Tag Archives: library books

Love Your Library, March 2024

By Rebecca Foster on | 33 Comments

Thanks to Eleanor, Laila, Laura and Naomi for posting about their recent library reads! Everyone is welcome to join in with this meme that runs on the last Monday of the month.

My library system’s delivery van has been unreliable recently, so the branch transfers have really stacked up. Last week I had to stay nearly an hour longer than usual for my volunteering to get through all the requests. Some of my holds had been stuck in transit and arrived all at once, so I will have a bunch to pick up tomorrow, including Land of Milk and Honey by C. Pam Zhang for the Carol Shields Prize longlist. I’ve been dipping into other prize lists as well, as I recounted in Saturday’s post.

 

Since last month:

READ

 

SKIMMED

  • Doppelganger by Naomi Klein

CURRENTLY READING

  • The Paris Wife by Paula McLain (rereading for book club)
  • The Bee Sting by Paul Murray
  • The Song of the Whole Wide World: On Grief, Motherhood and Poetry by Tamarin Norwood
  • Come and Get It by Kiley Reid
  • How to Raise a Viking: The Secrets of Parenting the World’s Happiest Children by Helen Russell
  • The Collected Stories of Carol Shields
  • Before the Light Fades by Natasha Walter
  • Lunar New Year Love Story by Gene Luen Yang

 

CURRENTLY READING-ISH

(set aside temporarily)

  • Death Valley by Melissa Broder
  • The Year of the Cat by Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett
  • King by Jonathan Eig
  • Babel by R.F. Kuang

CHECKED OUT, TO BE READ

  • After Dark by Haruki Murakami
  • Jungle House by Julianne Pachico

 

RETURNED UNFINISHED

  • A Sign of Her Own by Sarah Marsh: I was intrigued enough by the premise – the story of a deaf pupil of Alexander Graham Bell’s – and the fact that the author is surgeon Henry Marsh’s daughter to put this on my Women’s Prize wish list. However, the writing just wasn’t there in the first chapter, when it’s imperative to draw a reader in, nor has Marsh been well served by her publisher, who allowed this to go to press with three glaring errors within the first 10 pages: a missing period at the end of a sentence on p. 5, “he’ll being saying” [for he’ll be saying] on p. 6, and “tthere” on p. 8.

 

RETURNED UNREAD

  • Peach Blossom Spring by Melissa Fu

 

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.

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Love Your Library, February 2024

By Rebecca Foster on | 30 Comments

Thanks to Eleanor, Jana, and Laura for posting about their recent library reads. Everyone is welcome to join in with this meme that runs on the last Monday of the month.

This statistic popped up on a poll I answered. Considering that this is a Penguin forum for people who consider themselves to be dedicated readers, I was appalled by the ‘Never’ figure (and the total of the bottom four bars). Do so many really buy every single book they read?! (I answered ‘Once a week’, of course.)

Literary prize season is heating up, with recent longlist announcements for the inaugural Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction and the Walter Scott Prize for historical fiction. Coming up in early March, we’ll be able to compare the Carol Shields Prize and Women’s Prize longlists. For all of these nominees and more, my first port of call is always the library. It’s especially handy when a book can do double duty for multiple lists: I’m awaiting holds of Doppelganger by Naomi Klein, which is nominated for both the Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction and the Writers’ Prize; and The Bee Sting by Paul Murray, which was on the Booker Prize shortlist, is currently shortlisted for the Writers’ Prize, and won a Nero Award.

 

Since last month:

 

READ

  • The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
  • Brother Do You Love Me? by Manni Coe
  • I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy
  • The Tiger’s Wife by Téa Obreht (reread for book club)
  • Went to London, Took the Dog by Nina Stibbe
  • The Winter Wife by Claire Tomalin

CURRENTLY READING

  • Sleepless: Discovering the Power of the Night Self by Annabel Abbs
  • The Home Child by Liz Berry
  • Death Valley by Melissa Broder
  • King by Jonathan Eig
  • Mrs March by Virginia Feito (for Literary Wives)
  • Howards End by E.M. Forster (rereading for book club)
  • Babel by R.F. Kuang
  • The Collected Stories of Carol Shields
  • Before the Light Fades by Natasha Walter

 

CHECKED OUT, TO BE READ

  • Blood by Dr Jen Gunter
  • Groundbreakers: The Return of Britain’s Wild Boar by Chantal Lyons
  • After Dark by Haruki Murakami
  • Jungle House by Julianne Pachico

 

RETURNED UNFINISHED

  • A Thread of Violence by Mark O’Connell – I loved To Be a Machine and Notes from an Apocalypse and so thought I could happily read O’Connell on any subject, but a crime I’d never heard about and learned the basics of within the first 20 pages was never going to engage me for the length of a whole book.

