NHFT virtual book club meeting #30 - No Good Deed

After our visit to the Ashokan Reservoir, in upstate New York, with John Langan's delightfully scary The Fisherman, we are returning to more familiar territory for our 30th book club read, David Jackson's UK set thriller, One Good Deed.

Elliott has never thought of himself as a hero. Until one dark night he meets Rebecca, a scared and vulnerable young woman who needs his help. There's a man harassing her, following her; would he mind pretending to be her boyfriend, just while she walks home, to put him off?

And that is that - just a favour for a stranger - until there is a knock at Elliott's door. It's the man who was following Rebecca. He claims he's her ex-boyfriend, but it's clear that he's been stalking her. He's obsessed, dangerously so. He wants Rebecca, and he will do anything to have her.

When Elliott eventually tries to tell him the truth, the man doesn't believe him. The only way to save himself is to get Rebecca to explain. There's just one problem: Rebecca is nowhere to be found. And now it looks like one good deed will cost Elliott everything...

‘One Good Deed is an addictive, fast-paced and suspenseful thriller. If you like your thrillers action-packed and nail-bitingly tense and/or you love a cat-loving antihero to root for, One Good Deed should be at the top of your shopping list.’ Kelly Van Damme (Goodreads)

We'll be meeting on Thursday 14th of December via MS Teams where we will be discussing the novel. You can find the link via the Events Calendar on the Staff Room.

Hope to see you there... 

NHFT virtual book club meeting #29 - The Fisherman

Following on from our visit to Japan and the world of the gig economy in Kikuko Tsumara's There's no such thing as an easy job, things are taking a darker turn in our creepy Halloween read (and Bram Stoker award winner), The Fisherman by John Langan.

In upstate New York, within the woods, Dutchman’s Creek flows out of the Ashokan Reservoir. Steep-banked and fast-moving, it offers the promise of fine fishing, and of something more, a possibility too fantastic to be true.

When Abe and Dan, two widowers who have found solace in each other’s company and a shared passion for fishing, hear rumours of the Creek and what might be found there, the remedy to both their losses, they dismiss them. Soon, though, the men find themselves drawn into a tale as deep and old as the Reservoir.

It’s a tale of dark pacts, of long-buried secrets, and of a mysterious figure known as Der Fisher: the Fisherman. It will bring Abe and Dan face to face with all that they have lost, and with the price they must pay to regain it.

‘What starts as a slow, melancholy tale gains momentum and drops you headfirst into a churning nightmare from which you might escape, but you’ll never forget” - Richard Kadrey (author)

‘The Fisherman is a treasure, the kind of book you just want to snuggle up and shiver through. I can’t say enough good things about the confidence, the patience, the satisfying cumulative power of this book. It was a pleasure to read from the first page to the last’ - Victor LaValle (author)

We'll be meeting on Thursday 16th of November  via MS Teams where we will be discussing the novel. You can find the link via the Events Calendar on the Staff Room.

Hope to see you there... 

NHFT virtual book club meeting #28 - There's No Such Thing as an Easy Job

Following on from our absinthe soaked visit to fog-shrouded San Francisco in Jonathan Moore's twisty psychological thriller, The Poison Artist, we are moving across the Pacific to Japan in the shape of award winning author Kikuko Tsumura's surreal comic novel, There's No Such Thing as an Easy Job.

A young woman walks into an employment agency and requests a job that has the following traits: it is close to her home, and it requires no reading, no writing – and ideally, very little thinking.

She is sent to a nondescript office building where she is tasked with watching the hidden-camera feed of an author suspected of storing contraband goods. But observing someone for hours on end can be so inconvenient and tiresome. How will she stay awake? When can she take delivery of her favourite brand of tea? And, perhaps more importantly – how did she find herself in this situation in the first place?

As she moves from job to job, writing bus adverts for shops that mysteriously disappear, and composing advice for rice cracker wrappers that generate thousands of devoted followers, it becomes increasingly apparent that she's not searching for the easiest job at all, but something altogether more meaningful...

