Thanks so much to Eleanor, Laura and Marcie for posting about their recent library reads! It’s been a light library reading month for me, but I’m awaiting many holds of recent releases, including a coincidental gardening-themed trio that I fancy reviewing together if the timing works out.

Marcie also gifted me a New York Times article so that I could go through their list of the 100 Best Books of the 21st Century so far and see how many I have read. The answer is 53 (+ 6 DNFs), with another 23 on my TBR. I pulled some awardees off my shelves and might try reading them later this year (below right) – let me know if you’d like to buddy read any of them with me. I was pleased to see that the article first encouraged readers to reserve books from their local library before giving links to places where they can be bought.

It was fun to find libraries mentioned in a couple of library books I’ve been reading recently:

• Thanked in the Acknowledgements to Soldier Sailor by Claire Kilroy: “The librarians of Howth and Baldoyle who are part of the village that raises the child”.
• From Late Light by Michael Malay:

[When I was] a boy in Australia, my mother often took me to a library near our house, a small concrete building that stood across the road from a chicken shop and a video rental store. … the front door was slightly warped, making it difficult to pull open, while the carpet had been worn bare by years of footfall – and yet, to my fourteen- or fifteen-year-old self, it was a kind of palace. I would go there once or twice a week, roam the shelves on my own, gather all the books that appealed to me, and then take home as many titles as our library account would allow. I don’t think the books I chose were ever to my mother’s taste – at that time, I was obsessed with comics and fantasy novels – but she encouraged my enthusiasm anyway. … looking back now, I see that these books did other things for me – that they fed my curiosity, made time move in different ways, and opened up portals to other worlds. In all those years, I can’t remember my mother ever encouraging me to read more ‘serious’ or ‘literary’ books, and I continue to love her for that.

I’ve seen this Peanuts comic before and I love it. Isn’t library borrowing a brilliant concept?! All the more astounding when you step back to think about it anew. This was shared on Facebook by the library in the village where we go to church. Threatened with closure, it went independent. It has a building on peppercorn rent from the council and is run by volunteers. I don’t borrow books there because I can rarely visit during their limited opening hours (and I have plenty of other library books on my plate), but I do try to get to their book sales at least once or twice a year – particularly useful for stocking up on 3/£1 books for the book swapping game I run at our book club holiday social each year.

Tomorrow at 2 p.m. (if you’re in the UK, that is), the Booker Prize longlist will be announced. No doubt I’ll be baffled at all the books I’ve never heard of, or read. It happens every year. Perhaps I’ll be tempted enough by two or three nominees to place library holds on them right away.

My library use over the last month:

READ

• Fortunately, The Milk… by Neil Gaiman

 SKIMMED

• Rites of Passage: Death and Mourning in Victorian Britain by Judith Flanders

CURRENTLY READING

• The Cove: A Cornish Haunting by Beth Lynch (I enjoyed her previous memoir)
• Groundbreakers: The Return of Britain’s Wild Boar by Chantal Lyons (Wainwright Prize longlist)
• Late Light: Finding Home in the West Country by Michael Malay (Wainwright Prize longlist)
• The Song of the Whole Wide World: On Motherhood, Grief, and Poetry by Tamarin Norwood (resuming this after it went out to fulfil an interlibrary loan)

CURRENTLY READING-ish (more accurately, set aside temporarily)

• Death Valley by Melissa Broder
• The Tale of Despereaux by Kate DiCamillo
• King: A Life by Jonathan Eig
• Mother’s Boy by Patrick Gale
• Learning to Think: A Memoir about Faith, Demons, and the Courage to Ask Questions by Tracy King
• Unearthing: A Story of Tangled Love and Family Secrets by Kyo Maclear
• Late Light: Finding Home in the West Country by Michael Malay
• Mrs Gulliver by Valerie Martin
• After Dark by Haruki Murakami
• Excellent Women by Barbara Pym
• Stowaway: The Disreputable Exploits of the Rat by Joe Shute
• Mrs Hemingway by Naomi Wood

CHECKED OUT, TO BE READ

• Wasteland: The Dirty Truth about What We Throw Away, Where It Goes, and Why It Matters by Oliver Franklin-Wallis

IN THE RESERVATION QUEUE

• Private Rites by Julia Armfield (I read 43% on Kindle and stalled so I’ll try again in print)
• One Garden against the World: In Search of Hope in a Changing Climate by Kate Bradbury
• The Painter’s Daughters by Emily Howes
• The Garden against Time: In Search of a Common Paradise by Olivia Laing
• The Accidental Garden: The Plot Thickens by Richard Mabey
• The Burial Plot by Elizabeth Macneal
• This Is My Sea by Miriam Mulcahy
• The Echoes by Evie Wyld

ON HOLD, TO BE PICKED UP

• Parade by Rachel Cusk
• Nature’s Ghosts: A History – and Future – of the Natural World by Sophie Yeo

RETURNED UNREAD

• Hungry Ghosts by Kevin Jared Hosein – A glance at the first few pages was enough to put me off.

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

This meme runs every month, on the final Monday. Share a link to your own post in the comments. Feel free to use the above image. The hashtag is #LoveYourLibrary.