For the latest in our podcast series, recorded just before the Library building closed, we are delighted to welcome musician, broadcaster and editor Jarvis Cocker. 

Jarvis’s music career has spanned three decades, including major hits with the band Pulp, which he founded while still at school. A regular radio presenter he has also been involved in recent years with publishing house Faber & Faber and books and reading have always been part of Jarvis’s life.

For his podcast, Jarvis introduced five books that that have been particularly influential to him:

The first is Grimm’s Household Tales. For Jarvis there was something particularly appealing about the way the tales were collected rather than written from scratch.

In complete contrast is Richard Brautigan’s Sombrero Fallout, a chance find picked up in a secondhand book shop.

Jarvis’ next choice The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers, made an equal impression as characters imagine their lives away from the drab world they inhabit, and find ways to relate and pour out their feelings.

Homo Deus by Yuval Noah Harari “haunted me for quite a time”. Jarvis had chosen it on holiday “but it isn’t beach reading and it actually really frightened me”.

Jarvis’s final podcast choice is The Book of the Secrets by Bagwhan Shree Rajneesh. He had been fascinated by the lurid Netflix documentary The Wild, Wild Country - about the movement creating a lavish settlement in Oregon. But he was more intrigued about the unanswered question of why the movement was so popular and what it had to say about approaching the mental overstimulation of 21st century life.

During his podcast, Jarvis reflected on a visit he made to The London Library recently and comments on how discovery, chance finds and serendipity have always informed Jarvis’ reading and helped fire his imagination. His podcast gives a fascinating and highly absorbing insight into some of the books he has found along the way.

Listen here

The London Library's Trustees have been keeping busy during lockdown and have put together a list of the books they've been reading and would recommend. The eclectic list has something for everybody and ranges from Shakespeare to Putin to a new coming of age novel about a struggling journalist in his 30s.

• Daisy Goodwin: The Splendid and the Vile: a saga of Churchill, family and defiance during the Blitz.by Erik Larsson
• Sophie Murray: Inge’s War by Svenja O’Donnell (out in August)
• Andrew Popplewell: The Great Sea by David Abulafia
• Howard Davies: Mr Tasker's Gods by T F Powys
• Alan Aubry: Shakespeare’s sonnets and Montaigne’s essays
• David Reade: Chivalry and manners in Early Modern England by Keith Thomas
• Philip Broadley: The Rules of Contagion: why things spread and why they stop by Adam Kucharsk
• Philip Broadley: Putin’s People: how the KGB took back Russia and then took on the West by Catherine Belton
• Isabelle Dupuy: The Dumas Club by Arturo Perez Reverte
• Maria Zhivitskaya: Theft by Luke Brown
• David Lough: Jutland 1916 by Nigel Steel & Peter Hart
• Peter Stewart: Maigret in New York by Georges Simenon
• Daisy Goodwin: One Two Three Four: The Beatles in Time by Craig Brown
• Frank Lawton: Frank Ramsey: An Excess of Powers
• Giles Milton: Summer Isles: a sea voyage by Philip Marsden

Happy reading!

Please find some guidance for using Overdrive below, if you can't find what you're looking for please visit help.overdrive.com or email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Using the Libby app

The Libby app is the easiest way to get started with digital books and audiobooks. Install the Libby app from the app store on your Android, iOS or Windows 10 device. Or visit libbyapp.com in your Chrome, Firefox, Safari or Edge browser.

In Libby, follow the prompts to find The London Library and sign in with your membership number and PIN.

Browse our collection and borrow a title. Borrowed titles appear under Shelf > Loans and download to the app automatically when you're on Wi-Fi, so you can read them when you’re offline. From your Loans, you can tap tap 'Open Audiobook' or 'Open Magazine' to start reading or listening to that title. Tap 'Manage Loan' to see options like Renew and Return.

Note that the ‘recommend to library’ feature that tells staff at The London Library about titles you would like to be able to read is not available in the Libby app – that feature is only available using a web browser by going to londonlibrary.overdrive.com - see ‘Using Overdrive on a computer’ below.

Using Overdrive on a computer

Use these steps to borrow and enjoy digital titles from your library on your Windows or Mac computer. NOTE: If you're using a Chromebook™ or Windows 8 and up, you may be able to use the new Libby app or the original OverDrive app to borrow and enjoy digital titles from your library.

STEP 1: Go to londonlibrary.overdrive.com

STEP 2: Sign in with the same email and password used to register as a member.

STEP 3: After you borrow a title, you can: read, watch, or listen to a title right in your browser, download an ebook, then use free Adobe Digital Editions software to transfer it to a supported ereader or download an audiobook then use OverDrive's free desktop app for Windows to transfer it to a supported MP3 player.

Using Overdrive on an ereader

STEP 1: Install Adobe Digital Editions (ADE) on your computer: www.adobe.com/products/digital-editions.html

STEP 2: Connect your ereader to your computer.

STEP 3: On your computer, open your library's digital collection and borrow an ebook.

STEP 4: Click Download for the borrowed ebook.If prompted, authoriSe ADE with a free Adobe ID or an OverDrive account.

STEP 5: To transfer an ebook to your ereader, drag and drop it from your ADE library into your ereader, which should appear on the left under "Devices."