RETURNED UNREAD

  • None of the Above by Travis Alabanza
  • Godkiller by Hannah Kaner
  • Cahokia Jazz by Francis Spufford

Others of you have loved those books, but I couldn’t get anywhere with them; forgive me!

  • Day by Michael Cunningham
  • Wasteland by Oliver Franklin-Wallis
  • Tell Me Good Things by James Runcie
  • Reasons to Be Cheerful by Nina Stibbe
  • Night Side of the River by Jeanette Winterson

And maybe another time for these.

 

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.

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Love Your Library, January 2024

By Rebecca Foster on | 13 Comments

It feels like sooooo much longer than five weeks (the week before Christmas) since I last posted one of these round-ups. The turn of the calendar to February will be a welcome milestone. My thanks, as always, go to Eleanor for her faithful participation in this monthly meme, and to Marcie for spotlighting her recent library reads.

Since last month:

READ

CURRENTLY READING

  • King by Jonathan Eig
  • Babel by R.F. Kuang
  • I’m Glad My Mom Died by Jennette McCurdy
  • The Tiger’s Wife by Téa Obreht (rereading for book club)
  • A Thread of Violence by Mark O’Connell
  • Went to London, Took the Dog by Nina Stibbe
  • Before the Light Fades by Natasha Walter

 

CHECKED OUT, TO BE READ

  • None of the Above by Travis Alabanza
  • Death Valley by Melissa Broder
  • Brother Do You Love Me? by Manni Coe
  • Jungle House by Julianne Pachico
  • Cahokia Jazz by Francis Spufford

RETURNED UNFINISHED

  • Undercurrent by Natasha Carthew

RETURNED UNREAD

  • Stories for Christmas and the Festive Season

 

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.

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Love Your Library, November 2023

By Rebecca Foster on | 12 Comments

My thanks, as always, go to Elle for her participation in this monthly meme. Thanks also to Jana and Naomi for featuring some of their recent library reads.

Speaking of Eleanor, we had rather an exciting opportunity yesterday evening to attend one of the UK literary world’s biggest annual events. More on that in another post later today!

It’s crunch time for all the novellas and buddy reads I currently have on the go and intend to finish and write about before the end of November, which is approaching alarmingly rapidly. The 30th is also my husband’s 40th birthday, so it’s a busy week coming up!

*Note: Next month, instead of posting Love Your Library on the last Monday (Christmas), I will post one week before, on the 18th.

 

Lots of the below I have already reviewed for various other challenges, or will be reviewing soon.

Since last month:

 

READ

  • Harriet Said… by Beryl Bainbridge
  • The Garrick Year by Margaret Drabble
  • Ferdinand, the Man with the Kind Heart by Irmgard Keun
  • The Private Life of the Hare by John Lewis-Stempel
  • Western Lane by Chetna Maroo
  • The House of Doors by Tan Twan Eng
  • Absolutely and Forever by Rose Tremain
  • The Last House on Needless Street by Catriona Ward

CURRENTLY READING

  • Bodily Harm by Margaret Atwood
  • Stone Mattress by Margaret Atwood (on audiobook!)
  • Bright Young Women by Jessica Knoll
  • The Cancer Journals by Audre Lorde
  • The Story Girl by L.M. Montgomery

 

CURRENTLY (NOT) READING

  • The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
  • The Year of the Cat by Rhiannon Lucy Coslett
  • Reproduction by Louisa Hall
  • Findings by Kathleen Jamie (a re-read)
  • Before the Light Fades by Natasha Walter

I started all of these weeks ago, but they have been languishing on various stacks and it will take a concerted effort to get back to and finish them.

 

RETURNED UNFINISHED

  • Weyward by Emilia Hart – I read the first 48 pages. The setup is EXACTLY the same as in The Bass Rock by Evie Wyld (three women characters connected in similar ways, and set at three almost identical time periods). Unfortunately, that one’s amazing whereas this was pedestrian. I could never be bothered to pick it up.
  • The Last Bookwanderer by Anna James – I read the first 36 pages and felt no impetus to read any more. The series went downhill after Book 3 in particular, but really never topped Book 1. Say no to series! Stand-alone books are fine!!

