Reading the Library returns!

It feels like a heck of a long time ago that I started this reading challenge. It’s weird how everything now is divided into “before lockdown” and “after lockdown”. And I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s been struggling to focus on reading (or writing, or anything) while the world is a flaming garbage fire.

But the good news is, I’m back in work now, which means I once again have access to our book collection and can restart my Reading the Library challenge. Now I just need to rediscover my ability to read for fun… (no joke, I’ve found it incredibly difficult to relax and enjoy any book during these last few months, which is upsetting on a lot of levels.)

Before the break, we’d got up to the letter E. So, in a bit of a hurry, I went and grabbed the first book in the F section that snatched my fancy:

THE BEST AWFUL by Carrie Fisher

As it turns out, it’s a sequel to POSTCARDS FROM THE EDGE, which I also haven’t read. And of course I didn’t realise it was a sequel before I started reading, because that would’ve involved me doing a modicum of research. Having said that, it didn’t really impact on my enjoyment, or lack of. Oooh, that sounded bitchy. I mean, it wasn’t terrible. I just didn’t enjoy this as much as I was expecting to – it’s pretty funny, with lots of dry humour, and fairly unflinching in it’s subject matter. If someone told me this book changed their life, I would completely understand. Sadly it just wasn’t my cup of tea.

Next up, it’s the turn of the Gs, and we’ve got this:

THE ARCANUM by Janet Gleeson

Okay, full disclosure: this was filed in the fiction section and, at first glance, it could be fiction. I was expecting some kind of historical court drama. Turns out it’s mis-shelved non-fiction, and details the history of European porcelain. I only realised this halfway through the first chapter. Yes, I’m unobservant.

Anyway, rather than picking a different book, I’m sticking with this one, because it’s a lot of fun. Apparently, the quest to turn clay into porcelain ran concurrent with the doomed attempts to turn lead into gold, and involved just as much deceit and chicanery. The whole book is full of people lying to monarchs, fleeing cities in the dead of night, selling their secrets to the highest bidder, being poisoned by terrible working conditions, and/or refusing to share their research even on their deathbeds.

I’ve probably mentioned that my favourite type of non-fiction is Obscure-Specific-Topic-Written-About-By-Someone-Who-Loves-The-Subject, with bonus points if it’s a topic I’ve never had even a passing interest in before. THE ARCANUM certainly ticks those boxes. I’ve been regaling my family with pithy anecdotes about 17th Century Poland all week (they’re notably less impressed than me, natch).

As soon as I’ve finished THE ARCANUM, it’s on to the H shelves, and I’ve already picked this:

THE TASTE OF APPLESEEDS by Katharine Hagena

(Apologies for the lack of choice in these matters, btw, but I kinda rushed in and grabbed whatever I could take, since I didn’t know how long it’d be till I’m back at work full time. Also, it must be noted, the library shelves are particularly bare right now, because just before lockdown we issued as many books as we could to our borrowers to tide them over. So, currently, more than 3,000 of our books are on loan, which equates to about 8% of our total stock, hence there’s far more space on the shelves than I’ve ever seen before. Plus we’ve been using the lockdown to weed out books that haven’t been borrowed in ages and remove them from stock. A librarian’s work is never done, and all that.)

Writing With Rakie: Episode 3

On the Subject of Hats

How to Keep Writing During An Apocalypse

So we are still in the Upside Down. Hope everyone is doing okay, staying indoors, and staying safe. Also hope y'all have enough books to last you through this weird, weird time.

My 2020 reading challenge has well and truly stalled, because reading has become yet another casualty of this quarantine. My attention span is terrible, I can't seem to focus on anything for any length, and, on top of that all, I'm frozen with the panic that I should be making the most of this unique opportunity but instead I'm wasting all this time. I suspect I'm not alone in this.

One of the other things that's on hiatus is our writing group. I was supposed to be running a couple of workshops for them, so I've opted to video record them to post on facebook. This is the second I've done, on How to Keep Writing During An Apocalypse:

[enforced pause]

Well. In terms of things I expected to derail this reading project, a worldwide pandemic was not one of them. It's never the apocalypse you expect, is it?

