I have been compiling this list of books for a while. It took me ages to finish it because I kept reading excellent books that I wanted to include.

It’s a fairly mixed selection. There’s a mix of genres and it includes fiction and non-fiction, all published in the last five years. It’s just a list of books that I’ve read and enjoyed enough to want to share them with other people.

The one major thing they all have in common is that they’re all books I borrowed from the library and read as a real physical book. Physical books are my favourite – they never run out of battery, they don’t ask for your password or if you want accept cookies and the only tracking device is the bookmark you use to hold your place.

I can promise you that this list was created by a human; all of these books exist as physical books that were read one page at a time by me.

Everything on this list is available for free anywhere in Ireland with your library card. Libraries are brilliant. Not only do they offer shelves and shelves of free books, but you can also order up a book and have it delivered to the library of your choice from anywhere in the country.

The only downside of this is that sometimes it can take a few weeks or months before you eventually get your hand on a particular book, (I am currently the 688th person of 979 waiting to borrow Yesteryear) but while you wait, you can wander through the shelves and pick something else that catches your eye.

That’s how I came upon Love & Other Human Errors by Bethany Clift; an author that was completely new to me. It was that wonderful title that caught my interest. It’s a romance novel set in the near future with an element of AI, but not scary AI. It’s a sweet love story and I really liked the characters, so much so that I’m hoping for a sequel and I’m not usually a sequel’s girl. I’d also settle for a tv adaptation, which is could be possible as Clift used to work in tv.

I suspect her first novel was written during the pandemic. It’s very different to the sweet romance novel. Last One At The Party is a post-pandemic story, set in 2023 when a killer virus wipes out basically the entire human race, give or take. What would you do if you were the last person alive in London? I loved the format and structure of the novel and really enjoyed the immediacy of the writing and the intense questions it asked and answered. It felt timely and terrifying.

Sea of Tranquility by Emily St John Mandel is set in a future where time travel is real and has been discovered by a US government agency who then immediately declared illegal. This means they are the only ones allowed to do it. It is mostly set in the future, but also in the past and it’s also about living on the moon. All the different elements fit together beautiful to form a great story, beautifully told. It is full of big ideas that stretch your mind in interesting ways.

One of the characters is an author who has written a book about the aftermaths of a pandemic and is now living through another pandemic. (A situation not completely dissimilar to Mandel’s experience of living through covid after writing the brilliant Station Eleven about a post-pandemic world and the few surviving inhabitants)

The Truth About Lisa Jewell by Will Brooker is another book I spotted it in the library and picked it up without knowing anything about it. I’m so glad I did because this book is bonkers and I loved it so much. It’s a non-fiction deep dive into the work of the best-selling author Lisa Jewell.

If you are not familiar with Lisa Jewell, she is a British author who published her first novel in 1999 and has published a new book every year since 2007. I knew her as a highly prolific author who wrote twisty, contemporary crime novels where terrible things happen to people who are usually hiding dark secrets.

I have been reading her novels for years. They are total page-turners. The plot doesn’t always stand up to much scrutiny after you closed the book but when you’re immersed in the story, they carry you along nicely. There’s always a mystery or a crime at the centre of them, and two or three separate time-lines so the whole book tells both the story of how we got here, and what happened next.

With Jewel’s permission, Will Brooker spends a year following her progress on a new novel. She sends him her work in progress throughout the year. (The book is The Family Remains, a sequel to The Family Upstairs.) He also looks back at her 20 year career, the changing nature of her books and the themes she explores. He starts out as a fan and getting to know her and watching her work seems to make him even more of a fan.

The year he spends following her is 2021, so it’s in the midst of the covid pandemic with changing lockdown rules, very little socialising and practically no travel. I found that aspect of it interesting as well – a reminder of that weird year written in real time.

The book is almost a thesis on Lisa Jewell but we also get to see the different stages of novel writing, as well as a developing friendship between the writer and his subject. It’s an interesting look behind the scenes of a bestselling, highly prolific, popular writer. You probably need some familiarity with her work to really appreciate this book, even if it’s just the two books that feature here which are the book she’d just published and publicising and the one she’s writing.

Reading this book set me off on a bit of a Lisa Jewell binge. I read a lot of her earlier books which are more mysteries than crime fiction. I also discovered that she has written a novel featuring Marvel’s Jessica Jones called Breaking the Dark.

I love Jessica Jone, partly because I love Kristen Ritter who plays her. (I love her most as Chloe in Don’t Trust the B—— in Apt. 23 which is currently on Disney+ and still ridiculous and hilarious.)

Breaking the Dark is very much a Lisa Jewell book. It starts in New York but we quickly move to a charming English village that is hiding dark secrets. It’s a fun read.

