Friday Reads — January 30th, 2026

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

This week, LibraryThing staff are reading:

Tim / @timspalding: The Wright Brothers by David McCullough
Abby / @ablachly: Sleep by Honor Jones
Kristi / @kristilabrie: Katabasis by R.F. Kuang
Lucy / @knerd.knitter: We'll Prescribe You a Cat by Syou Ishida
Zeph / @ZephCraven: The Rest of Our Lives by Benjamin Markovits

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

I've been continuing my random short story reads (all over the place, I am). I'm getting really excited and have been preparing for a February group read of Simon Armitage's translation of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. We'll be reading it over on It's a GoodThing Group Read, a group set up by @TonjaE as a brilliant idea for new members from Goodreads to mingle with LibraryThing members, to get the feel of how it works here.

Anyone can join in.
https://www.librarything.com/topic/378224#n9101561

George Falls Through Time by Ryan Collett and Northern Bull by Michelle Swallow. Two very different books, but equally interesting and entertaining.

Via Kindle:
The Library Book Ch 15- / Susan Orlean
Via Kindle app:
The Burning Earth: an environmental history of the last 500 years ch 10 p 250- / Sunil Amrith
The Gene: an intimate history Pt 2, p 141- / Siddhartha Mukherjee
The Fugitive: In Search of Lost Time, Volume 6 (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) Ch 1 p 57- / Marcel Proust; translation, notes, introduction Peter Collier

Bedtime reading:
Trade paperback:
Kristin Lavrandsdatter pt 1, p 120- / Sigrid Undset; translation & notes Tina Nunnally (Penguin Classics)
Everyman hardcover:
Lavengro Ch XXIX- (George Borrow)

Loosening up this week, reading The Wolf and His King and Captain America Modern Era Epic Collection: The Burden of Dreams, just finished listening to The Art of Libromancy.

@knerd.knitter: We'll Prescribe You a Cat by Syou Ishida

That looks uplifting and quirky, are you enjoying it, Lucy?

>5 Watry: The Art of Libromancy looks mighty intriguing. What is "handselling?"

>7 DebiCates: Handselling is recommending a book in a personal sense rather than than a general or marketing one. So if you are shopping in my bookstore, and you ask me for a recommendation or are carrying similar books, I might grab We'll Prescribe You a Cat and explain why you might like it.

I just finished When Driving Is Not an Option and just started A Psalm for the Wild-Built

>6 DebiCates: That looks uplifting and quirky, are you enjoying it, Lucy?

I am! It is very cute!

>9 norabelle414: just started A Psalm for the Wild-Built

Oh, I just read that, and I enjoyed it a lot!

I read The Clue by Carolyn Wells yesterday and enjoyed the characters Kitty and Rob so much that I dug through my kindle to find something with similar vibes. I ended up choosing The Best of All-Story Love 1929, a selection of stories from that romance pulp magazine.

I've still got Vanguard: How Black Women Broke Barriers, Won the Vote, and Insisted on Equality for All by Martha Jones going, and should finish it soon since the loan expires on Tuesday.

And then I'm still reading Anneke, a Little Dame of New Netherlands on my tablet, slowly.

>11 knerd.knitter: >9 norabelle414: I love that one, too! There's some descriptive bits about a building that I always find to be particularly lovely.

>8 Watry: Aha, I see. I was imagining someone in an Ice Cream truck with that Ice Cream truck music going, driving down my street "handselling" books. And ice cream of course. ha!

>13 keristars: I'm adding it to my TBR now. I mean we all need a pure feel good book now and then. (I often read kid's books for that sweet dopamine hit.)

>9 norabelle414: How did you like When Driving Is Not An Option? I have that next to my bed right now but haven't picked it up to read it yet. Anna Zivarts is a great advocate for bicycling and pedestrians.

Revisiting Interim Errantry

update that I finished the foreword in The Best of All-Story Love 1929 and the first story "Saturday Night and No Date" is a cute little makeover/fake dating story. I really enjoyed it, and the next story "The Timid Vamp" is about a girl newspaper writer who (reluctantly) surprises a shy aviator with a kiss - all for the publicity and paper sales.

Others who enjoy books from 100 years ago, especially with light romance (as in, no sex!) may also like this collection. Editor Lucynka even made sure the illustrations in the pulp mag were reproduced. Her foreword says the love pulps were the best-selling of all the story pulps at the time!