"An irreverent but thoughtful voice, with light echoes of Haruki Murakami... the book is uncannily timely... a novel as smart as is quietly funny" - Financial Times

'Quietly hilarious and deeply attuned to the uncanny rhythms and deadpan absurdity of the daily grind' - Sharlene Teo

The next meeting will be Thursday the 5th of October at 7pm via MS Teams where we will be discussing the novel. You can find the link via the Events Calendar on the Staff Room.

Hope to see you there...

NHFT virtual book club meeting #27 - The Poison Artist

After our visit to revolutionary France with Madame Tussaud in Edward Carey's Little, we are moving to a contemporary, fog-shrouded San Francisco in the shape of Jonathan Moore's twisty psychological thriller, The Poison Artist.

Caleb Maddox is a toxicologist who just wants to drown his sorrows after an ugly breakup with his girlfriend

At a bar he meets the beautiful and bewitching Emmeline who has a taste for absinthe but then vanishes into the night.

He must find her.

As his search begins, Caleb becomes entangled in a serial-murder investigation. The police have been fishing men from the bay, and the post-mortems are inconclusive. One of the victims vanished from the bar the night Caleb met Emmeline. When questioned, Caleb can’t offer any information, nor does he tell them he’s been secretly helping the city’s medical examiner, an old friend, study the chemical evidence on the victims’ remains. 

The search for the killer soon entwines with Caleb’s hunt for Emmeline, and the closer he gets to each, the more dangerous his world becomes...

'An electrifying read... I haven't read anything so terrifying since Red Dragon.’ Stephen King

The next meeting will be Thursday the 24th of August at 7pm via MS Teams where we will be discussing the novel. You can find the link via the Events Calendar on the Staff Room.

The NHFT Virtual Book Club - the video!

We were really pleased to be asked to take part in the 2023 Northamptonshire Virtual Wellbeing Festival to talk about the virtual book club and our love of reading.

You can find more about all the books we have shared on our blog or watch the video on YouTube from the Wellbeing Festival.

Health Information Week - mental health and wellbeing

It is Health Information Week #HIW2023 and today is all about mental health and wellbeing, which ties in nicely with the Northamptonshire Virtual Wellbeing Festival which started on Monday.

Do you know how the library can support your mental health and wellbeing?

•  Leisure collection: find your summer reading here! A mix of fiction (including the virtual book club books) and non-fiction books supported by the Northamptonshire Health Charitable Fund.
  
  
• Your Health collection: includes how to reduce stress, menopause management and using nature for wellbeing.
  
  
• Lots of other books on topics such as managing stress, anxiety, overcoming depression, men’s  health, being happy and wellbeing (both clinical and non-clinical).
  
  
• Games: alternatively why not try a game in a team meeting for a fun and different way to learn? Try the Working stress game or the Teams that care game.

 Find all these on the library catalogue https://nhft.koha-ptfs.co.uk/

A reading list for Pride Month

June is Pride Month and to celebrate we have put together a reading list of all the resources we have to support our LGBTQ+ colleagues, patients and the wider community.

These are available for all staff and students in Northamptonshire Healthcare and Northampton General Hospital to borrow from the libraries.

The list contains a mixture of clinical, management and healthcare related titles (both in print and electronic), as well as fiction and nonfiction books from our leisure reading collections with an LGBTQ+ theme.

You can find the reading list on our catalogue here.

NHFT virtual book club meeting #26 - Little

After our visit to New Caledonia with Marge Benson and Enid Pretty in Miss Benson's Beetle, we are stepping further back in time to revolutionary France with Edward Carey's Little.

In 1761, a tiny, odd-looking girl named Marie Grosholtz is born in a village in Switzerland. After the death of her parents, she is apprenticed to an eccentric wax sculptor and whisked off to the seamy streets of Paris, where they meet a domineering widow and her quiet, pale son. Together, they convert an abandoned monkey house into an exhibition hall for wax heads, and the spectacle becomes a sensation. 

