My thanks, as always, to Eleanor and Skai for posting about their recent library borrowing and reads!
We spotted Porto’s library bus at the Foz do Douro on our recent trip to Portugal.
From My Autobiography of Carson McCullers by Jenn Shapland:
“Library books, especially annotated ones, or ones with page corners creased, or with notes or bookmarks or other ephemera tucked into them, have given me this same feeling, this reprieve from loneliness, since I was a kid. Someone else was here.”
This sentiment feels more applicable to university or specialist library books. If, during my volunteering, I come across books with dogeared pages, I unfold them; I also remove any items used as page markers and put them in our basket for lost bookmarks. Secondhand book purchases, I find, tend to have more of an aura of their previous owners.
My library use over the last month:
(links are to any book reviews not already featured on the blog)
READ
- Tender: 100 Poems for the First 100 Days of Life by Harry Baker
- Our Numbered Bones by Katya Balen
- Bog Child by Siobhan Dowd
- The Migrant Painter of Birds by Lídia Jorge
- The High Mountains of Portugal by Yann Martel
- First Class Murder by Robin Stevens
SKIMMED
- Eva Luna by Isabel Allende (for April book club)
- Art Cure: The Science of How the Arts Transform Our Health by Daisy Fancourt
CURRENTLY READING
- The Heart of Christianity by Marcus Borg (a reread)
- A Beautiful Loan by Mary Costello
- The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich (for May book club)
- The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon (a reread)
- Carrie by Stephen King
- The Spirituality Gap by Abi Millar
- Nonesuch by Francis Spufford
- The Murderer’s Ape by Jakob Wegelius (a reread)
CHECKED OUT, TO BE READ
- Pathfinding: On Walking, Motherhood and Freedom by Kerri Andrews
- The Swell by Kat Gordon
- Skylark by Paula McLain
- Wandering Stars by Tommy Orange
- Carrion Crow by Heather Parry
- Wise: Finding Purpose, Meaning and Wisdom Beyond the Midpoint of Life by Frank Tallis
- Greenwild by Pari Thomson
- Women Talking by Miriam Toews
ON HOLD, TO BE COLLECTED
- Almost Life by Kiran Millwood Hargrave
- The Careful Surgeon: Finding Light, Courage and Compassion in the Face of Life and Death by Shehan Hettiaratchy
IN THE RESERVATION QUEUE
- Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke
- Lost Lambs by Madeline Cash
- Dominion by Addie E. Citchens
- The Correspondent by Virginia Evans
- Agnes Aubert’s Mystical Cat Shelter by Heather Fawcett
- Honour & Other People’s Children by Helen Garner
- The Shock of the Light by Lori Inglis Hall
- Alice with a Why by Anna James
- My Year in Paris with Gertrude Stein: A Fiction by Deborah Levy
- A Hymn to Life: Shame Has to Change Sides by Gisèle Pelicot
- The Original by Nell Stevens
RETURNED UNFINISHED
- Our Better Natures by Sophie Ward – I managed the first 76 pages but found none of the three storylines compelling and gave up hope of them feeling significant in conjunction with each other. Disappointing as I loved her first book and named this one of my Most Anticipated titles of 2026.
RETURNED UNREAD
- The Impossible Thing by Belinda Bauer – Silly me; I don’t read crime. (I was attracted by the setting of Bempton Cliffs and the plot element of stealing seabird eggs.)
- Katherine by Anya Seton – Sarah Perry thinks this is one of the best examples of historical fiction out there, but I can’t get over my antipathy for the time period.
- Sempre: Finding Home by Raymond Silverthorne – Requested because it came up on a search for Portugal in the library catalogue; I didn’t realize it was self-published.
- A Far-Flung Life by M.L. Stedman – The first few pages didn’t draw me in, so I’ll let the many others in the reservation queue have a go.