>16 Kyler_Marie: It was great! A quick read. I only gave it 4.5 out of 5 because it's very Seattle-specific, but that won't be a problem for you.

>18 keristars: I enjoy early twentieth century writing, writing felt more articulate then. I like stories without the emphasis on sex, internet, cell phones, social media, and on and on, stories that still have a certain innocence about them--although the flappers were hardly considered that. Still, I like the era. Sounds like you are enjoying it. Is it an ongoing series? Will there be The Best of All-Story Love 1930?

>20 DebiCates: I've asked Lucynka/joked with her about doing 1930, but I'm not sure if she's decided on it yet. 1929 only had 7 issues (57 stories) because it launched near the end of the year, so it wasn't a beast to choose the best.

I suspect if she does 1930, it will be published in December, to allow time to clean up the illustrations, etc.

She blogs fairly regularly about what she finds in the pulps and has a new monthly newsletter at https://lucynka.wordpress.com/, and she's previously edited collections of stories by Beulah Poynter. I believe those are mainly mystery stories.

>21 keristars: What a gem of a find, that blog! I love it when people find a niche and share their quirky but very specific love for it.

I didn't mention it above, but I'm reading something like that right now, Miranda July's It Chooses You I got the book in the mail yesterday (I'm being a buying maniac after 2025's self-imposed No Book Buy), and while adding it to my Library, almost blew through half of it, though that wasn't my intention. Here's the blurb--it is also a sort of niche thing, too, but a niche of living people and the odd and end things they are trying to sell.

In the summer of 2009, Miranda July was struggling to finish writing the screenplay for her much-anticipated second film. During her increasingly long lunch breaks, she began to obsessively read the PennySaver, the iconic classifieds booklet that reached everywhere and seemed to come from nowhere. Who was the person selling the "Large leather Jacket, $10"? It seemed important to find out-or at least it was a great distraction from the screenplay. Accompanied by photographer Brigitte Sire, July crisscrossed Los Angeles to meet a random selection of PennySaver sellers, glimpsing thirteen surprisingly moving and profoundly specific realities, along the way shaping her film, and herself, in unexpected ways. Elegantly blending narrative, interviews, and photographs with July's off-kilter honesty and deadpan humor, this is a story of procrastination and inspiration, isolation and connection, and grabbing hold of the invisible world.

Still reading The Memorist by M.J. Rose

>22 DebiCates: I don't remember how I stumbled upon her, but I guess the interest in the old pulps jives with a lot of what I've liked about "Tattered But Still Lovely" sorts of books over the years. These were stories meant to entertain but not expected to be remembered or preserved unless the writer expanded or republished. They're little windows into everyday life and pop culture. And for the love pulps, they are evidence of the developing romance genre.

I was describing TBSL to someone the other day, and the first thing that came to mind was "we were the kids who read the books chosen for decor in furniture showrooms" (surely i wasn't the only one?? while my parents debated about a new sofa or dresser for centuries, then dragged us to another showroom to compare prices and style) I don't think that's a strictly accurate description of the group, but I did enjoy peeking into the books no one cared about as books anymore, and finding those glimpses of another time.

I think that's what Lucynka Staron is doing, too. Tattered But Still Lovely, only looking at the mostly forgotten pulp magazines and sharing the delight of rediscovering truly fun stories.

It Chooses You sounds interesting! I can't blame July for her curiosity. I love how varied people are, the myriad interests and ways of living. (I honestly start crying when I think of it.)

>24 keristars: I remember those books on show room floors, mostly Reader's Digests! One of the first stories as a teen I fell in love with was in one of my grandmother's Reader's Digests, a true story. They ended up making a quite soppy (I can be very soppy) 70s TV movie of it, "Sunshine." I love thinking of you as a girl, being hauled around by your parents shopping for a sofa (how boring!) and instead finding the joy of all those books as you went along. The classic Reader Kid.

I like that there are those that are keeping alive the old pulp romances (I have a friend that specializes in certain ones). It's akin to the old science fiction pulps that also are growing in reverence. And both are easily identified by their own style of pulp covers. Some of the SciFi ones i wouldn't read on a bus.

July's book would make you cry. It made me feel soft and squishy for my fellow humans, those just trying to live and not knowing how brave and remarkable they are.