Bristol Reads
We created our Bristol Reads collection as a space to allow our library members to develop and grow the love of reading for pleasure. Bristol Reads holds 100s of books and is a collection developed to foreground diverse writers. The collection celebrates a variety of works from international fiction to graphic novels, contemporary poetry and non-fiction books covering cooking to mud-larking to environmental protest.
The Joy of Reading!
Reading for pleasure can improve mental wellbeing and has many physical benefits. Putting time aside to read for pleasure can help ease stress as it can lower ones blood pressure and heart rate, this also means that reading before bed can aid in readiness for a goodnight’s sleep. With the potential to widen vocabulary, improve brain connectivity and increase understandings of empathy, reading is considered to improve wellbeing on so many levels.
Bristol Reads Locations
It can feel difficult to allow time for reading in your down time while studying so we have made space for the Bristol Reads collection in four of our libraries; the Arts and Social Sciences Library, Education Library, Chemistry Library and the Wills Memorial Library. It is now easier to pop in to pick up your next read while travelling across campus or browse during a study break!
Libby App
Listen to audiobooks and read eBooks for free with the Libby App! Simply download and login with your university details to access contemporary fiction and non-fiction from prize winning authors, including many BAME and LGBTQAI+ authors.
Have Any Recommendations?
We want to keep our collection current and of interest to all, so if you have any suggestions for additions to the Bristol Reads collection please let us know by suggesting a purchase.
Staff book recommendations
Butter by Asako Yuzuki
The cult Japanese bestseller about a serial killer gourmet cook and the journalist intent on cracking her case, inspired by a true story. The story takes many twists and turns and is as much of a personal journey of discovery as it is a journalistic investigation. Full of culinary delights and seduction, self-acceptance and feminism, makes for an engrossing read!
Cursed Bread by Sophie Mackintosh
From the Man Booker-nominated author of The Water Cure comes an elegant and hypnotic new novel of obsession that centers on the real unsolved mystery of the 1951 mass poisoning of a French village, when the small town of Pont-Saint-Esprit collectively lost its mind. In this erotic fable of transformation and lesbian desire, Mackintosh creates a complex and atmospheric historical read.
DallerGut Dream Department Store by Lee Mi-Ye
In a mysterious town that lies hidden in our collective subconscious, there's a quaint store where dreams of all kinds are sold . . . A captivating and magical story, this is the first book in a best-selling duology for anyone who needs a break from daily life.
None of the Above: Reflections on Life Beyond the Binary by Travis Alabanza
In None of the Above, Travis Alabanza considers seven phrases people have directed at them about their gender identity that have stayed with them over the years. Some are deceptively innocuous, some deliberately loaded or offensive, some celebratory; sentences that have impacted them for better and for worse. This work of reflection speaks to the broader issues raised by a world that insists that gender must be a binary.