So, looking back to the beginning of March, approximately five hundred years ago, I was looking for something from the E-Shelves in our library. I started reading a couple of possible choices, but abandoned them after a few pages. I know, I shouldn't be judgmental, but I have almost zero-tolerance for cringe comedy, and if in the first few pages of a book there's a woman fumbling her important job interview in a way that'd make Daisy Steiner blush, then I'm out, sorrynotsorry.

Instead I picked up this:

It's a collection of short stories by Jenny Eclair, who by coincidence was on Celebrity Bake Off Stand-Up to Cancer the night before I had to choose a book. I don't normally read short stories because I have a short attention span (if I commit to a story, I need it to last for more than a dozen pages; do you have any idea how difficult it is to learn a whole new set of characters and plot ten times in a single book?) (for me anyway, I understand that this is my problem not a failing of the genre).

But I gave this a go, and it was very pleasant. Some of the stories had an unexpected mean streak in them. Others were the nice sort of distracting that you find in Women's Weekly. Overall, Jenny Eclair has a real gift for observing character and drawing you into an imaginary life in the space of a few short pages, and I enjoyed reading this. It's definitely the pick of the bunch from my random library shelves so far this year.

Speaking of which... the library is now closed, officially, so I'm at a bit of a loose end in terms of this project. I can't even get into the building to raid the shelves. Obviously, as soon as I can, I'll get back into things, but for now...

I think the best thing for me to do is tackle the (rather daunting) stack that is my to-read pile. This week I will weed out all my to-read books, put them in a big, alphabetical heap, and decide where to start with them.

Until then, everyone stay safe, take care of yourself and others, and go read. Because now more than ever, reading is fundamental.

noble assassins and ignoble witches

Honestly, you wait ages for a book about 17th Century court intrigue, then two show up at once.

(Having spent quite a lot of February without a car, I’ve decided the old saying about buses needs updating – in my experience they either show up when they’re supposed to, or not at all.)

This month I’ve got back into audiobooks, for a number of reasons. Firstly, I forgot to cancel my subscription to audible (I reactivate it about once a year, whenever an author I love releases an audible-exclusive book) (yes, Peter Clines, I’m looking at you) so I’ve got some free credits to use up this month. Secondly, I’ve been walking/bussing a lot more than usual due to the aforementioned lack of car, so it’s been helpful to use that time constructively. Thirdly, I hate my brain. All that time spent walking gives me far too much time to think, which doesn’t sound a bad thing unless your brain is prone to unhelpful spiralling and/or rehearsing arguments you intend to use online someday. Audiobooks are a proper godsend sometimes.

So, as well as browsing my way through the fiction section of our stacks at the library, I’ve also been perusing the audiobook selection. I’ve found I much prefer non-fiction to fiction, because it doesn’t matter so much if my concentration wanders. Specifically, I love love love gentle informative non-fiction where someone with a reassuring voice tells me about their deep affection for a particular subject. Two of my recent favourites have been SPIRALS IN TIME and THE SOUL OF AN OCTOPUS, and someone recommended BRAIDING SWEETGRASS to me, which is so definitely my thing that I’m saving chapters as a special treat for myself each day.

I also picked up an audio copy of WITCHES: A TALE OF SORCERY, SCANDAL AND SEDUCTION by Tracy Borman, because why wouldn’t I. It’s a pretty good non-fiction introduction to the witch hunts of the late 1500s / early 1600s, with a focus on one particular case involving the children of the Earl of Rutland. Since I don’t know anything at all about this period of history, I can’t vouch for how accurate all the information is, but it was entertaining enough. Although the narrator did keep putting on accents every time she quoted someone.

At the same time, I’ve been reading THE NOBLE ASSASSIN by Amanda Dickason, which is about courtly intrigue in the early 1600s and, by a fun coincidence, features some of the same characters as WITCHES. The only surviving child of the Earl of Rutland, Katherine Manners, married the Duke of Buckingham, who was the favourite of the king and crops up a fair bit in both books. It was nice to reference back and forth between the two books and learn more about the characters from each.

THE NOBLE ASSASSIN is probably the most enjoyable randomly-selected book I’ve read so far this year, although the plot meandered a little bit and the most interesting bit (a “fake” scheme to murder the prince) felt almost like a side note, slotted in when the main character got tired of mooning over poets.

