Thanks to Eleanor, Laura and Skai for posting about their recent reading from the library! Margaret has also contributed a profile of a library she visited in Spain.
It’s been a lighter library month for me because I’ve been focusing on my own shelves. You can tell I’ve been looking for comfort reads during a damp, dark and illness-marred month, as there have been a lot of children’s books on my stacks, including Redwall, part of a series I loved when I was a kid. Rereading it 33 years or so later, it’s hard to recapture the magic, but I’m enjoying it well enough.
This Independent subheading was served up to me on Facebook early in the month: “Library use in the UK is dwindling with less than a third of the population using a library service in the last year.” To me, that’s a sad and shocking statistic. A staff member at the library where I volunteer said that loans are down at the moment and it’s important to increase them. Well, I’m doing my best (see reservation list below)!
My library use over the last month:
READ
- The Two Faces of January by Patricia Highsmith
- The Satsuma Complex by Bob Mortimer
An attempt at a meta passage reveals the stark truth about this one!
- Arsenic for Tea by Robin Stevens
- Sam Francisco, King of the Disco by Sarah Tagholm, illus. Binny Talib
- The Best Nest Contest by Luke Western
SKIMMED
- It’s Not a Bloody Trend: Understanding Life as an ADHD Adult by Kat Brown
CURRENTLY READING
- The Parallel Path: Love, Grit and Walking the North by Jenn Ashworth
- Eva Trout by Elizabeth Bowen (for February book club – classics subgroup)
- The Honesty Box by Lucy Brazier
- Redwall by Brian Jacques (reread)
- Carrie by Stephen King
- Of Thorn & Briar: A Year with the West Country Hedgelayer by Paul Lamb
- A Long Game: How to Write Fiction by Elizabeth McCracken
- People Like Us by Jason Mott
- Ultra-Processed People: Why Do We All Eat Stuff that Isn’t Food … and Why Can’t We Stop? by Chris van Tulleken (for February book club)
CHECKED OUT, TO BE READ
A rare university library book haul…
- Eva Luna by Isabel Allende (for April book club)
- Like Mother by Jenny Diski
- Winter Trees by Sylvia Plath
IN THE RESERVATION QUEUE
- Strangers: The Story of a Marriage by Belle Burden
- Honour & Other People’s Children by Helen Garner
- The Swell by Kat Gordon
- Leaving Home: A Memoir in Full Colour by Mark Haddon
- Snegurochka by Judith Heneghan
- The Brain at Rest: Why Doing Nothing Can Change Your Life by Joseph Jebelli
- Half His Age by Jennette McCurdy
- Skylark by Paula McLain
- Frostlines: An Epic Exploration of the Transforming Arctic by Neil Shea
- First Class Murder by Robin Stevens
- Our Better Natures by Sophie Ward
Also … I took a cue from Eleanor and, even though I felt a little sheepish about it, sent an e-mail to the stock librarian back in November asking if the library system could acquire certain books for me. I thought maybe they’d purchase a few of my requests, but they bought all 13! So I’ve placed holds on all but one (I’ll wait until summer to borrow and read Kakigori Summer by Emily Itami). I hope other patrons will get much enjoyment out of these, too!
Fiction:
-
- I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman
- The Girls Who Grew Big by Leila Mottley
- Bog Queen by Anna North
- Wandering Stars by Tommy Orange
- Carrion Crow by Heather Parry
- Let the Bad Times Roll by Alice Slater
- The Original by Nell Stevens
- Pick a Colour by Souvankham Thammavongsa
- The First Day of Spring by Nancy Tucker
Nonfiction:
-
- Pathfinding by Kerri Andrews
- Everything Is Tuberculosis by John Green
- The Spirituality Gap by Abi Millar
RETURNED UNFINISHED
- We Live Here Now by C.D. Rose – Requested off of me, but I’ll get it back 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 
Ah, Redwall! I read so many of those as a kid but I never really fell in love with them. The schematic good/evil binary and the lack of stakes (very few character deaths on the ‘good’ side) got to me. Cosy memories, though!
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(My review of Redwall aged 10, from my school reading diary: ‘The mice win against the rats too many times and you end up wanting the rats to win!’. )
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[Chanting] Cluny! Cluny!! Cluny the Scourge!!!
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OMG, that is too precious that you still have your childhood reading diaries!
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Of course! I archive everything! 🙂
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I’m an archivist of my own past as well. But when my parents got divorced I had to part with a lot of my stored memorabilia, and I also have a feeling a box may have gotten lost in the subsequent moves.
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Oh, I’m sorry to hear that. My parents are also divorced, and it took me a long time to collect all my archives together again.
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Well, as it happens, Redwall has been requested off of me. I’d only read 60 pages, but I’m okay with stopping there and leaving it in the past.
