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.)
No comments:
Post a Comment