Onwards, therefore, into the E-Shelves:

The letter E is much more restrained. Not 20+ shelves for them, oh no. Instead, a nice, manageable five shelves to choose from, which means for the first time this month I don’t feel overwhelmed.

After a small amount of consideration, I’ve picked shelf number 4, mostly because it contains a copy of THE BLOOD PRICE by Jon Evans, who once wrote a screenplay version of my book TERROR ISLAND and therefore holds a fond place in my heart:

But this shelf also contains almost too much choice. Now I’m not limited to just two or three authors, I’m dithering. I reckon it’s a choice between Harriet Evans (gentle romance), Pam Evans (historical romance, with dancing), or Lissa Evans (funny romance, I think? Possibly involving cats and snails?):

I’m also going to throw a wildcard into the mix: THE HORSE WHISPERER, on the basis I should probably read it at some point in my life:

While the Lissa Evans book looks like the most attractive option, I think I might’ve read something else by that author (if she’s the same Lissa Evans who wrote WED WABBIT, which she might not be) (no, I’ve not googled it, what do I look like a person who ain’t lazy). So I’ll throw it open to comments again, in case anyone has any strong opinions one way or the other. Or indeed, if there’s another gem on the shelf that I’ve overlooked.

cold comfort

The thing about a comfort zone, right, is that it’s comfortable.

Reading outside your comfort zone is great *in theory*but in practice, well...

I mention this only because I have found myself outside my zone for the third fortnight in a row. Which is great – that’s what this project is about, I’m supposed to be finding new books that I otherwise would overlook, books that fall outside what I would normally read. The trouble is... they’re outside what I would normally read. And that makes me uncomfortable.

This isn’t to say there’s anything intrinsically wrong with literary explorations of sibling rivalry and moths, sprawling epics about Irish family life, or gritty urban dramas where everything is always terrible. Whatever floats your boat, lady. It just doesn’t seem to be my thing.

Which brings us neatly enough to this fortnight’s book, WHAT THEY DO IN THE DARK.

Reviews for this on Goodreads are, ehhh, mixed at best. People are apparently put off, not by the unrelentingly grimy feel to the whole narrative, but to the (spoiler alert) sickening, horrendous swerve the plot takes in the last thirty pages. And honestly I have to agree with them a little. The story follows two young girls, about 11 years old, from very different backgrounds, who become unlikely friends and eventually do something almost-inexplicably terrible. Throughout the book, there’s violence and child abuse and racism and a lot of other stuff that sits uneasy with the reader. It’s all very real, don’t get me wrong, the author obviously has a talent for describing people and events in squirmingly accurate detail. But then, like I say, in the last few pages the horrible, irreversible thing happens, then it just... ends. Almost none of the plot strands are tied up at all. We don’t find out for definite what happens to the two main girls, or their families, or the victim, or any of the characters in the sub-plot about a movie that’s filming at the girls’ school. One character, who narrated at least a half dozen chapters, doesn’t even get a mention in the summing-up.

So it’s difficult to tell what everyone reacted badly to – the grim, grubby realism; the swerve into the final act of horrendousness; or the fact we don’t get proper closure about any of it. I can see why the author made the choices they did but still... it all leaves a sour taste in the mouth. Which, honestly, was probably the intention.

Anyway, onwards and onwards, into the C-section (... may need to rephrase that):

12 shelves of C authors, and the Random Number Generator picks number 6:

(I may need to find a new way of choosing these shelves, because right now it seems to be either too random or not random enough...)

And again I’m left with a choice of two authors, neither of whom I’ve read before, neither of which is anything like my usually (comfortable) reading material:

So... which should it be? Regency historical fiction (which literally has a bodice on the cover) or WWII historical fiction?

If anyone has any kind of preference, please leave a comment below. I’m gonna give myself a few days to think about this one.

busy busy busy

Before we do anything else, I need to tell you about this:

My next book has just been announced from One More Chapter, and I am quite giddy with excitement. LITTLE GIRLS TELL TALES is available for preorder now. Please do check it out.

ALSO! Me and a few friends have teamed up to make a podcast. It's called WELL RED and involves us drinking wine and chatting books. This month we're discussing FLOWERS IN THE ATTIC (the 40-year-old classic that I am ashamed to say I've never read until this year), and trying to decide which wine you should drink while reading it. If that sounds like your sort of thing, give it a listen on Anchor.fm or find us on Spotify. Ta.

