Thanks to Eleanor, Margaret and Skai for writing about their recent library reading! Marcie also joined in with a post about completing Toronto Public Library’s 2025 Reading Challenge with books by Indigenous authors.

I managed to fit in a few more 2025 releases before Christmas. My plan for January is to focus on reading from my own shelves (which includes McKitterick Prize submissions and perhaps also review copies to catch up on), so expect next month to be a lighter one.

My recent reading has featured many mentions of how much libraries mean, particularly to young women.

In her autobiographical poetry collection Visitations (coming out in April), Julia Alvarez writes of how her family’s world changed when they moved to New York City from the Dominican Republic in the 1960s. “Waiting for My Father to Pick Me Up at the Library” adopts the tropes of Alice in Wonderland: as her future expands, her father’s life shrinks.

In The Mercy Step by Marcia Hutchinson, the public library is a haven for Mercy, growing up in Bradford in the 1960s. She can hardly believe it’s free for everyone to use, even Black people. Greek mythology is her escape from an upbringing that involves domestic violence and molestation. “It’s peaceful and quiet in the Library. No one shouts or throws things or hits anyone. If anyone talks, the Librarian puts a finger to her mouth and tells them to shush.”

The Serviceberry by Robin Wall Kimmerer affirms the social benefits of libraries: “I love bookstores for many reasons but revere both the idea and the practice of public libraries. To me, they embody the civic-scale practice of a gift economy and the notion of common property. … We don’t each have to own everything. The books at the library belong to everyone, serving the public with free books”.

After Rebecca Knuth retired from an academic career in library and information science, she moved to London for a master’s degree in creative nonfiction and joined the London Library as well as the public library. But in her memoir London Sojourn (coming out in January), she recalls that she caught the library bug early: “Each weekday, I bused to school and, afterward, trudged to the library and then rode home with my geologist father. … Mostly, I read.”

And in Joyride, Susan Orlean recounts the writing of each of her books, including The Library Book, which is about the 1986 arson at the Los Angeles Central Library but also, more widely, about what libraries have to offer and the oddballs often connected with them.

My library use over the last month:

(links are to any reviews of books not already covered on the blog)

READ

• Mum’s Busy Work by Jacinda Ardern; illus. Ruby Jones
• Book of Lives: A Memoir of Sorts by Margaret Atwood
• Storm-Cat by Magenta Fox
• The Robin & the Fir Tree by Jason Jameson
• I Love You Just the Same by Keira Knightley – Proof that celebrities should not be writing children’s books. I would say the story and drawings were pretty good … if she were a college student.
• Winter by Val McDermid
• The Search for the Giant Arctic Jellyfish, The Search for Carmella, & The Search for Our Cosmic Neighbours by Chloe Savage
• Weirdo Goes Wild by Zadie Smith and Nick Laird; illustrated by Magenta Fox
• Murder Most Unladylike by Robin Stevens

 + A final contribution to #DoorstoppersInDecember

Do Admit: The Mitford Sisters and Me by Mimi Pond

Truth really is stranger than fiction. Of the six Mitford sisters, two were fascists (Diana and Unity) and one was a communist (Jessica). Two became popular authors (Nancy and Jessica). One (Unity) was pals with Hitler and shot herself in the head when Britain went to war with Germany; she didn’t die then but nine years later of an infection from the bullet still stuck in her brain. This is all rich fodder for a biographer – the batshit lives of the rich and famous are always going to fascinate us peons – and Pond’s comics treatment is a great way of keeping history from being one boring event after another. Although she uses the same Prussian blue tones throughout, she mixes up the format, sometimes employing 3–5 panes but often choosing to create one- or two-page spreads focusing on a face, a particular setting or a montage. No two pages are exactly alike and information is conveyed through dialogue, documents and quotations. If just straight narrative, there are different typefaces or text colours and it is interspersed with the pictures in a novel way. Whether or not you know a thing about the Mitfords, the book intrigues with its themes of family dynamics, grief, political divisions, wealth and class. My only misgiving, really, was about the “and Me” part of the title; Pond appears in maybe 5% of the book, and the only personal connections I gleaned were that she wished she had sisters, wanted to escape, and envied privilege and pageantry. [444 pages]

CURRENTLY READING

• The Parallel Path: Love, Grit and Walking the North by Jenn Ashworth
• The Honesty Box by Lucy Brazier
• Of Thorn & Briar: A Year with the West Country Hedgelayer by Paul Lamb
• The Satsuma Complex by Bob Mortimer (for book club in January; I’m grumpy about it because I didn’t vote for this one, had no idea who the author [a TV comedian in the UK] was, and the writing is shaky at best)
• We Live Here Now by C.D. Rose

SKIMMED

• Look Closer: How to Get More out of Reading by Robert Douglas-Fairhurst

CHECKED OUT, TO BE READ

• It’s Not a Bloody Trend: Understanding Life as an ADHD Adult by Kat Brown
• We Came by Sea by Horatio Clare

ON HOLD, TO BE COLLECTED

• The Two Faces of January by Patricia Highsmith
• Arsenic for Tea by Robin Stevens

IN THE RESERVATION QUEUE

• Honour & Other People’s Children by Helen Garner
• Snegurochka by Judith Heneghan
• Ultra-Processed People by Dr. Chris van Tulleken (for book club in February)

RETURNED UNFINISHED

• Night Life: Walking Britain’s Wild Landscapes after Dark by John Lewis-Stempel

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.