Library of a Librarian

never without a book, endlessly reading

Book Review – The Last House on Needless Street By Catriona Ward

The Last House on Needless Street is about Ted Bannerman, a loner who lives in the house at the end of the cul-de-sac that is Needless Street. It’s the house he grew up in with his mother. Sometimes he goes into the woods behind the house, sometimes he uses a dating website to meet women but theres never a second date.

The Last House on Needless Street is also about Olivia, Ted’s cat, and Lauren, Ted’s daughter, who occasionally visits Ted at the house. Ted’s relationship with each is sometimes volatile. Olivia is a target when he’s drunk and Lauren is a captive ward whose warmth towards her father seems to hide other motivations.

A looming presence in Ted’s life is the memory of his mother, a disgraced nurse, a huge presence in his life, someone he can’t quite live up to. Then there’s Dee a woman who’s searching for the person who kidnapped her sister when they were children and at the minute she has her suspicions about Ted.

If I say anything else, I am going to give everything away. This novel oozes mistrust, and with every sentence, you know, as the reader, that there is a deeper story that you are not seeing, but only getting glimpses of. It adds to the desire to turn the page wonderfully the suspense continually builds with each chapter, I was desperate to find out what what going on.

The multiple points of view presented allow us to see each character’s thoughts on particular scenes, but we are still left wanting more information about what is going on, finding questions and hungering for answers. I did not think I would love the perspective of a Cat in an adult novel so much but the way it is written here add so much to story, each characters voice is so distinct that you get caught up in them, swept along in the story.

The whole novel has a deep sense of isolation no matter which person’s perspective we are exploring, and it creates a wonderful atmosphere that is deeply unsettling and adds fantastic tension. I devoured this book I just had to know what was happening I could not put it down until I got to the end, and WOW, did the end get me.

If you like psychological horror thrillers, stories that are suspenseful and full of twists and mysteries with unexpected plot turns, this is for you

October 25, 2024
How I Review Books

I know a lot of people are really incredibly professional and detailed about how they review books. They review absolutely everything they read, they review even when they hate the books, happy to lay it all out there for everyone to read, they have metrics and data points and a scoring system and everything.

And that’s cool if that’s what you want to do

I don’t do that

I mostly review books that I’ve enjoyed in some aspect, and I have to admit I am mostly positive, there are times when I’m downright effusive.

There is nothing inherently wrong with either approach, at least, I don’t think so. Others may tell you differently, and that’s okay, it’s the nice part about having opinions they don’t have to be the same.

Let me lay it out for you

I think it takes a lot of effort, and time, and love and work to write a book. If i really don’t like your book I’m probably just not going to say anything about it, unless someone asks me directly what I think about it and then I will let them know what I thought with the caveat, that its just my opinion.

Just because I don’t like a book doesn’t mean it’s not a good book. It just means I didn’t like it for whatever reason. I’ll give you an example.

I hate Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (shock, gasp, the horror) I know right, I’m a terrible person. I had to read it in high school and I flat out did not enjoy it one bit. I found it boring, and overly verby and it felt like nothing actually happened ever. Thats my experience as a reader, albeit one at 16. I understand why its important historically, I can see why other people love her work, but for me its a no.

How does this help you?

It doesn’t

Reviewing is by its very nature a subjective process and it should be. If everyone loved the exact same things in art and literature and music the world would be a very boring place and all those beautiful acts of creation would be totally necessary. How sad would that be.

Back to the point. When I review something it’s because I have something I want to say about it. Because I liked something about it, because it made me question something because it made me laugh, it made me cry it made me think about my life or the world in a different way. Because it left me breathless in horror, in anticipation, in joy in sorrow in stunned silence. Because I just couldn’t get it out of my mind and I had to share it.

With you

October 7, 2024
Library of a Librarian

Its me!

Hello, I’m Emily I’m a librarian, and I read a lot, like a lot, a lot, and I really love sharing all the book bits and pieces with other people, people like you out there in the internet lands reading this who hopefully also loves reading and books and bits and pieces about books.

Two years ago, I started a bookstagram because I got excited about books again, and I just wanted to share that with other people and find good books to read, other people who loved books and who were happy to chat about them.

Now, I still want to do that, but I have found that I would like to be able to be a bit more chatty myself when it comes to my reviews and sometimes my general book opinions, and sharing all the research I put into finding new and old books to read, curating book lists and discovering amazing fiction.

So blog, because the whole video thing looks like it’s very, very much effort, and I write better than I speak, mostly and I like words, I like the act of putting the metaphorical pen to paper to communicate there’s something intimate about it in a way that is lost when you’re just speaking to a camera, at least for me.

So if you like books, and rambly sentences and occasional digressions that I think are fun and sometimes weird, booklists and reviews also the odd cat picture and sometimes a totally non bookish post out of nowhere written by an almost 40 something Australian Librarian then I suppose this is Blog for you,

It’s nice to meet you

September 27, 2024

English