Friday Reads — March 13th, 2026

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

This week, LibraryThing staff are reading:

Abby / @ablachly: Like Family by Erin O. White
Chris Catalfo / @ccatalfo: Blank Space: A Cultural History of the Twenty-First Century by W. David Marx
Lucy / @knerd.knitter: The City and Its Uncertain Walls by Haruki Murakami
Zeph / @ZephCraven: Deep House: The Gayest Love Story Ever Told by Jeremy Atherton Lin

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

Commute reading: The Green Man's war by Juliet McKenna. The seventh instalment in this series. It's not great literature but pretty entertaining.
Bedtime reading: Asterix i Lusitanien by Fabcaro and Didier Conrad. Both Uderzo and Goscinny may be dead since many years, but the Astérix saga continues. Not as good as the original albums, though.
And I'm still listening to: Gösta Berlings saga by Selma Lagerlöf.

Currently I'm working through two books: Toscanini: Musician of Conscience by Harvey Sachs and It Can't Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis. The Lewis novel was published about 90 years ago but is arguably more relevant today than when it was published.

Via Kindle:
The Red and the Black: A Chronicle of 1830 = Le Rouge Et Le Noir (Modern Library Classics) / Stendahl; translation Burton Raffel (Pt 1, Ch 19-)
Via Kindle app:
Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World / Tom Holland (Pt 1, Ch 2-)
Finding Time Again: In Search of Lost Time, Volume 7 (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) / Marcel Proust, translation, notes & introduction Ian Patterson (p 152-)
Hardcover remainder:
The Obscene Bird of Night / José Donoso; translation Hardie St. Martin & Leonard Mades (Pt 3)

Bedtime reading:
Hardcover:
The Romany Rye. Everyman's Library No. 120 / George Borrow (Ch III-)
Trade pbk:
Kristin Lavransdatter: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition) / Sigrid Undset; translation & notes Tina Nunally (Book 2: The Wife)

Finished 2 books the previous week I enjoyed: The MANIAC / Benjamin Labatut & The Gene: An Intimate History / Siddhartha Mukherjee, so I recommend both.

I started Susan Coolidge's A Little Country Girl today, and oh! the first chapter has such gorgeous descriptions. I hope it continues as delightfully - I expect it might, since I enjoyed her Katy Carr series so much.

I'm still plodding through A Daughter of the Huguenots and Sacred Liberty, too. Decided last week to not give up on that one just yet.

>5 keristars: Interesting! I have one more to go in Coolidge's Carr Family series, and have thought I would read others by her, eventually. Good to know this one is so enjoyable.

I'm reading Thirteen Ways to Kill Lulabelle Rock by Maud Woolf on paper and Glutton: The Multi-Course Life of a Very Greedy Boy by Ed Gamble on audio (narrated by the author).

>6 AbigailAdams26: Candace, the main character, is about 16, I think. From what I can tell, Coolidge has one other novel (Eyebright), and the rest are collections of short stories and poems. I think those are all meant for younger readers than A Little Country Girl or the last 3 Katy Carr, but I haven't looked too closely to be certain. I'm not as interested in the books for much younger readers, so I'm not sure if I'll pick any of those up. (Then again, I was surprised by how much I enjoyed Bessie at the Sea-Side, though it's meant for reading with young children.)

I rather wish she'd written a novel for adults. I would love to see it. Though, I suppose, Clover and In the High Valley have a nice general audience appeal.

Butterfly Effects by Seanan McGuire is top of my pile. However, I am doing a two-day printmaking workshop this weekend so may not have much time for reading. My first priority is finding an appropriate picture to work from!

>5 keristars: I’m a sucker for gorgeous descriptions. Not that I need more TBRs.

For class, I’m reading Lincoln at Cooper Union. This class is billed as the Civil War, but I’m getting such a good education in the century that led up to it.

For fun, I’m re-reading some of the Vorkosigan Saga, presently The Vor Game.

As well, I’m researching heraldic crests, and I’m rambling in Fairbairn’s, A Complete Guide to Heraldry, and Heraldry: sources, symbols and meaning. Only finding fragments of what I need, so I’ve got two more on order from the library and another from AbeBooks.

I'm reading an ARC of No Man's Land by Richard K. Morgan, The Eagle of the Ninth by Rosemary Sutcliff, and I'm alternating listening to David Tennant read How to Break a Dragon's Heart by Cressida Cowell and Rachel Elizabeth Smith read Amal El-Mohtar's Seasons of Glass and Iron.

>10 2wonderY: If you feel like putting it on your list, it's a fairly short book, at least! :)

I would also recommend What Katy Did Next by Coolidge - it's from the Americans Abroad genre and genuinely funny at parts.

Your class continues to sound interesting! And seems not unlike my own steady backwards chronology as I read about the 1880s and realize i need to read about the 1860s to make sense of some things... which requires more understanding of the 1830s, etc. 😆

Currently reading Mother's Day, Muffins, and Murder by Sara Rosett a cozy mystery