Friday Reads — January 9th, 2026

It's Friday again, and time for Friday Reads!

This week, LibraryThing staff are reading:

Abby / @ablachly: Family of Spies by Christine Kuehn
Kristi / @kristilabrie: To Be a Machine by Mark O'Connell
Kate / @katemcangus: The Last Girl by Jane Casey
Lucy / @knerd.knitter: The Toll by Neal Shusterman
Abigail / @AbigailAdams26: Full Moon Coffee Shop by Mai Mochizuki
Zeph / @ZephCraven: Witchcraft: A History in Thirteen Trials by Marion Gibson

What about all of you? What are you reading this Friday?

My commute reading is And go like this, a collection with stories by John Crowley. I have only just started on it, so no opinions yet (but the writing is, as always, excellent).

My bedside reading is an exhibition catalogue from a recent exhibition of art by Nordic children's books illustrators: Från Mumin till Chop Chop : Tove Jansson, Ilon Wikland, Pija Lindenbaum, Linda Bondestam, edited by Karin Sidén.

I'm currently reading Prophet Song (not a fun read at the present moment, but it's unlikely to ever be) and I'm almost done with Cat Sebastian's latest, After Hours at Dooryard Books

Via Kindle app:
Phaedo / Plato; translation G.M.A. Grube, intro/notes JM Cooper (Hackett Complete Works of Plato collection) ... almost finished; follow-up to Bart Ehrman's Heaven and Hell: a history of the Afterlife book ... next maybe Mary Roach's Spook?
A Suitable Boy / Vikram Seth, Ch 15.1-, p 1169-
The Prisoner p 319- / Proust, In Search of Lost Time v 5; translation, notes, introduction Carol Clark (Penguin Classics)
Doctor Faustus / Thomas Mann; translation, notes, introduction Ritchie Robertson (Oxford World's Classics)

Bedtime reading:
Hardcover: Lavengro / George Borrow Ch XIV- (Everyman Series)*
Trade pbk: Ozma of Oz / L. Frank Baum Ch XII-; illustrations John R. Neill
Kindle: Mary Poppins in the Park Ch 2- / P.L. Travers, illustrations Mary Shepard (Mary Poppins omnibus collection, book 4)

*Not sure of the book's provenance; I'm guessing purchased in the late 60s from the used textbook store across the street (Broadway) from Columbia University; thin paper is still in fine condition must have been acid-free -- sorry I never got around to it until now! (though now the print is pretty small for my eyes) -- bought it based on an article in The Atlantic that cited a favorable notice of the author by Winston Churchhill ...

Finished Ozma of Oz this afternoon so I'm continuing the series by picking up #4, Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz for bedtime reading (sometimes read in the morning to get "revved up")

I've begun especially looking forward to these Friday Reads, seeing what (and where) others are reading, hovering over titles to get a short synopsis. It's akin to browsing a favorite bookstore on Fridays which I used to regularly do as a treat. Now I buy used online. Not quite as fun, but you couldn't tell it by the stacks of unread books I have, no less than I used to.

This week I've started my 2026 first group read, by the inimitable E M Forster, Maurice.

I'm also reading short stories from all over the place like a mad woman because of a fun 2026 short story challenge with prompts. Yesterday I read The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas--still riding high on that one.

I finished The Monastic World: A 1,200 Year History less than five minutes ago, and while it was very interesting and I learned a ton, I'm a bit relieved to have it over. I also read Through Gates of Garnet and Gold yesterday, and I guess now I have a decision to make!

Jumping back into The End of the World as We Know It - an anthology of stories set in the world of The Stand by Stephen King. All from different writers, but not Uncle Steve himself, although with his blessing.

The Isle in the Silver Sea by Tasha Suri. I'm a bit of an old school fantasy reader, and so I've avoided much of the romantasy trend because it has never really seemed to be for me, but I'm really enjoying the fantastic world/magic systems of this book.

I’m listening to Life's Edge: The Search for What It Means to Be Alive by Carl Zimmer and reading The Daughters by Ben Rogers (an Early Reviewers win) and They Will Drown in Their Mothers' Tears by Johannes Anyuru. They’re all great so far.

>6 Watry: Oh, the new Wayward Children is out! Thanks for alerting me. :)

>2 anglemark: That exhibition catalogue looks so neat!