Anyway, last week for Reading the Library, the book was THE GLASS LAKE by Maeve Binchy and, honestly, it was quite good.

It’s a big community-saga, following the ebb and flow of life in a small village in Ireland as people fall in love, fall out of love, fall in the lake, run away with shady men, and question whether true love is really all it’s cracked up to be. It’s got a perfect sheen of ‘real-life’ all over it – people occasionally make ridiculous decisions, things don’t always work out neatly, people have the same name as each other (I’m certain there were two Kevins), sometimes fate is cruel and random: just like in real life. This does become annoying sometimes (just like in real life) because there are loose ends which don’t fit with the story (did we really need the whole subplot about the fella who breaks into the car shop?), but that’s not really the point. This book is essentially a soap opera. You can cut it a lot of slack for that.

Plus the main(ish) character, Kit McMahon, has some wonderful moments – for example, when some boy starts telling people she slept with him, she promptly sues him for impunity her virtue, and wins. Hats off to you, missy.

Next week, we’re looking at the C-shelves:

25 of these buggers, including three that belong exclusively to Catherine Cookson.

The random number generator gives us shelf number 9:

Hmm. So it looks like my choice is Harlan Cohen or Jonathan Coe or... oh hey, what’s that?

Okay, this looks interesting. I’ve never heard of this book or this author (the inside flap says she was a scriptwriter on Shameless). Let’s give it a go then.

neat things

A bunch of neat things I found this week while withdrawing old books from the library shelves.

This pithy review, tucked into the flap of a hardback:

Secret codes, used by readers so they’d know at a glance whether or not they’d already read a certain book:

Many author pictures of Catherine Cookson, each of which made me think for a moment she was Carrie Fisher:

This wonderful sentiment in some of the ancient large print books:

And THE TINFISH RUN, published 1979, with its five full pages of issues, suggesting this copy may have been read by up to 200 people in its forty years of circulation:

Week 2: B Shelves

Today in the library, someone made me cry (in a good way, this is a happy story).

A local group, who assist adults with learning difficulties, come into our library fairly regularly on a Friday morning. They always manage to time it for our busiest period, when we also have a toddler group doing music time, so they often wander into the middle of a group of twenty toddlers and their grown-ups doing the hokey-cokey.

(As a side note, yeah, I think we’re quite a non-traditional library. We almost never shush people. The only time I’ve ever told someone off was when one grandpa ignored the sign saying DO NOT TOUCH THE LOBSTERS.)(That was the day we had lobsters visiting the library.)

So anyway, one of the women who comes along with the care group is super-keen on the royal family, especially Princess Diana. She has already read all the books we have on the shelves about the Royals. I always feel a bit sad when we can’t find her anything knew to read. Plus she needs a specific type of book – preferably one with less writing and more pictures. So I ducked out to the stacks in the other room, where we keep our thousands of home library service books, and had a quick rummage in the Royal section. Long story short, I came up with three nice big picture books, including one of Charles and Diana that predated Diana’s death.

I figured this was a fairly average, everyday thing to do – I mean, it’s literally my job to find books for people. But this woman was so happy to see this new selection of books that she got completely overwhelmed and on the verge of tears. She had to ask her carer whether she could borrow all three books instead of the one she usually gets (obviously the carer said yes). Usually the woman gives me a high-five before she leaves; today I got a hug. Hence why I was crying like an eejit at lunchtime.

(Also, the Charles and Diana book had not been borrowed since 1997, and I’d just been reading this thread on Twitter about neglected library books, so that set me off again.)

At the risk of sounding super-pretentious, it turns out distributing a hundred books to a hundred people isn’t necessarily as important as getting one particular book to the right person at the right time.

Anyway. Back to my 2020 reading project.

The first book of the year was THE BEHAVIOUR OF MOTHS by Poppy Adams. You can check out my less-than-comprehensive review here.

We now move on to the B shelves.

There are NINETEEN of these buggers. Nineteen. I haven’t even counted how many separate authors that includes. So, with the help of a random number generator, I picked shelf number 10:

Which is... hmm. Well, I guess this was bound to happen. Quite a lot of these shelves are taken up by just two or three authors (and sometimes just one – Danielle Steele has two full shelves to herself) so sometimes I won’t have a huge choice. This fortnight we’ve got Maeve Binchy, Tim Binding, and Charlotte Bingham. I’ve not read any of these people. None of these books look like my usual comfort zone.