As word of her artistic talent spreads, Marie is called to Versailles, where she tutors a princess and saves Marie Antoinette in childbirth. But outside the palace walls, Paris is roiling: The revolutionary mob is demanding heads, and... at the wax museum, heads are what they do.

"this is a visceral, vivid and moving novel about finding and honouring one’s talent; about searching out where one belongs and who one loves, however strange and politically fraught the result might be." The Guardian

"Don’t miss this eccentric charmer! Little, by Edward Carey, narrated by Madame Tussaud of waxworks fame, [on] her strange life and times, including the almost fatal French Revolution, a prime season for heads." —Margaret Atwood

The next meeting will be Thursday the 20th of July at 7pm via MS Teams where we will be discussing the novel. You can find the link via the Events Calendar on the Staff Room.

NHFT virtual book club meeting #24 - Ghostwritten

Following our rather tense (and sometimes painful) visit to Syria with former CIA analyst David McCloskey's spy thriller, Damascus Station, we are moving around the globe with David Mitchell's extraordinary debut novel, Ghostwritten.

“Are you what you believe yourself to be?”

Ghostwritten is a novel of nine interconnected stories, taking us to Tokyo, Hong Kong, China, Mongolia, St Petersburg, London, New York and Ireland.

It weaves together a host of characters including a doomsday cult member in Japan, a Mongolian gangster, a woman on a holy mountain who talks to a tree, and a late night New York DJ.

Winner of the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize for the best work of literature, the novel was described as "an astonishing debut" by the Independent and "a dazzling piece of work" by the Washington Post.

The next meeting will be Thursday the 4th of May at 7pm via MS Teams where we will be discussing the novel. You can find the link via the Events Calendar on the Staff Room. 

NHFT virtual book club meeting #21 - The Lido

Following our visit to the rather creepy Eel Marsh House in The Woman in Black, we are off to Brixton to read the altogether sunnier The Lido by Libby Page.

Meet Rosemary, 86, and Kate, 26: dreamers, campaigners, outdoor swimmers.

Rosemary has lived in Brixton all her life, but everything she knows is changing. Only the local lido, where she swims every day, remains a constant reminder of the past and her beloved husband George.

Kate has just moved and feels adrift in a city that is too big for her. She's on the bottom rung of her career as a local journalist, and is determined to make something of it.

But when a local developer attempts to buy the lido for a posh new apartment complex, Rosemary’s fond memories and sense of community are under threat.

As Kate dives deeper into the lido’s history—with the help of a charming photographer—she pieces together a portrait of the pool, and a portrait of a singular woman, Rosemary.

"A joyful celebration of community and friendship " The Observer

The next meeting will be Thursday the 12th of January at 7pm via MS Teams where we will be discussing the novel. You can find the link via the Events Calendar on the Staff Room. 

An updated reading list for Black History Month

October is Black History Month and a couple of years ago we developed a reading list in support of it. We've now updated the list, adding new titles, and these are available for staff and students in Northamptonshire Healthcare and Northampton General Hospital to borrow from the libraries.

The list covers race and racism, fiction from black authors, nonfiction titles from our leisure reading collection, as well as organisational and health care related books.

On the list you'll find titles like "The uncomfortable truth about racism", "Overcoming everyday racism" and David Olusoga's "Black and British: a forgotten history" as well as fiction from black authors like Marlon James and Akwaeke Emezi (writer of the excellent "Freshwater"). 

There are also biographies, like those of Walter Tull and Michelle Obama as well as classics like "The Colour Purple", "Beloved" and "If Beale Street Could Talk", books on cookery, and more clinically focused titles. We hope there is something for everyone on the list.

You can find the reading list on our catalogue here.

Our leisure reading collections are on the move

The Library has a great collection of leisure reading titles, both fiction and non-fiction, covering a broad
variety of topics and genres.

We have moved a large selection of the stock between the different libraries to enable everyone to access a different set of titles at each of the sites.

