Just Jillian blog - What am I reading?

What am I reading?

Audio version

When I started work in the Library my friends all thought how lucky Trollies full of new books I was to be able to read books all day and get paid for it! If only that was the case! Reading time is certainly not factored into our working day.

It is very frustrating to be amongst so many books that I want to read but know that I just haven’t the time! At the moment we are receiving a lot of new books - which is lovely to see but it almost physically hurts to see them being trollied away without having the chance, or time, to devour any of them! There is only so many books that you can read at once and let me tell you I try very hard with an audiobook in the car, an ebook on my phone and a novel by my bed for bedtime.

The most I can do is take note of titles which I know I really want to read and hope that sometime in the future, maybe on some exotic holiday or cruise, I will actually have time to read them. Being part of two reading groups means that often I am reading books for those as well as something else of my own choosing but it also means I take longer than I should at finishing any of them!

Ebooks have been a real boon to anyone who likes to take plenty of reading material on holiday with them. Its not that long ago that I would gather up all the charity books I could, divide them out round the family luggage and live in hope that the resort would have a shelf of left-behind books to swop mine with as I read them. Did you know that there actually is a phobia of running out of reading material? It’s called Abibliophobia and I can attest that it is very real

So – confessions of a librarian. At present I am listening to The Bee Sting by Paul Murray (Warning - it is very long! 26 hours long to be exact – so it’s great if you have a long regular commute or enjoy long hikes!) This was shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2023 and I have just heard that it is the winner of the first Nero Book of the Year Award. It is about a rural Irish family – the Barnes family - and their struggles to survive the crumbling of their world as the National economy collapses along with the walls of secrecy that have held them together for years. It is tragic yet at times humorous as each of the four family members tell their stories. I found it fascinating to see the hidden depths of each being revealed. It surprises, saddens and entertains all at once. It is well worth the investment of time to read this ‘big’ book of 645 pages

Beside my bed I have Kathy Reich’s new book The Bone Hacker. I love this series of books featuring Temperance Brennan - a forensic anthropologist based in Quebec. The novels are so much better than the series made for TV – “Bones” is a sanitised and trivialised imitation of the books with stories that are so far from the original to be unrecognisable.

My third current ebook is for our monthly online bookgroup and is A Tidy Ending by Joanna Cannon. I’m not far into it yet but so far so good. I’m interested to see where the story takes me, so that is always a good sign. If you’ve read it why don’t you register to join us online on Thurs 28^th March from 1-2pm. The link to the website is here Online Book Club (librariesni.org.uk)