National Year of Reading 2026: Library Customers Share Their Best Reads
For the National Year of Reading 2026, we asked library customers through our newsletter to share their book recommendations!
From nature-writing and well-being to historical fiction and children’s literature. We were amazed by the variety of books they’ve been reading! Our wonderful library customers shared why they loved reading them and why you will too.
All the books are available to reserve online with your library card and pick them up at your local library. Or borrow digital copies on BorrowBox – all you need is your library card and PIN.
Explore our library customers’ National Year of Reading recommendations!
Sue from Honiton Library recommends:
“Moving and endearing, but with life-changing information which affected me deeply. All landowners should read it. So much change for good can be done with so little action.”
Borrow from the library catalogue here, or on BorrowBox here.
Ed from Paignton Library recommends:
“A gentle manifesto to help get you through winter, both seasonal and personal ones. When nature beckons its animals, insects and plants to hibernate each year, why do we humans expect ourselves to be as productive as we are in those long summer days?
I come back to this book every year for a reminder of what we stand to gain by heeding winter’s call for rest, reflection and recharge. Let this book change how you winter.”
Borrow from the library catalogue here, or on BorrowBox here.
Kate from Exeter Library recommends:
Endemic: Exploring the Wildlife Unique to Britain by James Harding-Morris
“Very well written, much more accessible than I was expecting, and loads of fascinating info.”
Borrow from the library catalogue here.
Danae from Kingsbridge Library recommends:
The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah
“Best book I’ve read for a long time, the power of two sisters during war struck France, very powerful.”
Borrow from the library catalogue here, or on BorrowBox here.
Linda from Sidmouth Library recommends:
“Lots of breathing exercises which have improved my wellbeing. Very informative and put over in a light and enjoyable manner. Well worth a read.”
Borrow from the library catalogue here, or on BorrowBox here.
Michele from Barnstaple Library recommends:
“A perfect book to read out loud to 7-year-olds (and their brothers and sisters listening in.) Jane and Michael love their strict nanny who leads them to marvellous adventures. Do not be put off by some stereotypes typical of early 20th-century England. These can be explained as anachronisms to children. And although 90 years old now, these books communicate their vivid imaginary exploits to today’s children. They also give an amusing picture of middle-class Londoners in the 1930s, with maids, a cook, a garden man, Dad going off to the City and Mum busy writing letters, leaving the daily raising of the children to this nanny, practically perfect in every way.”
Borrow from the library catalogue here, or on BorrowBox here.
Millicent from Torquay Library recommends:
“It makes you feel a part of the group the story centres around, whilst also telling the history from the time and setting as well as the matriculation of the first women into Oxford University and the different rules they had to follow compared to the men, and how society reacted to women being allowed to undertake a university degree.”
Borrow from the library catalogue here, or on BorrowBox here.
Helena from Torrington Library recommends:
Spring: The Story of a Season by Michael Morpurgo
“A personal story of spring and all it means. With children having fun working in the countryside, and the struggles and happiness of nature and animals. A lovely, gentle read ideal for everyone.”
Borrow from the library catalogue here.
Peter from Exeter Library recommends:
The Glass Bead Game by Hermann Hesse
“I first read Hesse’s ‘The Glass Bead Game’ around 1971 to ’72, partly on East Finchley Tube Station… Between jobs and about to start working as an Assistant Probation Officer in the Elephant and Castle area of London, having not had an education after 11 years old. In 1970s London, rife with racism and revolution, this book portraying the 23rd-century country of ‘Castalia’ with its merit based education system, intrigued me as it reflected my desire to exist within, as Dr Martin Luther King Junior put it, (paraphrased), “… a society where judgment is by the content of the character and not by the colour of one’s skin…”
“…’The Glass Bead Game’ took my young soul to where potential was searched out and given, whatever their economic background, the chance to get a good education and to contribute to society in whatever way they saw fit, rather than that society providing preordained decisions about what they should do in order to be allowed to exist, rather than to freely give.
This book, therefore, gave things that most good books tend to give in one form or another to their readers, namely: a good helping of inspiration, a credible landscape in which to roam or hide in; an escape, an affinity of ethics, a good plot and a descriptive style that captured and fed the imagination whilst comforting the soul…”
Borrow from the library catalogue here, or on BorrowBox here.