 

RETURNED UNREAD

  • Land of Milk and Honey by C. Pam Zhang – Requested after me. Will try to 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.

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Love Your Library (and Life Update), October 2023

By Rebecca Foster on | 29 Comments

My thanks, as always, to Elle for her participation in this monthly meme, and to Laura for mentioning whenever she sources a book from the library!

I’m posting a bit later than usual because it’s been a busy time, and quite an emotional rollercoaster too. First was the high of my joint 40th birthday party with my husband (whose birthday is in late November) on Saturday evening. It required close to wedding levels of event planning and was stressful, especially in the week ahead, with lots of dropouts due to illness and changed plans. Yesterday and today, I’ve been up to my knees in dirty dishes, leftovers, and soiled tablecloths and bedding to try to get washed and dry. But it was a fantastic party in the end, bringing together people from lots of different areas of our lives. I’m so grateful to everyone who came to celebrate with cake, a quiz, a ceilidh, a bring-and-share/potluck meal, and dancing to the hits of 1983.

The next day was a bit of a crash back to earth as I snuck away from the house guests to attend my church’s annual Memorial Service. With All Hallows’ Eve and then All Saints coming up, it’s a traditional time to think about the dead, but all the more so because today is the first anniversary of my mother’s death. It’s taken me the full year to understand and accept, with both mind and heart, that she’s gone. I’m not marking the day in any particular way apart from having a cup of strong Earl Grey tea in her honour. I feel close to her when I read her journals, look at photographs, or see all the many items she gave me that I still use. We recently moved her remains to a different cemetery and it’s strangely comforting to think that her plot could also accommodate at least a portion of my ashes one day.

Love Your Library

Last week I was trained in how to use the library content management system and received log-ins for limited access to return, issue and renew books and search for information on the internal catalogue. It has been interesting to see how things work from the other side, having been a customer of the library system for over a decade. At busy times I will be able to help out behind the counter, but because I have to call a senior for literally anything more complicated, I am not a replacement for an employee. It is a sad reality that some libraries have to rely on volunteers in this way; none of the smaller branches in West Berkshire would be able to stay open without volunteers working alongside staff.

Novellas in November will be here before we know it. I have a huge pile of library novellas borrowed, in addition to all the ones I own.

Since last month:

READ

CURRENTLY READING

  • Western Lane by Chetna Maroo
  • The Last House on Needless Street by Catriona Ward

CURRENTLY (NOT) READING

  • The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
  • The Year of the Cat by Rhiannon Lucy Coslett
  • Reproduction by Louisa Hall
  • Weyward by Emilia Hart
  • The Last Bookwanderer by Anna James
  • Findings by Kathleen Jamie (a re-read)
  • Before the Light Fades by Natasha Walter

I started all of the above weeks ago, but they have been languishing on various stacks and it will take a concerted effort to get back to and finish them.

RETURNED UNREAD

  • The Seventh Son by Sebastian Faulks
  • This Other Eden by Paul Harding
  • All the Little Bird-Hearts by Viktoria Lloyd-Barlow

All were much-hyped or prize-listed novels that didn’t grab me within the first few pages, so I relinquished them to the next person in the reservation queue.

 

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.

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Love Your Library, September 2023

By Rebecca Foster on | 22 Comments

Thanks, as always, to Elle for her participation, and to Marcie for sharing some of her latest library borrowing on Twitter – I mean X. (Can’t get used to that change.)

Thanks also to Jana for posting about the books she has out, and what is new for the autumn at the library where she works.

I’ve been stocking up on books for upcoming challenges and buddy reads (R.I.P., 1962 Club, L.M. Montgomery readalong, Margaret Atwood Reading Month, etc.), with a big novella stack to be borrowed later in the week.

My reading and borrowing since last time:

 

READ

  • The Three Graces by Amanda Craig
  • Uncle Paul by Celia Fremlin
  • Tom Lake by Ann Patchett

 

SKIMMED

 

CURRENTLY READING

  • The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie
  • The Whispers by Ashley Audrain
  • The Seaside by Madeleine Bunting
  • Penance by Eliza Clark
  • The Year of the Cat by Rhiannon Lucy Coslett
  • By the Sea by Abdulrazak Gurnah (for book club)
  • Reproduction by Louisa Hall
  • Weyward by Emilia Hart
  • Findings by Kathleen Jamie (a re-read)
  • Milk by Alice Kinsella

 

CHECKED OUT, TO BE READ

University library stack at left.

