Library Book Haul

Spoiler: I may have gone overboard….

I went to the library a few days ago and decided to really browse the shelves and pick up a good selection. And I feel like I succeeded…

I picked up both fiction and non-fiction to give myself a wide selection to choose from. 

Let’s start with non-fiction. 

I picked up a couple of books on ways to go more green. “1001 Ways You Can Save the Planet” by Joanna Yarrow and “Green Makeover” by Maria Cuculiza. I have actually read “Green Makeover” before a number of years ago, but I just remember thinking it all seemed a bit of a hassle and I was too lazy to really implement any of the ideas given in this book. But as I have aged I have become more invested in living a less wasteful life and more dedicated to the environment and sustainability. I am still lazy, but I hope to find a few ways to clean up my act in these two books. 

Then I picked up “Eating Animals” by Jonathan Safran Foer because I’ve heard a lot about it from people who have gone vegetarian and I am also interested in vegetarianism from both a health perspective but also a sustainability perspective. Everyone has raved about this book so I hope it will give me some insight too. 

I also picked up two books to help me get healthier. One is based on the FODMAP diet and a healthy gut and one is a diet and exercise plan for 28 days to help you get in shape and get healthier. I don’t expect to follow the plan to the letter, as the recipes are not vegetarian and I have some other issues with some of them, but I thought it could be an inspiration for me to create a plan of my own. 

I also picked up Mary Wollstonecraft’s “A Vindication of the Rights of Woman” since this is a seminal piece of feminist literature. I have also been getting more interested in politics lately, and I figured this would help build a foundation of knowledge. Along those lines I also picked up “The Myth of the Muslim Tide - Do Immigrants Threaten the West?” by Doug Saunders. I don’t like the way immigrants are being portrayed in the public debate and I want some more knowledge so I can join in that debate with some facts. 

Then I also picked up a guide on how to make more time in a busy life. I have recently started a new career and I find it takes up a lot more time than my previous one, so if I can carve out a few extra hours a week to read some more books I am all for it. 

Then we have the fiction:

First I picked up “The Stones of Summer” by Dow Mossman. I have actually read this many years ago, and I remember really liking it even though I was a bit sceptical at first. When I saw it on the shelves I figured it was due for a reread and promptly put it in my basket. 

Then I found “Did You Ever Have A Family?” by Bill Clegg. I saw this floating around on Booktube in 2015 as it was long listed for the Man Booker Prize. It is about a woman who loses her family and decides to leave it all behind. The synopsis doesn’t really say anything more than that, and I have mixed feelings about this book. It could be touching, but it could also be dreary. 

I also picked up “Big Little Lies” by Liane Moriarty, because I saw this on Booktube a while back. It seems like it would be sort of a “Desperate Housewives” in book form, so that should be fun. 

“Vinegar Girl” by Anne Tyler is a retelling of the Shakespeare classic “The Taming of the Shrew”. Anne Tyler was also long listed for the Man Booker Prize in 2015, and I believe she has won it before. So she is an author of some acclaim and since I have a Shakespeare retelling on my Bingo Board for this year I figured this was a good place to start. However, I have heard some mixed things about this book, so let’s see how it goes. 

Another book for my Bingo Reading Challenge is “My Brilliant Friend” by Elena Ferrante. This was carried over from last year’s challenge as the book for my “modern translated fiction” entry. It finally arrived at my library so I figured I might as well read it for this year’s challenge. 

The last book I picked up is “A Thousand Pieces of You” by Claudia Gray. Again, I saw this on Booktube when it first came out and it seemed interesting. For some reason I thought it was contemporary YA but reading the blurb on the back, apparently it involves time travel. So I guess it will be interesting to see where this book takes me. 

Again, I might have gone overboard. But the good thing about a library book haul is it doesn’t really matter if you don’t have time to read all the books, or even of you don’t like them, having picked them up on a whim, because you haven’t spent any money on them. And if you didn’t have time to finish them you can just borrow them again. And THEN decide if you want to spend your hard earned pennies adding that particular book to your collection. This way your library will consist of books you KNOW are good, and you won’t feel like you’ve wasted money if you get rid of books, or that you should hang on to books you don’t like because you spent so much money on them. It’s a win-win situation!