I'm reading Patience, a Daughter of the Mayflower via archive.org and am a bit perplexed by the way the Puritans of 1620 are jumbled with the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. The author apparently knew the history, so I'm not sure why. It's definitely a lot of 1899 middle class American values (which is always a fun part of reading historical fiction from the past - I had the same thought about Betsy-Tacy 2 weeks ago, that it's 1945 values but set in 1902).

On my kindle, I'm still reading Radical Spirits: Spiritualism and Women's Rights in Nineteenth-Century America, by Ann Braude. It's such a great pick from my SantaThing santa. (Kind of depressing to read about what women's rights were being agitated for vs. what certain political figures are calling for right now, though.)

>4 featherbear:

You're reading Plato? May I assume you're not in Texas? https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaeltnietzel/2026/01/08/texas-am-forbids-a-plato...

The Mysterious Mr. Badman: a Yorkshire Bibliomystery, by W. F. Harvey
Choosing Community: Action, Faith, and Joy in the Works of Dorothy L. Sayers, by Christine A. Colón
Common Goal, by Rachel Reid (I blame Jacob Tierney!)

>11 lilithcat: I thought this was because of the gender issues in Symposium, a dialog I read freshman year in college 1967/68 & re-read off & on, most recently last year. My Friday reading of Phaedo was due to its purported influence on Christian concepts of the Afterlife & the immortality of the soul. I found the dialog -- finished reading earlier today -- to be quite bizarre, insofar as I could follow the argument. It ends with the death of the teacher Socrates, corrupter of Athenian youth. Texas A&M administration would undoubtedly approve of this scenario, as well as the proto-Christian elements imagined by Plato (though he has Socrates shrug off the mythological elements at the end if I understood correctly). I shared the following on my bibliographic thread:

Alan Blinder. 01/07/2026: shared link: Texas A&M, Under New Curriculum Limits, Warns Professor Not to Teach Plato. "The university is reviewing courses under new rules restricting teaching about race and gender. Administrators told a philosophy professor to cut some lessons on Plato to comply."

I understand the professor is considering using the NYT article as a substitute discussion topic regarding academic freedom in place of the forbidden Plato.

I'm currently reading an oldie A Dangerous Love by Brenda Joyce part of the DeWarenne series.

>13 featherbear: re: the proto-Christian elements of Plato -
a lot of ink has been spilled on the topic, but I really liked how Ada Palmer approached it throughout Inventing the Renaissance, among many other things she discusses. It's probably intended for those familiar with it but not deeply read, like me, but I thought I'd mention it in case anyone else thought it sounded interesting.

The US edition ebook is almost $40, but today it's on promo for $3.99, if anyone else wants to nab a copy for their kindle: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DNNGRN3C (I wouldn't normally go around sharing kindle promos except this book is so expensive normally and it's relevant to my recommendation.)

>11 lilithcat: Oh the irony!

>15 keristars: Thanks for the tip Mr Bezos, just downloaded Inventing the Renaissance -- though it was the Bart Ehrman book on the sources of the Christian notion of the Afterlife that got me to take a look at Phaedo.* The Palmer book clocks in @757p though so I'm wondering whether I'll be experiencing the beyond before I get around to finishing it. Plus I have >6 Watry: The Monastic World on my wishlist if it gets deep discounted before I'm 80.

*Kind of prefer L Frank Baum's Oz to Plato's recycling mythology if push comes to shove

>17 featherbear: haha, yeah, the Palmer is long. It took me 6 weeks, I think. It's a very casual writing style, much like a chatty blog or social media thread, so I did find it entertaining as well as filling in the gaps of my knowledge/expanding my understanding.

That Ehrman book sounds interesting, too! I've been finding that I'm familiar with a lot of Plato and other important philosophers thanks to my Catholic school upbringing, but why/how I gained the familiarity is lost to the mists of time. I've enjoyed seeing the links and how the medieval thinkers incorporated the classical ideas into Christianity (or made them fit Christian beliefs, to "prove" that Christian doctrine was eternal good, that Plato etc were ok to look to and not totally heathen)

Audio: Evening Class by Maeve Binchy

Text: Two For Sorrow by Nicola Upson

NEXT UP:
Audio: Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir
Text: Time of the Child by Niall Williams