 

RETURNED UNREAD

  • The Fascination by Essie Fox – Turns out the gorgeous sprayed edges were not enough to get me to read this (the bottom book pictured below is Weyward).

 

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.

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Love Your Library, August 2023

By Rebecca Foster on | 27 Comments

Thanks to Elle and Jana for participating this month!

My reading and borrowing since last time:

READ

  • Loved and Missed by Susie Boyt
  • One Midsummer’s Day: Swifts and the Story of Life on Earth by Mark Cocker
  • Protecting the Planet: The Season of Giraffes by Nicola Davies
  • Rhubarb Lemonade by Oskar Kroon
  • August Blue by Deborah Levy
  • La Vie: A Year in Rural France by John Lewis-Stempel

&

Diary of a Tuscan Bookshop by Alba Donati (2022; 2023)

[Translated from the Italian by Elena Pala]

My final #WITMonth selection (I’m pleased with my total of nine, after these four and those four!) and a perfect choice for readers of Shaun Bythell’s bookshop diaries. Instead of a lovable grump in Wigtown, you get a tiny town in the Tuscan hills and a stock of mostly women’s literature and bluestocking gifts curated by an outspoken feminist poet in her sixties. She relied on crowdfunding to open the shop in 2019 – and again to rebuild it after a devastating fire just a couple of months later.

Set during the first five months of 2021, this gives lovely snapshots of a bookseller’s personal and professional life without overstaying its welcome or getting repetitive. Donati has an adult daughter and a 101-year-old mother who was only just losing independence. Although she generally feels supported by the people of Lucignana, some 30% are naysayers, she estimates, and not everyone shares her opinions – she’s outraged when the council cuts down all the trees in the central square.

While keeping the focus on books, she also manages to give a sense of her family’s convoluted wartime history, local politics, and shifting Covid restrictions. I especially enjoyed hearing about her 25-year career in publishing; Edward Carey, Michael Cunningham, and Daša Drndić were ‘her’ authors and she has juicy stories to tell about all three.

Each entry ends with a list of that day’s orders. It’s fascinating to see which are the popular authors in translation – Maeve Brennan, Emily Dickinson, Fannie Flagg, Kent Haruf, Jenny Offill, Vita Sackville-West, Ali Smith – as well as plenty in various European languages. Sometimes, no doubt, the stock reflects Donati’s own taste. [A couple of the English titles are rendered incorrectly: “Longbourne House” by Jo Baker and “Woman, Girl, Other” by Bernardine Evaristo should have been caught before this went to print.]

In short, she’s a bookish kindred spirit (“I like books that make you discover other books – a virtuous cycle that should never be broken. The only eternity we will ever experience here on earth”) and I thoroughly enjoyed reading about her fairly uneventful yet rewarding days. This, too, was perfect (summer) armchair travel reading.

 

SKIMMED

  • The Orchid Outlaw by Ben Jacob

 

CURRENTLY READING

  • The Year of the Cat by Rhiannon Lucy Coslett
  • The Three Graces by Amanda Craig
  • Reproduction by Louisa Hall
  • Milk by Alice Kinsella
  • Tom Lake by Ann Patchett
  • Wild Fell by Lee Schofield

 

CHECKED OUT, TO BE READ

 

RETURNED UNFINISHED

  • The Other Side of Mrs Wood by Lucy Barker – I read the first 82 pages. This was capable hist fic but without the spark that would have kept me interested.
  • King by Jonathan Eig – Requested after I’d only read two chapters. It’s a massive biography, so I’ll have to get it back out another time when I can give it more attention.

 

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.

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Love Your Library & Miscellaneous News, July 2023

By Rebecca Foster on | 20 Comments

Thanks, as always, to Elle for her faithful participation (her post is here).

Today happens to be my 10th freelancing anniversary. I’m not much in the mood for celebrating as my career feels like it’s at a low ebb just now. However, I’m trying to be proactive: I contacted all my existing employers asking about the possibility of more work and a few opportunities are forthcoming. Plus I have a new paid review venue in the pipeline.

