August Reading Wrap Up & September TBR

[@CharlieBrookReads]

Least you are still clearing books off your shelves which was the mission✅I hope you love all your Sept picks!! 📚

[@jillianhasner7386]

I love when people DNF! Why would anyone waste time on books they don’t like?? I also have Small Country on my shelf! You’ve given me a reason to pick it up. I read both The Poisonwood Bible and The Dutch House in August and loved them both. Currently reading Juno Loves Legs (loving!) and listening to It Was Vulgar & It Was Beautiful: How AIDS Activists Used Art To Fight A Pandemic (also loving!). I have a bunch of books from the library which I want to read (shhhhhh don’t tell my bookshelves!) including: Mrs S, The Humble Lover, Tom Lake, Ponyboy, Small Worlds, Learned By Heart, and Bellies! Great video!!

[@ameliareads589]

There's absolute nothing negative about dnf'ing and talking about it. I'm always interested to hear what people don't like and not only about what they like. I had absolutely the same experience with The Sommer Before Darkness and bailed on it in August too! I actually love both: Keegan and Ward. 😊

[@mradcaqbdb]

This was such an interesting and fun video, Jen! I have all of Jesmyn Ward’s books and have yet to read a single one. But look at you! You managed to finish them all! I’m going to use you as inspiration to finally read her. Maybe I’ll start with her non-fiction, Men We Reaped, but I can also listen to Where The Line Bleeds for free, so I may start there. I’m a bit wary of magical realism, mostly because I couldn’t define it if someone asked me to. I think it’s the kind of thing that you know when you’re in it. 🤷‍♀️ I just got Claire Keegan’s newest book, So Late in the Day, in the mail today. She’s like the ever shrinking novelist, except it’s the books that are shrinking. This is the smallest to date. Can we just all agree they are publishing her short stories as one-offs now? I mean it’s a very lovely package, but it’s £8.99 for 47 pages with font I can just about read without my glasses. And this is the UK release, so not just American publishers taking advantage. I hope I will love it as much as Small Things Like These and Foster, but does she maybe need to write a book of short stories next time, or maybe, and I’m just thinking out loud here, a novel? 🤣 I’m all in on whatever Persephone videos you come up with. I am dying to find a way of teleporting myself from Rhode Island to Bath with a large, empty tote bag, and filling it up at Persephone and maybe Mr. B’s and then teleporting back. But in the meantime, I’ll be watching whatever Persephone content you post! I don’t DNF very many books at all. Just a very few that I start and know for sure I won’t go back to. I do have quite a few that I started and liked but put aside for another time for whatever reason, but I still think I’ll read them at some point. Then again, there are the books I’ve bought that I’ve now decided I’ll never read and they go into the sell/donate stacks. I guess those are sort of DNS (did not start). A whole new category! 😩

[@clotildemaville5549]

I loved Small Country!

[@bookofdust]

Last month I unexpectedly picked up a Doris Lessing book for my annual monthly reading challenge of dead female authors I’ve never read before, and she wasn’t even on my initial list of possibilities! There’s nothing I love more then books about messy colonialists being messy in Africa, fiction and nonfiction (here’s looking at you Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight) so her debut novel The Grass is Singing certainly lived up to that hype and expectation. Gloriously, gloriously messy, and by what little I’ve read about her actual life quite messy too. Definitely going to read more! Speaking of Africa, I’m completely fascinated with Small Country. I spent chunks of time in Rwanda two different summers building libraries and have read much of their Genocide literature, but many people forget that Burundi’s president was also assassinated in that plane crash as well as Rwanda’s president and it unleashed Genocide in Burundi too. So, I’m going try to fit it in this month also.

[@JentheLibrarianreads]

Messy colonialists being messy is a great genre to read 😂 Let me know what you think of Small Country when you've read it - I think I'm going to pick it up later this week.

[@Tutankhamun18Reads]

Small Country is fantastic!!! One of my favourite books.

[@JentheLibrarianreads]

That's great to hear, I'm looking forward to getting to it next.

[@jenniferlovesbooks]

Excellent DNF'ing Jen 👏😂 I've never read any Doris Lessing, where would you recommend starting? Yes to Persephone ranking.

[@ChaoticBibliophile]

I don’t know whether to say congratulations for reaching your goal??? 😂 but this was so fun to watch!

[@JentheLibrarianreads]

Getting books off my TBR is definitely to be celebrated...even if they don't leave by way of actually being read 😂

[@sarah-roadworthy]

Phew. Someone else that did NOT enjoy The Gallery. Currently enjoying My Father's House by Joseph O'Conner. This is actually a WWII thriller (?) set in the Vatican.

