I hope everyone is having a good Memorial Day / Bank Holiday weekend. It’s far too hot here in southern England!

Thanks, as always, to Eleanor and Skai for posting about their recent library reads.

Here’s Audre Lorde on the importance libraries had in her life (from Zami): “I learned how to read from Mrs. Augusta Baker, the children’s librarian at the old 135th Street branch library. … If that was the only good deed that lady ever did in her life, may she rest in peace. Because that deed saved my life, if not sooner, then later, when sometimes the only thing I had to hold on to was knowing I could read, and that that could get me through.” In a neat echo of her early life, the Epilogue then has Lorde graduating from library school.

My library use over the last month:

(links are to any book reviews not already featured on the blog)

My library system has bought the whole Jhalak Prize for Poetry shortlist, so I’ll be working my way through that. (The Howe was the first.)

I’m also proceeding through the Women’s Prize shortlist; I’m only awaiting one more title that’s on order. I predict The Correspondent will win, and that would suit me just fine as I am loving it.

READ

• A Beautiful Loan by Mary Costello
• The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich
• The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon (a reread)
• Almost Life by Kiran Millwood Hargrave
• Foretokens by Sarah Howe
• My Year in Paris with Gertrude Stein: A Fiction by Deborah Levy
• Zami by Audre Lorde
• Nonesuch by Francis Spufford
• The Murderer’s Ape by Jakob Wegelius (a reread)

SKIMMED

• Wise: Finding Purpose, Meaning and Wisdom Beyond the Midpoint of Life by Frank Tallis

CURRENTLY READING

• Pathfinding: On Walking, Motherhood and Freedom by Kerri Andrews
• The Heart of Christianity by Marcus Borg (a reread)
• The Correspondent by Virginia Evans
• Kingfisher by Rozie Kelly
• Carrie by Stephen King
• The Spirituality Gap by Abi Millar
• A Hymn to Life: Shame Has to Change Sides by Gisèle Pelicot
• Greenwild by Pari Thomson
• Women Talking by Miriam Toews

CHECKED OUT, TO BE READ

• My Dearest Friend by Lady Red Ego
• Poems that Make Grown Women Cry: 100 Women on the Words that Move Them, ed. Anthony and Ben Holden
• The New Carthaginians by Nick Makoha
• Crossing the Water by Sylvia Plath
• Saving Graces: Images of Women in European Cemeteries by David Robinson
• The Queen’s Gambit by Walter Tevis

ON HOLD, TO BE COLLECTED                                                            

• Lost Lambs by Madeline Cash
• I Sing to the Greenhearts by Maggie Harris
• Holy Boys by Andrés N. Ordorica

IN THE RESERVATION QUEUE

• Yesteryear by Caro Claire Burke
• Dominion by Addie E. Citchens
• Come What May: Life-Changing Lessons for Coping with Crisis by Lucy Easthope
• Agnes Aubert’s Mystical Cat Shelter by Heather Fawcett
• Hunger and Thirst by Claire Fuller
• Honour & Other People’s Children by Helen Garner
• The Shock of the Light by Lori Inglis Hall
• Why I Am Not a Bus Driver by Ashley Hickson-Lovence
• Alice with a Why by Anna James
• Dogs, Boys and Other Things I’ve Cried About by Isabel Klee
• The Book of Birds by Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris
• Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundhati Roy
• The Original by Nell Stevens
• The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout

RETURNED UNFINISHED

• Service by John Tottenham – I read the first 25 pages and found the grumpy bookseller narrator’s perspective amusing (but potentially quite tiresome after another 300). I loved this skewering of the trend for publishing short stories in individual volumes: “At sixty-three pages this recently published book was no more than a short story, but it was presented in the form of a novel; it was the sort of book that people who wanted to be thought of as ‘well-read’ felt they were supposed to like, and it was presented with a classic red-on-black design with bold lettering.”
• Nowhere Burning by Catriona Ward – This wasn’t gripping me in the first few pages, but I might try it again one day.

RETURNED UNREAD

• The Swell by Kat Gordon – Will borrow another time.
• The Careful Surgeon: Finding Light, Courage and Compassion in the Face of Life and Death by Shehan Hettiaratchy – Seemed twee and not notably well written.
• Skylark by Paula McLain – I’ve enjoyed her other novels and this seems like it should be perfect for Tracy Chevalier fans, but it’s so long and with such small type that I have attempted it twice and made no headway.
• Wandering Stars by Tommy Orange – Will borrow another time.
• Carrion Crow by Heather Parry – Will borrow another time.

What have you been reading or reviewing from the library recently?

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