Tomorrow the Booker Prize longlist will be announced. I haven’t had a whole lot of time to think about it, but over the past few months I did keep a running list of novels I thought would be eligible, so here are 13 (a “Booker dozen”) that I think might be strong possibilities:

Old God’s Time, Sebastian Barry

The New Life, Tom Crewe

Fire Rush, Jacqueline Crooks

The Wren, The Wren, Anne Enright

The Vaster Wilds, Lauren Groff

Enter Ghost, Isabella Hammad

Hungry Ghosts, Kevin Jared Hosein

August Blue, Deborah Levy

The Sun Walks Down, Fiona McFarlane

Cuddy, Benjamin Myers

Shy, Max Porter

The Fraud, Zadie Smith

Land of Milk and Honey, C Pam Zhang

 

See also Clare’s and Susan’s predictions. All three of us coincide on one of these titles!

Back to the library content!

I appreciated this mini-speech by Bob Comet, the introverted librarian protagonist of Patrick deWitt’s The Librarianist, about why he loves libraries … but not people so much:

“I like the way I feel when I’m there. It’s a place that makes sense to me. I like that anyone can come in and get the books they want for free. The people bring the books home and take care of them, then bring them back so that other people can do the same. … I like the idea of people.”

I recently added a new regular task to my library volunteering roster: choosing a selection of the month’s new stock (30 fiction releases and 9 fiction) and adding them to a PDF template with the cover, title and author, and a blurb from the library catalogue or Goodreads, etc. The sheets are printed out at each branch library and displayed in a binder for patrons to browse. I was so proud to see my pages in there! There are three of us alternating this task, so I’ll be doing it four times a year. My next month is October.

On my Scotland travels last month, I took photos of two cute little libraries, one in Wigtown (L) and the other in Tarbert.

I’m currently on holiday again, with university friends in the Lake District for a week (Wild Fell, below, is for reading in advance of a trip to, and on location in, Haweswater), and you can be sure I brought plenty of library books along with me.

My reading and borrowing since last time:

 

READ

 + 3 children’s picture books from the Wainwright Prize longlist:

  • Blobfish by Olaf Falafel: Silly and with the merest scrape of an environmentalist message pasted on (the fish temporarily gets stuck in a plastic bag).
  • The Zebra’s Great Escape by Katherine Rundell: Loved this super-cute, cheeky story of a little girl whose understanding of animal language allows her to become part of a natural network rescuing a menagerie held captive by an evil collector.
  • Grandpa and the Kingfisher by Anna Wilson: Nice drawings and attention to nature and its seasonality, but rather mawkish. (Adult birds don’t die off annually!)

SKIMMED

  • A Life of One’s Own: Nine Women Writers Begin Again by Joanna Biggs – The backstory is Biggs getting divorced in her thirties and moving to NYC. Her eight chosen female authors are VERY familiar, barring, perhaps, Zora Neale Hurston (thank goodness she chose two Black authors, as so many group biographies are all about white women). Do we need potted biographies of such well-known figures? Probably not. Nonetheless, it was clever how she wove her own story and reactions to their works into the biographical material, and the writing is so strong I could excuse any retreading of ground.

 

CURRENTLY READING

  • One Midsummer’s Day by Mark Cocker
  • King by Jonathan Eig
  • Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett
  • Milk by Alice Kinsella
  • Wild Fell by Lee Schofield

 

CHECKED OUT, TO BE READ

Lots of lovely teal in this latest batch.

 

RETURNED UNFINISHED

  • Undercurrent by Natasha Carthew – This was requested after me. I read 21% and will either pick it up on my Kindle via the NetGalley book or get it out another time.
  • The Gifts by Liz Hyder – I’ll try this another time when I can give it more attention.
  • Music in the Dark by Sally Magnusson – I loved The Ninth Child, but have DNFed her other two novels, alas! I even got to page 122 in this, but I had little interest in seeing how the storylines fit together.
  • The Five Red Herrings by Dorothy L. Sayers – I’m awful about trying mystery series, usually DNFing or giving up after the first book. I just can’t care whodunnit.

 

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.