I eventually settled on Maeve Binchy:

It’s a solid, hefty tome of a book.

I’ll post an update at the weekend to see how I’m getting on. At that time, I will hopefully also have SOME EXCITING NEWS about another new project we’re working on. It’s gonna be awesome.

It’s been noted that, rather like Rizzo in MUPPET’S CHRISTMAS CAROL, I am not suited to literature. Or, more accurately, I’m not suited to literary fiction.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve read smart books, I’ve enjoyed smart books, and I think I’ve understood smart books (they’re about girls, right?), but the older I get, the less tolerance I have for capital-L Literature. There’s only so often I can cope with a story about ennui and aging and the sheer thinginess of life.

(This is obviously a broad, sweeping generalisation. Literary fiction can be about so much more than the weight of life, just like genre fiction doesn’t have to be devoid of heavy themes to be enjoyable.)

The book group I currently attend was formed (in part) because everyone was fed up of reading books about middle-aged professors who are consumed with ennui and therefore absolutely must start an affair with their nubile young secretaries. If you personally happen to like those sort of books, good on you, whatever floats your boat. But speaking for myself, there’s only so much of that I can take before I start wishing the author had written in a salty dragon or a car chase or something.

Anyway, in my 2020 quest to read the library, it occurs to me that I’m going to run into more Literary Fiction than I usually consume.

Which brings us nicely to THE BEHAVIOUR OF MOTHS.

From her lookout on the first floor, Ginny watches and waits for her younger sister to return to the crumbling mansion that was once their idyllic childhood home. Vivien has not set foot in the house since she left, forty-seven years ago; Ginny, the reclusive moth expert, has rarely ventured outside it.

But with Vivien's arrival, dark, unspoken secrets surface. Told in Ginny's unforgettable voice, this debut novel tells a disquieting story of two sisters and the ties that bind - sometimes a little too tightly.

Incidentally, you can tell I read too much YA, because I was completely caught off guard on page 1 by the protagonist being an old woman (I didn’t read the blurb before I started). When was the last time I read a book about proper grownups?? But apart from that, okay, we’ve got a crumbling gothic house (lovely), dark family secrets (even better), and an unexpected wealth of information about moths (perfect!). Honestly, the level of details about moths, pupal soup, parasites and larvae might put off some people. When the narrator starts cutting open chrysalises to examine the soupy goo inside, or when she finds a caterpillar that’s being eaten alive from the inside by the parasitic larvae of another creature... it’d probably be too much of an ick-factor for many readers.

But, predictably enough, the forensic details about moths were my favourite bits of the book. The rest of it was a bit... literary for me. There are flashbacks to Ginny’s childhood, involving trauma and death and alcoholism and neglect. There’s an insistence on skipping over explanations and salient plot-points: Ginny has a habit of tuning out anything she’s not interested in hearing about, which leaves the audience to fill in a lot of gaps. And then there’s some stuff that happens at the end, explained away with a bit of hand-waving about free will (or the lack of it), and then the book finishes.

It was okay. I liked the stuff about moths. But it does make me worry that I’m going to struggle with other Literary books this year...

So, onwards into the Bs! Our library has 19 full shelves of authors beginning with B, so I’ll need a random number generator to pick a shelf for me. Update on Friday.

Welcome to week 1 of my 2020 reading challenge, Reading the Library!

Here is a summary of what I intend to do this year, and why.

(TL;DR - I'm planning to read one book every two weeks off the General Fiction shelves in the library where I work, starting at A and working through the alphabet, in an attempt to fill in some shocking gaps in my reading education.)

This fortnight, A is for:

There are six shelves of authors beginning with A, and, in a completely arbitrary fashion which will probably become the hallmark of this challenge, I've gone for the very first shelf, right at the top.

One book in particular popped out at me:

So, book number one of this year's challenge is THE BEHAVIOUR OF MOTHS by Poppy Adams. I know nothing about this book, or this author, and I don't intend to look at the blurb before I start reading. Let's see how this works out.

Progress update next Friday!