Books I picked up from the library: October 2024

The library is human civilization’s best invention. If you don’t have a library card, and then also reserve and pick up books on the regular, you are missing out!

The library is the free-er version of Amazon. I login to my library account online, search for books, ask them to be delivered to the location 3 blocks from my house and they show up there. For free!

But the freeness can lead me to request books a little willy-nilly — that is ALSO THE BEAUTY of the library. I can hear of a book and then get it in my hands to see if it’s right for me. No charge!

Here are some books I picked up this month and the reasons why:

“The Memory Police” by Yōko Ogawa.
I googled for a list of books that have good plots but are also well-written. In my older age I like a good page-turner, but genre fiction often seems to be spat out with no care for language. I need a good story AND good writing. “Good writing” is subjective, but I get to do the subjecting here.

“Faux Pas. Selected Writings and Drawings” by Amy Sillman.
I love a good words/pictures book that’s not a comic so I reserved this when, I think, Austin Kleon mentioned it.

I often think that librarians know exactly which people read Kleon’s newsletter based on what we reserve. Mimicry is flattery is us all trying to get closer to a creative source.

I haven’t read it yet, but this is the one I’m most excited about.

“Feel Good Productivity” by Ali Abdaal
I get sucked into watching Ali’s YouTube videos sometimes. They are generally ok, and I’ve learned a couple things from them, so I reserved his new book a few months ago when it was first released. There was a long wait for it. When it showed up this week I flipped through it and said “Nah, I don’t need this” and put it in the return pile. I have a new rule of not reading any more self-help or productivity books, tantalizing as their promises may be. I’ve read enough, so I’m now, instead, just living.