Of course, you can find all our leisure titles on the library catalogue, but sometimes browsing is more satisfying and this gives all our users the chance to peruse a different set of books.

With the summer here, it is the perfect opportunity for you to find a great read you can enjoy in the sunshine... 

NHFT virtual book club - our next read is The Illumination of Ursula Flight

Following our visit to contemporary Japan in Sayaka Murata's Convenience Store Woman, for our next read we are stepping back in time to the 1600s with The Illumination of Ursula Flight by Anna-Marie Crowhurst.

Born on the night of an ill-auguring comet just before Charles II's Restoration, Ursula Flight has a difficult future written in the stars.

Against the custom of the age she begins an education with her father, who fosters in her a love of reading, writing and astrology.

Following a surprise meeting with an actress, Ursula yearns for the theatre and thus begins her quest to become a playwright despite scoundrels, bounders, bad luck and heartbreak.

'...offers a joyous romp through Restoration England, with a heroine who lingers long in the imagination after the final page.' - The Guardian

The next meeting will be Thursday the 31st of March at 7pm via MS Teams where we will be discussing the novel. You can find the link via the Events Calendar on the Staff Room.

Hope to see you there.

NHFT virtual book club - our next read is The Bees

Following our encounter with PT Barnum in 19th century New York in The Mermaid we are going somewhere completely different for our first read of 2022, a bee hive, in The Bees by Laline Paull

Born into the lowest class of her society, Flora 717 is a sanitation bee, only fit to clean her orchard hive. Living to accept, obey and serve, she is prepared to sacrifice everything for her beloved holy mother, the Queen.

But Flora is not like other bees… 🐝

Shortlisted for the Bailey's Women's Prize for Fiction, and winner of the Orion Book Award, The Bees is a thriller based on real honey bee biology. 

“Few novels create such a singular reading experience. The buzz you will hear surrounding this book and its astonishing author is utterly deserved.” The New York Times.

The next meeting will be Thursday the 13th of January at 7pm via MS Teams where we will be discussing the novel. You can find the link via the Events Calendar on the Staff Room.

Hope to see you there.

NHFT virtual book club - our next read is The Mermaid

Following our visit to Sheffield in the excellent crime thriller Firewatching by Russ Thomas, our next novel for the 11th NHFT virtual book club will take us to 19th century America, and the world of P.T. Barnum in The Mermaid by Christina Henry.

Once there was a mermaid called Amelia who could never be content in the sea, a mermaid who longed to know all the world and all its wonders, and so she came to live on land.

Once there was a man called P. T. Barnum, a man who longed to make his fortune by selling the wondrous and miraculous, and there is nothing more miraculous than a real mermaid.

Amelia agrees to play the mermaid for Barnum and walk among men in their world, believing she can leave anytime she likes. But Barnum has never given up a money-making scheme in his life, and he’s determined to hold on to his mermaid.

"Wild things ought to be free. They can't belong to anybody.”

The next meeting will be Thursday the 2nd of December at 7pm via MS Teams where we will be discussing the novel. You can find the link via the Events Calendar on the Staff Room.

Hope to see you there.

NHFT virtual book club - our next read is Firewatching

Following our  immersion in the myths of ancient Greece with our reading of Circe by Madeline Miller, our next novel for the 10th NHFT virtual book club will be the Sheffield set crime thriller Firewatching by Russ Thomas.

A body is found bricked into a wall of the Old Vicarage. From the state of the hands, it’s clear the dead man was buried alive. When the man is connected to an old missing person’s case, Detective Sergeant Adam Tyler is called.

After an ‘incident’, Tyler needs this case to go well in order to prove himself and get his career back on track. But he soon discovers that he has a connection to the case that hopelessly compromises him. 

Meanwhile, someone in the city knows exactly what happened to the body. Someone who is watching Tyler closely. Someone with an unhealthy obsession with fire . . .

