Guest post by Henry the Librarian.
Where do you like to read? A paperback in the sunny spot of your garden (ice-cold drink mandatory), listening to an audiobook on your busy bus to work, or reading an ebook in your favourite coffee shop. Your local library has so many titles to choose from and if you can’t visit in person, be sure to check out the free digital library from the comfort of…well…anywhere!
Stuck for ideas on what to read next? This June, our librarians have selected an array of good books to keep you entertained…
Top fiction chosen by Siobham
Ordinary Human Failings by Megan Nolan
It’s 1990 in London and, after the death of a young girl on an estate, the finger of suspicion is pointing at one reclusive Irish family: the Greens.
At their heart sits Carmel: beautiful, other-worldly, and once destined for a future beyond her circumstances until life – and love – got in her way. Now, as the scandal unfolds and the tabloids hunt their monster, she must confront the secrets and silences that have trapped her family for so many generations.
‘Ambitious and original’ David Nicholls
Reserve the pBook of ‘Ordinary Human Failings’
Top non-fiction chosen by Leanne
Remember Me? Discovering My Mother As She Lost Her Memory by Shobna Gulati
Remember Me? is a memoir about caring for a parent with dementia and the memories that resurface in the process.
In her first book, Shobna Gulati sets out to reclaim her mother’s past after her death, and in turn, discovers a huge amount about herself and their relationship. Remember Me? captures the powerful emotions that these memories hold to both Shobna and her mother; secrets they had collectively buried and also the concealment of her mother’s condition. What ensues is a story of cultural assimilation, identity, and familial shame.
‘Shobna Gulati is the Northern heroine of a nation’ – Lemn Sissay
Reserve the eBook of ‘Remember Me?’
Reserve the pBook of ‘Remember Me?’
Top audio chosen by Ian
Western Lane by Chetna Maroo
Eleven-year-old Gopi has been playing squash since she was old enough to hold a racket. When her mother dies, her father enlists her in a quietly brutal training regimen, and the game becomes her world. Slowly, she grows apart from her sisters. Her life is reduced to the sport, guided by its rhythms: the serve, the volley, the drive, the shot and its echo.
But on the court, she is not alone. She is with her pa. She is with Ged, a thirteen-year-old boy with his own formidable talent. She is with the players who have come before her. She is in awe.
‘Western Lane is a beautiful and evocative novel about grief, about growing up, about losing and winning. The people and places in this book will stay with me for a long time.’ – Sally Rooney
Listen to the eAudio of ‘Western Lane’
Borrow the eBook of ‘Western Lane’
Reserve the pBook of ‘Western Lane’
Top children’s fiction chosen by Alan
Space Pirate Bears by Alastair Chisholm and Jez Tuya
Jamie and Abby are bored, and bored. Dad, trying to work from his dining table office, has no choice but to entertain them with a story – a Space Pirate Bear story! When something grey threatens the entire universe, and has the Star Defenders on the brink of defeat, who are you going to call? Well the mightiest band of heroes in all the cosmos, of course, the space pirate bears! But can Abby and Jamie agree who these mysterious heroes are before the Forces of Greyness destroys everything? A story within a story that celebrates family time together and choosing your own path.
Reserve the pBook of ‘Space Pirate Bears’
Top children’s non-fiction chosen by Nala
Above, below and long ago by Michael Bright and Jonathan Emmerson
Produced with the Natural History Museum, this book brings you closer to the wildlife that’s hard to reach – to the animals and plants in the skies, deep underwater, on clifftops, in caves and underground. Find out how plants and animals adapted to these environments and about wildlife from long ago. Filled with gorgeous linocut prints of wildlife, this is a book you will admire for its beauty as well as for the fascinating information inside.
Discover the snow leopard as it hunts mountain goats and sheep, the ghostly pale, eel-shaped olm and a mysterious orchid that only blooms underground.
This beautiful book reveals the textures and patterns of the natural world.
Borrow the pBook of ‘Above, below and long ago’