- Shuggie Bain by Douglas Stuart (audiobook) – I didn’t end up having an opportunity to listen to an audiobook. Perhaps one day I will get to Stuart’s back catalogue!
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 high hopes for the Costello. Hope you’re enjoying it!
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I’d say I’m enjoying it well enough. It’s hard these days not to compare her work with Claire Keegan’s.
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Oh, I quite like encountering those signs of previous readers in books from the local public library too – although if I ever end up having to dogear a page (!), I always unfold it before returning the book. Sometimes it’s good enough just to look at the due-date stamps on the front insert, and see when its most recent few borrows have been. (Sometimes the dates are depressingly far apart…)
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I less appreciate finding traces of previous readers’ snacks 😉
These days, with most people borrowing via self-service machines, that sheet is often blank or only has a few stamps even if a book has clearly been borrowed many times. I like borrowing old university library books and finding stamps from decades ago.
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Oh yeah, a big no thanks to crumbs and smears!
That’s a good point actually. Cheers me up a bit about the ones that seem not to have been checked out for 5+ years!
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I have just finished Almost Life. I found it totally involving and such a change from The Dance Tree and 16th century religious hysteria in Strasbourg – which also fully engaged me at the time.
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I sampled the early pages on my Kindle and have been eagerly awaiting a print copy to get stuck into. I’ve read all her adult fiction and particularly loved The Mercies. She’s so good at evoking a time period.
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Indeed! Even this more recent history was evocatively conjured up.
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Glad it wasn’t just me who was very underwhelmed by Our Better Natures. I also found Yesteryear disappointing. However, I love the Porto library bus!
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I’ll see how I get on with Yesteryear. Always happy to return it unread after a few pages!
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I found it super readable but ultimately disappointing!
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Is the library bus for transporting books between branches, or a bus with a library ad on it, or is it a bookmobile for borrowing?
You’ve reminded me that I’d meant to buy the Helen Garner but instead I bought Addie Citchens’ Dominion, which I’m looking forward to for sure (neither available from our library). Finally the snow here has melted (even the bottoms of the ditches are nearly entirely melted now) and my library use will soon resume and weekly loans a Thing again. I’m quite excited, although I actually quite enjoyed reading from my own shelves for a few months (something I consistently struggle to do, when the newer library books are so appealing) after I adjusted to the idea of it being 100% that and only that. #NiceProblemstoHave
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I’m not actually sure! I assumed it was a mobile library but did no further inspection — it was so hot that day.
Luckily, my library has Dominion on order now, too, so I’ll hope to read it before too long and maybe convince my book club to read it.
I can’t imagine weather preventing me from accessing a library. Then again, we had barely one flake of snow here all winter. A good excuse for you to treat your own shelves as ‘hold shelves’!
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Who cares, right? It’s a book bus! That’s all we need to know really! 🙂 My expectations for Dominion are high, I hope it’s All That. If we had a car, the weather wouldn’t deter me, because I love being outside in the winter (and we keep our deck furniture, winter-safe, out all year because we do have an enclosed fire-pit in the yard) but there’s a reason the library loans out snowshoes up here. lol We were only getting a couple of snowfalls each winter in Toronto the last winter we were there; even without regular plowing, there was no problem getting out and about. But no snow for you at all? That’s alarming.
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It is very sad. I’d have to move to another region of the UK to see snow again with any regularity.
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The Mystical Cat Shelter book intrigues me. I didn’t much like her Emily Wilde book, though (read the 1st one.)
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I DNFed that one. The cat theme is drawing me to this one, of course, but I’ll wait to see if her writing works out for me better.
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Hi, Rebecca and friends! It took me a very long time to get my Love Your Library blog finished, but I have finally posted it. https://inspirationalskai.blogspot.com/2026/04/love-your-library-april-2026-march-21.html That’s an interesting quote you shared. I agree, with library books those tend to be “reset” before they are returned to shelf, so it’s rare to find writing or bookmarks in it, but I certainly find more character in used books.
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