else’s library reads and I hope you have enjoyed checking out my library reads. Thank you!
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Thanks for joining in!
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Awww, I’m sorry that The Husbands didn’t work for you; I thought it was quite clever and ridiculous, but her repetition is the whole point, so if that was already annoying after only 30 pages, you made the right call. I’m also sorry I didn’t post for the event this month (I saw your original draft had included a space to add a link for me, thank you); I did snap the photo but ultimately have been too preoccupied by the scads of new loans right now to do anything other than project posts for BIP. Of the 35 throughout June, I think I have about 18 left, several underway, and I think I only lost 4 (which other patrons were waiting for) without finishing them (those aren’t DNF, right, when I had no choice? lol). It’s a lovely problem to have, really, but it has thrown a curve into various other plans. What are you reading in the photo (cute Benny!): such a judicious number of flags!
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In the Benny pic I’m reading Ripeness by Sarah Moss.
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[…] to last month: My library system’s reclassification seems all the stranger the more I look at it, especially in […]
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