Explore the Love to Read Collection: fiction, non-fiction and fun books!

Presenting the Love to Read Collection in the Library Cafe: image of book display, comforable seating and low table

We are thrilled to announce the creation of a new ‘Love to read’ Collection in the Templeman Library, housed in the Library Café. We’ve created a cosy space for you to curl up with a good book, and there’s more to come! Let us know what you think about the space and how you’d like to see the collection develop through our feedback board.

We’ve started to build a diverse range of fiction and non-fiction books – because let’s face it, sometimes it’s good to take a break! There are novels, best-selling books, self-help titles and some e-books too. Borrow the books as usual for a new adventure and / or a great escape!

Here are some of our favourites in the collection:

Earthlings by Sayaka Murata:

As a child, Natsuki doesn’t fit into her nuclear family. Her best friend Piyyut is a plush toy hedgehog from the planet Popinpobopia who has enlisted her in a special quest to save the Earth. One summer, her cousin Yuu confides to Natsuki that he is an extraterrestrial, and Natsuki starts to wonder if she might be an alien too. Later, as an adult living quietly in an asexual marriage, Natsuki feels stifled by the society she deems a “baby factory” and wonders if there is more to life and what it might take to escape the earthlings.

To paradise by Hanya Yanagihara:

Spanning three centuries and three different versions of the American experiment, an unforgettable cast of characters are united by their reckonings with the qualities that make us human fear, love, shame, need, and loneliness.

Mayflies by Andrew O’Hagan:

Everyone has a Tully Dawson: the friend who defines your life. In the summer of 1986, in a small Scottish town, James and Tully ignite a brilliant friendship based on music, films and the rebel spirit. With school over and the locked world of their fathers before them, they rush towards the climax of their youth: a magical weekend in Manchester, the epicentre of everything that inspires them in working-class Britain. There, against the greatest soundtrack ever recorded, a vow is made: to go at life differently. Thirty years on, half a life away, the phone rings. Tully has news–news that forces the life-long friends to confront their own mortality head-on. What follows is an incredibly moving examination of the responsibilities and obligations we have to those we love. Mayflies is at once a finely-tuned drama about the delicacy and impermanence of human connection and an urgent inquiry into some of the most important questions of all: Who are we? What do we owe to our friends? And what does it mean to love another person amidst tragedy?

Tomorrow sex will be good again : women and desire in the age of consent by Katherine Angel:

1976. Michel Foucault teased ‘tomorrow sex will be good again’. Katherine Angel considers how we might fulfil that promise with this provocative, elegantly written analysis of female desire, consent and sexuality in the age of MeToo. Crossing science and popular culture; pornography and literature; debates on consent and feminism, Angel challenges our assumptions about women’s desire and urges us to remake our thinking about sex, pleasure, and autonomy without any illusions about perfect self-knowledge.

Attend an event of the power of reading

We will be hosting a talk later this term on the power of reading and benefits it brings led by our wonderful literary fellows – watch out for more information on the event to be shared soon!

Take part in our Autumn term book swap

Tues 1 Nov and Wed 2 Nov 11-14.00, Welcome Hall, Templeman Library 

Fast on the heels of our previous book swap event’s popularity we are running another book swap over the course of two days in November. So if you have any titles you would like to pass on or just to pick up a new read then do come along. Please do use the book swap drop bins in the library to donate any titles you no longer need (leisure reads only please).

We’d like you to help shape the collection: recommend a book that you want us to buy.

3 responses to “Explore the Love to Read Collection: fiction, non-fiction and fun books!

  1. The Drill Hall Library at the Medway Campus has a ‘Lifestyle’ section located in the Group zone, for all those who love to read for pleasure.

  2. Please make it available to Medway students at the Drill Hall Library as well..

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