Thanks to Eleanor and Skai for posting about their recent library reading! Marina Sofia also recently posted about public libraries in China.

My library had a display coinciding with Dying Matters Awareness Week (5–11 May), an initiative of Hospice UK. I read a lot around illness, death and dying and am pleased to see books on these topics featured. I hadn’t heard of this weeklong celebration before, but I hope that it and the library display will get people talking.

I appreciated this quote from Women by Chloe Caldwell, whose narrator works in a library: “Books are like doctors and I am lucky to have unlimited access to them during this time. A perk of the library.” Bibliotherapy works!

My library use over the last month:

(links are to books not already reviewed on the blog)

READ

• Case Histories by Kate Atkinson (for book club)
• Women by Chloe Caldwell
• All Fours by Miranda July
• The Cafe at the Edge of the Woods by Mikey Please
• Stoner by John Williams (a reread for book club)

SKIMMED

• Spring Is the Only Season: How It Works, What It Does and Why It Matters by Simon Barnes

CURRENTLY READING

• Good Girl by Aria Aber
• Bellies by Nicola Dinan
• May Day by Jackie Kay
• Spring: The Story of a Season by Michael Morpurgo
• The Secret Lives of Booksellers and Librarians: True Stories of the Magic of Reading by James Patterson & Matt Eversmann

CHECKED OUT, TO BE READ

• The Honesty Box by Lucy Brazier
• Day by Michael Cunningham
• Looking After: A Portrait of My Autistic Brother by Caroline Elton
• Rebel Bodies: A Guide to the Gender Health Gap Revolution by Sarah Graham
• Period Power: Harness Your Hormones and Get Your Cycle Working for You by Maisie Hill
• Self-Portrait with Family by Amaan Hyder
• Adam by Gboyega Odubanjo
• The Forgotten Sense: The Nose and the Perception of Smell by Jonas Olofsson
• Horse by Rushika Wick
• Top Doll by Karen McCarthy Woolf

ON HOLD, TO BE PICKED UP

• Is a River Alive? by Robert Macfarlane
• The Persians by Sanam Mahloudji

IN THE RESERVATION QUEUE

• The Most by Jessica Anthony
• Don’t Forget We’re Here Forever: A New Generation’s Search for Religion by Lamorna Ash
• The Interpretation of Cats: And Their Owners by Claude Béata; translated by David Watson
• Fulfillment by Lee Cole
• A Sharp Scratch by Heather Darwent
• I Think I Like Girls by Rosie Day
• The Husbands by Holly Gramazio
• To the Edge of the Sea: Schooldays of a Crofter’s Child by Christina Hall
• The Blue Hour by Paula Hawkins
• Normally Weird and Weirdly Normal: My Adventures in Neurodiversity by Robin Ince
• The Homemade God by Rachel Joyce
• Shattered by Hanif Kureishi
• Enchanted Ground: Growing Roots in a Broken World by Steven Lovatt
• Whisky Galore by Compton Mackenzie
• Wife by Charlotte Mendelson
• Ripeness by Sarah Moss
• The Age of Diagnosis: Sickness, Health and Why Medicine Has Gone Too Far by Suzanne O’Sullivan
• Atmosphere by Taylor Jenkins Reid
• Three Weeks in July by Adam Wishart & James Nally

The top four books are from the Jhalak Poetry Prize shortlist.

RETURNED UNFINISHED

• The Meteorites: Encounters with Outer Space and Deep Time by Helen Gordon – I enjoyed her previous book well enough, but found I wasn’t interested enough in the subject matter here.

RETURNED UNREAD

• I Am Not a Tourist by Daisy J. Hung – The writing style was not enticing.
• Of Thorn & Briar: A Year with the West Country Hedgelayer by Paul Lamb – This was requested off of me but I will get it out another time.

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

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