Thanks, as always, to Eleanor for posting about her recent library reading! And thank you to Skai for joining in again.

Somehow over the summer I forgot to mark two anniversaries: my library’s 25th birthday (July), and five years of me volunteering there (August). When I first started as a volunteer, Covid was still a raging unknown and the library was closed to the public. I shelved returns in an empty building. It was blissful, in all honesty. But I know it’s perverse to be nostalgic about the pandemic. I still enjoy my Tuesday morning sessions of hunting for reservations, even when it’s (too) busy and noisy during the school holidays.

Early in the month, my husband and I went to an evening event at the library with Jasper Fforde. C is a fan, having read five of his novels, whereas I read The Eyre Affair during graduate school and found it silly – in the same way I can’t really get on with Douglas Adams or Terry Pratchett. But with tickets just £5, I thought why not go and support the library.

Fforde considers himself an “accidental author” for two reasons: one, he was seen as a stupid child who would never achieve anything – his dyslexia wasn’t diagnosed until he was in his fifties; and two, he wanted to work on films, and indeed did for a time. In 1988 he sat down to write a short story treatment of his intended film script and fell in love with the process of writing. He described it as being like a jigsaw where the words just fell into place. Thirteen years of hard work later, he made the New York Times bestseller list.

I didn’t realize that Fforde has lived fairly locally and set novels in Reading and Swindon – comic in itself because these are very unlovely towns. His first two series, nursery rhyme crime novels and the Thursday Next books (the eighth and last, Dark Reading Matter, is due out in September 2026), were about “moving the furniture around in people’s heads,” taking existing classic stories and twisting them. When he tried making things up, as with the Shades of Grey and Red Side Story duology and The Last Dragonslayer children’s books, the results were not as commercially successful. During the question time he reflected on the irony of his book getting confused with the blockbuster Fifty Shades of Grey. He joked that some probably bought his book by mistake and then wondered where the bondage was.

The evening was a conversation with the library staff member who seems to organise all the events. She asked him a lot of questions about his process. He listed a few tenets he lives by: “the narrative dare” (come up with a random idea and then figure out how to pull it off), “the path less-trodden,” and “the no-plan plan” (he makes it up as he goes along). His mind works like a drift net, he said, saving bits and pieces up to use another time, such as snippets of conversation overheard on a bus. For instance, “Oh my goodness, they’ve trodden on the gibbon!” and “They say haddock is making a comeback.” He also leaves himself “off-ramps” he can take up later if he ends up writing a sequel.

(C is at the bottom right of the second photo.)

Fforde was very personable and self-deprecating and I got more out of the event than I might have expected to.

My library use over the last month:

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

READ

• The Most by Jessica Anthony
• Sojourn by Amit Chaudhuri
• The Wedding People by Alison Espach
• Of All that Ends, Günter Grass
• The Summer I Turned Pretty by Jenny Han
• Seascraper by Benjamin Wood

SKIMMED

• Wild City by Ben Hoare
• The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller – The chilly writing and atmosphere suit the subject matter, but didn’t draw me in or make me care about the central characters.
• Cuddy by Benjamin Myers (for book club)

CURRENTLY READING

• Kairos by Jenny Erpenbeck
• Of Thorn & Briar: A Year with the West Country Hedgelayer by Paul Lamb
• Endling by Maria Reva

CHECKED OUT, TO BE READ

• The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood (for book club)
• Red Pockets: An Offering by Alice Mah
• Death in Venice and Other Stories by Thomas Mann
• Opt Out by Carolina Setterwall
• Slags by Emma Jane Unsworth

ON HOLD, TO BE COLLECTED

• The Two Roberts by Damian Barr
• All the Way to the River by Elizabeth Gilbert
• The Haunted Wood: A History of Childhood Reading by Sam Leith
• Buckeye by Patrick Ryan
• A Long Winter by Colm Tóibín

C will read the Sopel for book club, but I have to miss that meeting for a Repair Cafe committee meeting.

IN THE RESERVATION QUEUE

• New Cemetery by Simon Armitage
• Book of Lives: A Memoir of Sorts by Margaret Atwood
• It’s Not a Bloody Trend: Understanding Life as an ADHD Adult by Kat Brown
• Flashlight by Susan Choi
• The Perimenopause Survival Guide: A Feel-Like-Yourself-Again Roadmap for Every Woman over 35 by Heather Hirsch
• Queen Esther by John Irving
• The Matchbox Girl by Alice Jolly
• Heart the Lover by Lily King
• Misery by Stephen King
• The Rest of Our Lives by Benjamin Markovits
• What We Can Know by Ian McEwan
• The Eights by Joanna Miller
• Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
• Super-Frog Saves Tokyo by Haruki Murakami
• Rainforest by Michelle Paver
• Death of an Ordinary Man by Sarah Perry
• The Lamb by Lucy Rose
• Flesh by David Szalay

RETURNED UNREAD

• Fulfillment by Lee Cole – Argh, this keeps being requested off me!
• An Eye on the Hebrides by Mairi Hedderwick
• Love in Five Acts by Daniela Krien
• The Artist by Lucy Steeds

I missed the moment on the last three but may try another time.

• The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde – I thought about giving him another try after the event, but … no.

RETURNED UNFINISHED

• The Mermaid Chair by Sue Monk Kidd – I read about 45 pages. The setup was interesting but the narrative voice did not captivate.
• The Names by Florence Knapp – Ditto, but only 25 pages. The writing was just not very good.

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.