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Love Your Library, June 2023

By Rebecca Foster on | 26 Comments

Thanks, as always, to Elle for her participation, and to Laura and Naomi for their reviews of books borrowed from libraries. Ever since she was our Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award shadow panel winner, I’ve followed Julianne Pachico’s blog. A recent post lists books she currently has from the library. I like her comment that borrowing books “is definitely scratching that dopamine itch for me”! On Instagram I spotted this post celebrating both libraries and Pride Month.

And so to my reading and borrowing since last time.

Most of my reservations seemed to come in all at once, right before we left for Scotland, so I’m taking a giant pile along with me (luckily, we’re traveling by car so I don’t have space or weight restrictions) and will see which I can get to, while also fitting in Scotland-themed reads, June review copies, e-books for paid review, and a few of my 20 Books of Summer!

READ

  • Rainbow Rainbow: Stories by Lydia Conklin
  • The Greengage Summer by Rumer Godden
  • Under the Rainbow by Celia Laskey
  • Scattered Showers: Stories by Rainbow Rowell
  • A Cat in the Window by Derek Tangye
  • Cats in Concord by Doreen Tovey

 

CURRENTLY READING

  • The Happy Couple by Naoise Dolan
  • The Gifts by Liz Hyder
  • Milk by Alice Kinsella
  • Yellowface by Rebecca F. Kuang
  • Music in the Dark by Sally Magnusson
  • Five Red Herrings by Dorothy L. Sayers
  • Death of a Bookseller by Alice Slater
  • The Archaeology of Loss by Sarah Turlow
  • The Legacy of Elizabeth Pringle by Kirsty Wark

CHECKED OUT, TO BE READ

RETURNED UNREAD

  • Pod by Laline Paull – I wanted to give this a try because it made the Women’s Prize shortlist, but I looked at the first few pages and skimmed through the rest and knew I just couldn’t take it seriously. I mean, look at lines like these: “The Rorqual wanted to laugh, but it was serious. The dolphin had been in some physical horror and had lost his mind. Google could not bear his mistake. The sound he raced toward was not Base, but this thing, this creature, he had never before encountered.”

 

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.

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Three on a Theme: “Rainbow” Books for Pride Month

By Rebecca Foster on | 10 Comments

Two of these are short story collections (and one almost is); two are specifically queer in outlook; all attracted me for their colorful covers, and all were borrowed from the library. #LoveYourLibrary

Rainbow Rainbow: Stories by Lydia Conklin (2022)

The 10 stories in this confident debut collection are unabashedly queer, and half involve the trans experience, whether ideation or reality. Conklin is nonbinary, so it’s tempting to read several stories as autobiographical: female characters long to get top surgery and transition to male or nonbinary, but worry it will change how they are perceived or desired. “Pink Knives” and “Boy Jump,” especially, have the flavor of autofiction, with protagonists traveling in Poland and feeling attraction to people of various genders. (The former has a pandemic setting, which I’ve noticed has at this point started to feel dated.) My overall favorite was “Sunny Talks,” in which middle-aged Lillia accompanies her trans teenage nephew to a conference for celebrity YouTubers but can’t bring herself to announce her own intended transition. Though life hasn’t been easy for Sunny, he has support she lacked growing up.

Asher and Ivan, two characters of nebulous sexuality and future gender, are the core of “Cheerful Until Next Time” (check out the acronym), which has the fantastic opening line “The queer feminist book club came to an end.” “Laramie Time” stars a lesbian couple debating whether to have a baby (in the comic Leigh draws, a turtle wishes “reproduction was automatic or mandatory, so no decision was necessary”). “A Fearless Moral Inventory” features a pansexual who is a recovering sex addict. Adolescent girls are the focus in “The Black Winter of New England” and “Ooh, the Suburbs,” where they experiment with making lesbian leanings public and seeking older role models. “Pioneer,” probably my second favorite, has Coco pushing against gender constraints at a school Oregon Trail reenactment. Refusing to be a matriarch and not allowed to play a boy, she rebels by dressing up as an ox instead. The tone is often bleak or yearning, so “Counselor of My Heart” stands out as comic even though it opens with the death of a dog; Molly’s haplessness somehow feels excusable.

Six of the stories are in the third person and four in first person. I’d be interested to try Conklin’s longer-form work, and think first-person narration would particularly suit her. I didn’t really sense that this was a book meant for me, but that’s okay; a lot of readers will feel seen and represented. Pair this with, or have it on hand as a follow-up to, work by Allison Blevins, Melissa Febos and, most of all, Eley Williams.