For something completely different, and a different type of superhero, let me tell you about When the dust settles: stories of love, loss and hope from an expert in disaster by Lucy Easthope. This is a memoir by disaster expert Lucy Easthope who I first encountered in a New Yorker interview, via Jess Stanley’s excellent newsletter READ. LOOK. THINK.

After reading that interview, I immediately put this book on my library reserves list. Easthope writes about all sorts of disasters from around the world, beginning with the 1989 Hillsborough disaster which she saw happening live on tv as a child. The book takes in the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004, the London bombings in 2005, the Grenville fire in 2017, floods around the UK, as well as the beginning of the covid pandemic. She gives the reader an amazing “behind the scenes” of these disasters, as well as an insight into the things that can be done to help people and communities recover from them. This seems to be where and when people are most often failed by governments. I found it all utterly fascinating.

Lucy Easthope has also written a second book about responding to disasters called The Recovery Myth: The Plans and Situated Realities of Post-Disaster Response. It offers strategies for big, weather-related disasters such as floods or fires, and also personal disasters such as grief or long-term illness. If you want such advice on preparing for a possible fuel-crisis, you could do worse than looking to this book.

There’s Been A Little Incident by Alice Ryan is either a very funny book that kept making me cry or a sad book that kept making me laugh. Either way I enjoyed it immensely. (Though full disclosure, I read this book as I was getting over my last bout of covid so it’s possible that all my emotions were very close to the surface at the time.)

There’s a big chaotic Irish family at the heart of this book, who all love each other very much. It’s about grief and there’s also a bit of a mystery. It’s mostly set in Dublin and deals with Irish men and their feelings, and in a way, looks at how Ireland has changed in the last 30 years or so. It is laugh out loud funny and I felt great affection for all the characters. It’s fun and melancholy and I was sorry to finish it.

Africa is Not a County by Diplo Faloyin chronicles the story of Africa; beginning with the continent being carved up by the colonisers in the 1800s, up to the present day. It covers white saviours from Bob Geldof to Stacey Solomon via KONY 2012. It talks about the many stolen artefacts currently on display in Western museums. (You know the way animal lovers often feel a bit queasy about zoos? This book will make you feel like that about museums.)

 The final chapter looks at recent history, and by recent I mean in the last few years, including movements and revolutions in Nigeria, Algeria, Namibia, Uganda, Tanzania and Botswana as well as sections on Nollywood and Afrobeats.

It’s a very enjoyable read. The writing has an informal, chatty style (the author also wrote for VICE) and the book is really well structured. It’s also surprisingly funny considering the subject matter. This is not a dry history text, it feels very current and very much alive. I can’t recommend it highly enough .

What would you do if you arrived home one Saturday night after a night out with friends and discovered a husband that you’d never meet before? While he seems to know all about you, you don’t even know his name and then you discover that when he goes up into the attic, he is replaced by an equally mysterious husband. This is what happens to Lauren in The Husbands by Holly Gramazio. The attic keeps delivering an endless supply of brand new husbands, and every time a new one emerges, Lauren’s flat, job and other relationships are altered by the presence of this man in her life. It’s a very clever novel, handled with a light touch that make is seem easy and effortless. It’s about choice and the importance of romantic relationships and how being one half of a couple changes a person. In one way it’s a fun, trippy novel, full of what ifs? At the same it makes you see the world a little bit differently and wonder what you’d do in Lauren’s position.

Careless People: A story of where I used to work by Sarah Wynn-Williams is about Facebook and the author’s experience working there from 2011 to 2017. She also writes a little bit about her life before joining Facebook and what drew her so strongly to the organisation that she pestered them to give her a job that didn’t even exist at the time. This gives you some sense of the type of person Wynn-Williams is. She grew up in New Zealander and was a diplomat before going to work at Facebook. It’s fair to say she’s not your typical tech worker.

The writing is clear and concise, and the story is a complete rollercoaster. Facebook and the people who work there seem truly awful. There are so many points in the book when I thought this must be the things that makes her leave, she has to leave after this and yet, over and over again, she continues working there. (Part of that was because of American work culture and the fact that she was reliant on the company for her work visa and her health insurance. Which made me wonder how many others are stuck in a similar situation dealing with equally horrendous work situations?)

From an Irish perspective, it’s really interesting to see the lobbying side of things. Enda Kenny makes an appearance at Davos and discusses the Ireland’s role in regulating tech companies in Europe, or not as the case may be. All of which feels very relevant right now with discussions around age-verification and protecting children from these platforms. It’s a very readable book that offers a stark look into the work practices of this tech company.

That’s it, that’s my selection of books I’ve enjoyed enough to write about. Let me know if there’s any there that you loved (or hated), or any that you feel tempted to pick up. Also if you have any suggestions for books you think I’d like based on this list, I would love to hear them. The list of books I want to read is long but there’s always room for more!