Today I’m delighted to feature Meg Anderson, a contemporary fiction author who writes bookish magical realism. Meg’s debut novel, The Memory of Borrowed Books was published this month and is a sweeping, magical ode to community and the stories we leave behind. It follows Claire, a librarian, who discovers a hidden room of unfinished memories—and must find the one that can save her beloved library from closing forever.
Meg is married to her college sweetheart and is a mom to three kids and four very opinionated cats. She lives in Indiana, where she can usually be found folding an unreasonable amount of laundry or reheating the same cup of coffee. She’ll also be the first to reassure you that you can never have too many books, no matter what your bookshelves try to say.
Meg lives with multiple sclerosis, a part of her life but never the whole story. Writing has always been her outlet, and where she first discovered that putting words on the page helped her make sense of the world around her, sparking her love for writing stories. Whether she’s dreaming up her next novel or getting lost in someone else’s, Meg believes in the power of stories to comfort, connect, and create joy—even through life’s hardest chapters.
Over to Meg :
Which five pieces of music/songs would you include in the soundtrack to your life and why?
Hilary Duff – Come Clean: I graduated high school in 2006, which should probably explain this choice all on its own. But Hilary Duff’s music is basically a time machine for me. I actually recently saw her in concert, and the second this song started, I was right back in high school and for a couple hours I got to be that teenage girl again, singing every word without any idea what life had in store for her yet. Turns out nostalgia hits a little differently when you’re pushing forty. It was a very unexpectedly emotional moment getting to visit that version of myself again, even if only for a night.
Christina Perri – A Thousand Years: Yes, I realize I’ve now gone from Hilary Duff straight into Twilight, this list may just be an exercise in exposing all my millennial roots. But I’ve always associated this song with my husband and no, he’s not a vampire. But I love how this song paints this picture of loving someone through all the years and all the versions of yourselves you become. It gets me every time. We’ve built an entire life together, and after everything life has brought us, he’s still the person I’d choose a thousand times over.
Bluey Theme Song: Listen, I have three kids. It would be dishonest to create the soundtrack of my life and pretend Bluey hasn’t provided a significant portion of the background music for the last several years. It has played while I’ve made lunches, folded laundry, answered emails and written entire chapters of books. Motherhood is the biggest and best part of my life and right now, this is what it sounds like. I know there will come a day when my house is quiet and no one is yelling, “MOM!” and I have a feeling I’m going to miss this little song more than I can possibly imagine.
Natasha Bedingfield – Unwritten: At this point I’m just going to accept that this entire soundtrack is exposing exactly how old I am. But this one has taken on a completely different meaning for me as I’ve gotten older. My journey with multiple sclerosis brought me through one of the darkest periods of my life and there were times when it was incredibly difficult to imagine what came next. I couldn’t control the diagnosis or what it might mean for my future, but eventually I learned that I could still choose what I did with the pages in front of me. And considering I went on to become an author who writes so much about life’s hardest chapters not having to define the rest of our story, this one feels almost a little too perfect.
OneRepublic – Good Life: This one is for the chapter I’m living right now. Becoming a published author was a dream for so long that it’s strange to realize I’m now standing inside the life I used to imagine. My instinct is always to look toward the next deadline, the next book or whatever comes after this, so I’m trying really hard to stop every once in a while and take in how extraordinary this particular moment is. Life certainly hasn’t looked the way I once thought it would, but that makes me even more grateful for where I ended up. This is a chapter I really don’t want to rush through.
What five things (apart from family and friends) would you find it hard to live without.
Ooooh, I love this question!
Books, obviously. I’m one of those people who brings a book everywhere even when there is absolutely no logical scenario in which I’m going to have time to read.
Coffee, because I’m not entirely sure I’d be a functioning human without it.
Libraries and bookstores, which I’m grouping together because I refuse to sacrifice one of my five spots by choosing between them. There’s just this magical feeling that follows you into either one of these places that immediately makes the world feel a little better, even if for a little while.
Cats. Always cats. I’ve been a cat person my entire life, and I genuinely don’t know what a home feels like without one wandering around acting mildly inconvenienced by my existence.
And finally, my ridiculous pile of notebooks. I buy them constantly, despite already owning more blank ones than I could possibly fill in one lifetime. Some hold book ideas, some have random thoughts scribbled across three pages and then nothing else, and some are too pretty to actually write in. Do I need another notebook? Absolutely not. Will that stop me from buying one, though…also absolutely not.
Give five pieces of advice to your younger self?
Oh gosh, how much time do we have?
First, stop worrying so much about what other people think of you. Most people are far too busy worrying about themselves to be thinking about you nearly as much as you imagine they are.
Second, you don’t have to have your entire life figured out yet. Some of the very best parts of your life are going to come from things you never planned for, and some of the things that don’t work out will eventually make so much more sense looking back.
Third, take more pictures but also put the camera down sometimes. You’re going to learn just how quickly ordinary days become the ones you would give anything to step back into for five minutes.
Fourth, live each day to the fullest. Stop waiting to enjoy the life you’re already living.
And finally, when life gets really hard, please don’t mistake a difficult chapter for the whole story. There are going to be moments when life ahead of you looks nothing like the one you imagined, and you won’t always be able to see what comes next. Keep going anyway. There is so much waiting for you that you can’t possibly know yet.
Tell us five things that most people don’t know about you
Oh no, this is absolutely going to be the part of the interview where I reveal all my weirdness.
When I was little, I wanted to be a news anchor. There is video evidence somewhere in my parents’ possession of tiny me confidently saying, “coming to you live…” so I suppose sitting for interviews instead of conducting them is as close as I got to that career path.