 

Under the Rainbow by Celia Laskey (2020)

In Laskey’s debut, which has been marketed as a novel but reads more like linked short stories, a favorite format of mine, researchers have identified Big Burr, Kansas as the most homophobic town in America. A task force from Acceptance Across America descends on the rural backwater for a targeted two-year program promoting education and friendship. Each chapter is a first-person, present-tense confession from a local or a queer visitor, whose stories interlock and push the chronology forward. For every positive step – a gender-neutral bathroom in the high school, a closeted individual who summons up the courage to come out – there is a regressive one, such as a AAA billboard being set on fire or a house being egged.

Laskey inhabits all 11 personae with equal skill and compassion. Avery, the task force leader’s daughter, resents having to leave L.A. and plots an escape with her new friend Zach, a persecuted gay teen. Christine, a Christian homemaker, is outraged about the liberal agenda, whereas her bereaved neighbor, Linda, finds purpose and understanding in volunteering at the AAA office. Food hygiene inspector Henry is thrown when his wife leaves him for a woman, and meat-packing maven Lizzie agonizes over the question of motherhood. Task force members David, Tegan and Harley all have their reasons for agreeing to the project, but some characters have to sacrifice more than others.

Little references in later chapters catch you up on what’s happened with the others. I only questioned the need for Elsie as a POV character, and the exclusion of Jamal (presumably Laskey thought it unwise to write from the perspective of a Black man, but he’s a glaring omission). A final chapter, returning to one of the protagonists and set 10 years later, presents a town that’s changed enough to host its first gay wedding and first LGBTQ-owned business.

The novel is realistically sad, but not overly so, and was compellingly readable and heartwarming in a way that reminded me of how I felt about Shotgun Lovesongs. You might not want to live there, but I guarantee you’ll develop a certain fondness for Big Burr.

 

Scattered Showers: Stories by Rainbow Rowell; illus. Jim Tierney (2022)

I spotted this collection while shelving in the YA section of the library one day and admired the sky blue naked hardback for its red sprayed edges, chunky rainbow endpapers, distinctive font, and teal and magenta interior color scheme. I’d read one Rowell book before, the graphic novel Pumpkinheads. This is probably a better match for her dedicated fans in that three of the stories are spin-offs from her fiction and a few of the rest are one-offs (Amazon Original Stories, a World Book Day publication, a contribution to an anthology), such that I felt a little like I was reading leftovers. A B-sides volume, if you will.

Four of the nine are holiday-themed, so this could make a good Twixtmas read if you like seasonality; eight are in the third person and just one has alternating first person narrators. All are what could be broadly dubbed romances, with most involving meet-cutes or moments when long-time friends realize their feelings go deeper (“Midnights” and “The Snow Ball”). Only one of the pairings is queer, however: Baz and Simon (who are a vampire and … a dragon-man, I think? and the subjects of a trilogy) in the Harry Potter-meets Twilight-meets Heartstopper “Snow for Christmas.” The rest are pretty straightforward boy-girl stories.

I liked “Kindred Spirits,” in which Elena joins a small group (“three cold nerds”) of hardcore Star Wars fans waiting in line for the first sequel and notices Gabe, a classmate, as if for the first time; “Winter Songs for Summer,” in which a sensitive jock proves he knows his upstairs dorm mate better than anyone through the breakup-recovery tracks he puts on a mix CD for her; and “If the Fates Allow,” about Nebraska neighbors who bond over Jell-O salad during a couple of pandemic Christmases.

I wasn’t as enamored by the couple of fantasy stories, “The Prince and the Troll,” a fairy tale twisted into a vague environmental dystopian parable (“This isn’t easy. This is just another kind of hard. That’s all that’s left now, for any of us”), and “In Waiting,” about the evolving characters incubating in a writer’s head. “Mixed Messages” was refreshing for having middle-aged characters, two friends texting back and forth to try to work out whether the one missed a period because she’s pregnant or in perimenopause, but I doubt I’d be tempted to seek out the book these characters originated in (Attachments), or any of Rowell’s others.

 

There was a clear winner here: Under the Rainbow!

Extra goodies:

Celebrate Pride Month! The Bookshop.org team has curated this list of books by LGBTQIA+ authors for you to enjoy. Please enjoy 20% OFF all titles. [affiliate link]

A song Sufjan Stevens wrote for Pride Month 2019.

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