The next meeting will be Thursday the 28th of October at 7pm via MS Teams where we will be discussing the novel. You can find the link via the Events Calendar on the Staff Room.

Hope to see you there.

NHFT virtual book club - our next read is Circe

Following on from our reading of Brother of the More Famous Jack by Barbara Trapedo, our next novel for the NHFT virtual book club will be Circe by Madeline Miller.

In the house of Helios, god of the sun and mightiest of the Titans, a daughter is born. But Circe is a strange child - not powerful, like her father, nor viciously alluring like her mother. Turning to the world of mortals for companionship, she discovers that she does possess power - the power of witchcraft, which can transform rivals into monsters and menace the gods themselves.

Drawing from Homer's Odyssey, Circe is epic of family rivalry, palace intrigue, love and loss, as well as a celebration of indomitable female strength in a man's world.

“Think a novel based on Greek mythology isn’t for you?  Just wait.  Miller’s spell builds slowly, but by the last page you’ll be in awe.  In prose of dreamlike simplicity, she reimagines the myth of Circe, the sun god’s unloved daughter who went on to invent witchcraft and enchant Homer’s Odysseus." People

The next meeting will be Thursday the 23rd of September at 7pm via MS Teams where we will be discussing the novel. You can find the link via the Events Calendar on the Staff Room.

Hope to see you there.

NHFT virtual book club - our next read is Brother of the More Famous Jack

Following on from our reading of Blackberry Wine by Joanne Harris, our next novel for the NHFT virtual book club will be Brother of the More Famous Jack by Barbara Trapedo.

Stylish, suburban Katherine is eighteen when she is propelled into the centre of Professor Jacob Goldman's rambling home and his large eccentric family. As his enchanting yet sharp-tongued wife Jane gives birth to her sixth child, Katherine meets the volatile, stroppy Jonathan and his older, more beautiful brother Roger, who wins her heart. First love quickly leads to heartbreak and sends her fleeing to Rome but, ten years on, she returns to find the Goldmans again.

The next meeting will be Thursday the 12th of August at 7pm via MS Teams where we will be discussing the novel. You can find the link via the Events Calendar on the Staff Room.

Hope to see you there.

Uplifting resources for NHS staff

Heath Education England and the Reading Agency have crowd-sourced a selection of uplifting digital and print resources for NHS staff aimed at boosting your mood.

 The collection includes podcasts, websites, poems and apps.

You can find all the digital resources on the HEE web site.
 

As well as these digital resources, they have also supplied us with copies of 10 print books which we have added to our leisure reading collection.

• Love in Colour by Bolu Babalola
• The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse by Charlie Mackesey
• Three Things About Elsie by Joanna Cannon
• Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi
• The Lido by Libby Page
• Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens
• The Salt Path by Raynor Winn
• Calypso by David Sedaris
• The Lost Spells by Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris
• Happiness FM by Mary Dickins

You can find all the books from our leisure reading collection, both fiction and nonfiction, on our catalogue here.

We hope you enjoy them.

Your summer reading starts here with our new leisure collection

Off on holiday and need a read for the beach? Having your own summer reading challenge? Simply love books?

Last year the Library was successful in a bid to Greenheart to establish a leisure reading collection for staff and thanks to their generosity the collection is now available for staff to enjoy.

You may remember we were asking for ideas for titles and authors to buy for our new leisure collection. We took on your recommendations and ordered almost everything we could from the list of suggestions you kindly gave us. Then we added a few extra titles we thought you might enjoy with all the library staff recommending at least one book they have read and loved.

We now have a great collection of books available at all three of our libraries. Our leisure reading collections encompasses a really wide range of genres, topics, cultures and interests. From literary fiction, family sagas, and sci-fi, to cookery, interior design, biographies and gardening, we hope there is something for everyone.

You can find all of our leisure collection on the library catalogue or you can do it the old fashioned way and pop into the library to browse what is on the shelves...

With good evidence that reading for pleasure improves well being and empathy, and no fines on late books, we hope the library might be your first stop when planning your next read...