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I adored the Redwall series as a child, but agree that they offer diminishing returns. My favourites were Mossflower (the prequel) and Martin the Warrior, both of which take place outside of the familiar Abbey setting. The food descriptions are absolutely classic, though – if you say “Redwall feast” to any halfway-bookish ’90s-’00s kids, they’ll KNOW.
Excellent requesting work, too, and so pleased your stock librarian was responsive. No need to feel sheepish – they’ve got to spend their acquisitions budget somehow, and they might as well spend it on titles they know for sure a patron wants.
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Martin the Warrior was my favourite because it was the most tragic!
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Yes, the sense of epic/tragic scale was what appealed to me about it!
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I’m sure I read the whole series, but my memories are much fainter than yours and Laura’s. I do remember Mossflower being a favourite.
I guess I was mostly sheepish about the length of the request list. But I’ll make good on it by borrowing them all! And it’s a good counterbalance to the domination of Lee Child, James Patterson et al.
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[…] For Rebecca’s Love your Library. […]
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Poor you! I really hope you’re feeling better now. It’s dragged on so long. You got lots of reading done though. Here’ my contribution this month – not one of my own ‘reads’ mentioned though: https://margaret21.com/2026/01/26/love-your-library-in-premia-de-dalt/
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Well, I would say I was back to normal, but I seem to have pulled a muscle from all my coughing so now I’m dealing with that…
Thanks for your piece! I love to take virtual tours of other libraries.
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Poor you! Just relax with a book ….
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I always feel there’s a danger in re-reading!
I remember LOVING The Magus by John Fowles in my early 20s and loathing it in my 40s! But I don’t think Fowles, once so popular, has dated well. And don’t get me started on Swallows and Amazons!
As a Library volunteer of many years standing I have frequently requested books from our stock librarian. Must admit I haven’t felt sheepish about it – you are too nice!
I have occasionally checked back to see if ‘my’ books have been borrowed by others and they always have which pleases me.
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I read The Magus at about 27 or 28 and got nothing out of it; totally opaque to me. But in those days I persisted and didn’t DNF! I’d like to read certain others by Fowles (especially The Collector, which I own) but I’d agree that he seems passé.
I suppose I was sheepish because I’m already such a heavy library user, so surely I’m finding enough on the catalogue anyway. But yes, one of my requests (the John Green) has already been reserved after me, so that’s proof that others were interested, too.
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I read Redwall as an adult, but I loved it (not enough, apparently, to read on with the series, though..but I think that is really because I had trouble finding the second). Although as comments above indicate, I was also cheering for the rats (I love mice but tire of the anti-Rat ALL the time). Adjusting to my NO library winter this year, which is quite different from my VERY LITTLE library winter last year, but s’ok. Congrats on having your wishlist fulfilled.
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No library?! That’s a tragedy. Is it because of the weather? I’m sure your shelves will more than see you through the season!
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Oh dear, the Mortimer clearly wasn’t a hit with you. Though I do wonder if he actually wrote it or there was a ghost writer involved. There seem to be so many “celebs” trying their hand at fiction writing. It annoys me that they get backing from publishers (just because they think the books can be marketed easily) and many really good authors are ignored.
Time to get off my soap box now….
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I do think he wrote it, but I read (in others’ Goodreads reviews) that he has said he writes while watching telly, and that he doesn’t read fiction himself. And that shows in this woefully bad novel. It’s as if he couldn’t be bothered to learn the basics of voice, characterisation and plotting. Maybe he thought his sense of humour could make up for that. But I didn’t find it particularly funny either, and I’m astonished it won the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse Prize for Comic Fiction. Even those in our book club who like Mortimer’s comedy in general agreed this would never have been published if he wasn’t a celebrity.
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Happy new year everyone! It’s sad to hear that loans are down in the UK. In the US, library borrowing of physical books is going down while more people are check out digital books. However, the cost of eBooks is constantly going up, and it makes it increasingly hard for libraries to purchase the books people want, in the format they want.
Here is my Love Your Library post. https://inspirationalskai.blogspot.com/2026/01/love-your-library-january-2026-december.html I meant to get it down sooner, but I had to deal with other things first.
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I have Of Thorn and Briar TBR and am desperately hoping this hedgelayer isn’t as keen on shooting birds for fun as the one in the book I’ve just read (and subscribed to Unbound for!) (Words From the Hedge). I enjoyed Kakigori Summer and also loved The Girls Who Grew Big and Pick a Colour.
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He’s not touched a firearm yet! (I’m 1/3 through.)
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That was a good request list for your library and I’m glad they purchased them! I really enjoyed Bog Queen.
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I’m over halfway through Bog Queen and enjoying it very much. I read two of her previous novels, too.
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