[@bookinwithdebra]

I'm also trying to significantly reduce my unread books. Also picked some of the books I can get from the library on audio to help me make progress. I am also dnf-ing 🎉 I thought Small Country was very good. I believe it's written from the author's own experience. Written through the eyes of a child/young man but definitely for adults.

[@JentheLibrarianreads]

Audiobooks are so helpful in getting through my TBR. I think so many of the books left still unread on my shelves are because I struggled to get them on audio previously!

[@thelefthandedreader6632]

Hilarious! The DNFs. 😂😂😂

[@JentheLibrarianreads]

Are you still a booktuber when you DNF more than you read? 😂

[@thelefthandedreader6632]

@@JentheLibrarianreads , ha! The BEST kind. 🤩

[@Lokster71]

This is my first video of yours so I nipped off and watched the one about what you're doing your PhD in. It sounds absolutely fascinating. I've read - a read - a lot of WW1 literature and history in a non-academic capacity. I've agree with you about Brooke. I don't think most of his poetry is very good and his reputation hangs on one poem and an early death (which I know is a terrible thing to say, but I don't think one should under-estimate that in a poets reputation. (Even Owen's.) I've read all three of the Sassoon memoirs and he's definitely a fine writer. Better prose than poetry I think, but his poetry is better than Brooke's. I know it isn't relevant to your PhD so you might not get around to them (and you might have read them already) but an interesting double-bill read is Richard Aldington's 'Death of a Hero' and H.D.'s 'Bid Me to Live'. As they were a couple and the two stories (even though fictionalised) dovetail in interesting ways. Thanks for the video. I loved Lolly Willowes btw. I did actually find it quite funny in a dry way. I love In Parentheses. I read it every November as part of a big World War One Read I always do in November. In my dreams I plan to make a series of videos about. It's is a thick read but I love it so much. Sorry for the waffly comment.

[@JentheLibrarianreads]

It's great to have you here - welcome! And great to hear from someone else who reads a lot of WW1 material. I've not yet read Death of a Hero or Bid me to Live but I've just put holds on both of them with the library, so thanks for the suggestion!

[@Lokster71]

@@JentheLibrarianreads I evangelised a bit about the HD book because its so much caught up in events of the time both literary and political. Plus its a great book about a female artist finding her way. I think.

[@recentlyseenreading]

Your disappointment in Lolly Willowes makes sense to me - Warner’s never struck me as whimsical even though she’s marketed that way. Mind you I tend to see whimsical as twee and go elsewhere. Warner at her best is pretty spikey and dark. Have you read Jenny Diski’s In Gratitude? A chunk of it deals with her mostly difficult relationship with Lessing who rather clumsily emphasized to a 15 or 16 year old Diski the disaster childbearing can visit upon women.

[@JentheLibrarianreads]

Yes, it's really odd that Warner is marketed as a whimsical writer, I'm so confused after having read Lolly. I've never read the Diski, sounds intriguing though - I'll have to keep an eye out for that one.

[@ameliabarlowbooks]

looking forward to hearing your thoughts on Tolstoy! his narrative voice really wasn’t for me and I just didn’t find him funny, but I’m sure that’s just a ‘me’ thing! hope you had fun in old Manny! ♥️

[@JentheLibrarianreads]

Manchester is great, I love it so much! We also went camping afterwards in Bakewell - I hate camping, but it was cheap and we had amazing afternoon tea! I'm looking forward to seeing if my reaction is the same as you had - I think it might be.

[@ameliabarlowbooks]

@@JentheLibrarianreads a really special place! so glad you had a wonderful time, and hopefully a fruitful one with your research! 💖

[@JentheLibrarianreads]

@@ameliabarlowbooks A very fruitful trip - I took over 2000 photos of archival items...now I just need to read and log them all and write about them 😬

[@SupposedlyFun]

Okay, well I don't feel so bad for missing The Gallery now. 😅

[@JentheLibrarianreads]

I'm not saying you should unhaul it...but...

[@SupposedlyFun]

@@JentheLibrarianreads 🤔 🧐😉

[@patricia_ps]

Hi Jen! I've never read Doris Lessing and I loved how you described her writing 😊 Where would you recommend to start? Ohh and I'm definitely reading Fidelity!!

[@ameliareads589]

I would maybe start with her short stories to get a first impression of her writing. I also would recommend The Fifth Child, because it is really short. But I'm also curious what Jen would recommend.

[@patricia_ps]

@@ameliareads589 thank you very much!! I really appreciate your reply and recommendations 😀

[@JentheLibrarianreads]

Definitely try short stories...we have a large complete collection of her stories and they're brilliant to dip in and out of.

[@GemofBooks]

7 DNF’s!! 😂😂

[@JentheLibrarianreads]

What can I say, I’ve always been a high achiever