I LOVE puzzles. And I don’t mean casually doing a few pieces when I walk past one. I mean I will become completely consumed by a puzzle and accomplish very little else until that final piece is in place. I must enjoy creating problems for myself and then refusing to rest until I solve them, which also explains a lot about becoming an author.
Here is one that might horrify readers: I used to read the ending of a book before I started it. I know. I KNOW. But if a book started stressing me out, I needed the reassurance that everything was going to be okay. I don’t do it anymore, I promise! And looking back, it is very fitting that I did have to learn that sometimes you just have to keep going without knowing how things are going to turn out.
Animatronics terrify me. I realize this is completely irrational and I know they’re not real. My brain knows they’re not real, but the rest of my body has declined to accept this information. But on the much happier end of my list of quirks, I am also a firm November 1st Christmas decorator. Also, I will not be accepting criticism for this decision at this time.
And finally, I once broke both of my wrists at the same time while trying to climb a tree. I ended up with two casts that went past my elbows. I have blocked this period of my life from memory, which I think is probably for the best. Just take a moment to consider all the things you need at least one functioning wrist to accomplish in a day and you’ll understand why. And much like my childhood news-anchor career, there is also photographic evidence of this incident somewhere in my parents’ possession. Unfortunately, this also happened during a period when my mother believed a bowl cut was the best hairstyle for me.
Tell us five things you’d still like to do or achieve.
Oh, we’re putting dreams out into the universe now. Okay, let’s go big!
I would love to see one of my books adapted for film or television someday. Writing a story and then getting to watch an entire group of people bring that world and those characters to life would be surreal. I’m not sure my brain could fully process sitting down to watch characters who once existed only in my head now walking around on a screen, but I would very much like the opportunity to find out.
I’d also love to travel outside the U.S. more. Ireland, Scotland and the UK are especially high on my list. Give me old castles, villages, rainy cobblestone streets, beautiful countryside and a bookstore I can disappear into for several hours and I will be perfectly happy.
This one is considerably less ambitious, but I really want to learn how to crochet. Specially, I want to make myself a blanket. I have to have a blanket with me pretty much anytime I am writing anyway, so it feels only right that eventually I should be able to say I made one myself. Whether I actually possess the patience required to accomplish this remains to be seen though.
I want a home library and I’m talking about Belle in Beauty and the Beast. Floor to ceiling shelves with a rolling ladder and more books than any reasonable human being could ever read. But if we’re putting dreams into the universe, I see no reason to be practical about this one.
And finally, I want to keep showing my kids that they’re allowed to dream really, really big. I want them to grow up watching me chase things that once seemed impossible and know that they can do the same. Whatever their dreams eventually look like, I hope they never assume something is out of reach because it feels too big.
Many thanks for joining me today Meg, and congratulations on the publivation of The Memory of Borrowed Books. It sounds like it would be ideal for a screen adaptation so fingers crossed. You chose one of my all time favourite songs in A Thousand Years so I was delighted for an excuse to play that again. It’s actually a song I only discovered a few years ago and I just fell in love with it. As I’m much older, Twilight had totally passed me by, other than my being aware it existed. I’ve never watched an episode so was totally unaware of the songs significance. I’m another notebook fiend. I love them, but have to force myself to write in them as it feels like a violation. My answer to that is to write in them starting from the back That way, when I open them I’m faced with a clean, fresh page. That’s something that most people don’t know about me, so I’m sharing my weirdness too!
“Stop waiting to enjoy the life you’re already living” is a definite motto to live by. We really do need to live in the moment and appreciate it. Your revelation that you used to read the ending of a book before you started it, definitely horrified me. That said, I can totally appreciate the reasoning behind it. These days I’m usually happily ensconced in a romance which means by genre definition it should have a happy ending, whether that be an ‘ever after’ or ‘for now’. It helps balance any angst ridden road bumps knowing it’ll all work out in the end.
I hope that manifesting your dreams helps bring them to fruition. I may be a little biased being English, with Scottish and some Irish heritage, but they’re all well worth a visit. You’ll definitely be able to tick off your wish list and more. A home library is my dream too (I used to be a librarian which doesn’t help). Now that I’m retired I’m turning half of our garden office into a library, though it will be too cold to use in winter I’m planning on lots of summer reading in peace and quiet. Here’s hoping your dreams help inspire your kids to follow their dreams too, sometimes all you need is confidence and support.
The Memory of Borrowed Books
(NB This post features Amazon affiliate links from which I earn a very small commission on qualifying purchases)
Deep in the library lives a hidden room
where magic lines the shelves and memories lie in wait
Ready for readers daring enough to finally discover the truth.
In the coastal town of Foxhollow Bay, librarian Claire Ashford keeps her life as meticulously ordered as the centuries-old library she calls home. But when the town announces plans to shut it down, her sanctuary, and the life she’s built within its walls, begins to crumble.
One night, while wandering the stacks after hours, Claire discovers a door that shouldn’t exist. And behind it lies a secret room filled with books no one else can see.
Each book pulls her into the memories of those who have passed through the library’s doors—moments half-lived and stories left unfinished. Buried within these pages is a message the library has been trying to share, urging Claire to uncover the path to saving it.
With the demolition looming and time running out, Claire must piece together what the library is trying to show her. But one book keeps calling her back, and in its pages is a memory that could change everything. One that reveals the key to saving the library may be tangled in her own memories more than she ever could have imagined.
An ode to the power of community and hope, The Memory of Borrowed Books is a sweeping story about what’s at stake when the places we love—and the memories they hold—are threatened. A reminder that what we fight to preserve just might be the very thing that saves us in return.
