After a strange, somewhat scary week health-wise, this soothing room (photo credit: Rachael Smith via House and Garden UK) is just the thing. Except for the pineapple light fixture.
Posted in Library Lust | 1 Comment »
Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Claire from The Captive Reader and Sharlene from Real Life Reading that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library. If you’d like to participate, just write up your post-feel free to steal the button-and link it using the Mr. Linky any time during the week. And of course check out what other participants are getting from their libraries.
It’s been a strange, strange week. The good news is that I’ve had my first Covid vaccination – hurrrah! – but I had a scary health event a couple of days before that which involved calling 911 and going to hospital. I’ve had more appointments and tests since then and everything seems to be fine but it wasn’t how I would have chosen to spend the last five days. Hopefully everything will be less eventful going forward!
V for Victory by Lissa Evans – It’s here! This was published here last month and, having loved Evans’ earlier books which link to this (Crooked Heart and Old Baggage), I can’t wait to start reading.
Last Waltz in Vienna by George Clare – Slightly Foxed will be releasing this memoir in September but I didn’t want to wait until then to read it.
A Swim in the Pond in the Rain by George Saunders – essays aren’t always my thing, or short stories, or Russians, but the combination here – of Saunders’ essays about a selection of stories by four great Russian authors – seems irresistible.
More Than Just a Pretty Face by Syed M. Masood – I recently read Masood’s first adult novel – The Bad Muslim Discount – and loved it so quickly searched out this YA novel. I read it over the weekend and it was a delight.
Revolt – and Virginia by Essie Summers – I’d never heard of Summers before but was intrigued by this review back in April.
So Comes Tomorrow by Essie Summers – Since I had to use inter-library loan for one Essie Summers book, why not go for another at the same time?
What did you pick up this week?
Posted in Library Loot | 4 Comments »
Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Claire from The Captive Reader and Sharlene from Real Life Reading that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library. If you’d like to participate, just write up your post-feel free to steal the button-and link it using the Mr. Linky any time during the week. And of course check out what other participants are getting from their libraries.
Exciting news on the Covid front: I have a vaccine appointment for my first shot! We finally have lots of vaccine flowing into the country and are making huge strides – Canada is even expected to surpass the US in first doses administered within the next few days. My appointment isn’t until the end of the month (it was the first one available at a location near me) but it is booked and that is a great feeling!
The Price of Peace by Zachary D. Carter – you can keep your artists and authors; for me, John Maynard Keynes is the most interesting and influential member of the Bloomsbury Group and I’m very excited for this biography.
A House in the Mountains by Caroline Moorehead – I read several books earlier this year about wartime Italy and resistance groups and wanted to learn more. Moorehead has written several books about wartime resistance across Europe and here she profiles four women and their efforts in Northern Italy.
People We Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry – I enjoyed Beach Read by Henry last year so have been looking forward to this new release.
The Funny Thing About Norman Foreman by Julietta Henderson – I can’t remember where I heard about this but it sounds uplifting and charming.
The Widow Queen by Elzbieta Cherezinska – This, on the other hand, I can remember exactly when I first heard about: way back in 2018 when Tor announced they’d acquired the English translation of this Polish bestseller. So excited to finally be able to read it!
Promised to the Crown by Aimie K. Runyan – I saw a mention of this on Carla‘s blog and had to track it down. It’s about the filles du roi, women sent from France to New France (now Quebec) in the 17th Century to marry the men who had been sent earlier to settle the new territory. I loved reading about them when I was young and am looking forward to this.
What did you pick up this week?
Posted in Library Loot | 6 Comments »
Posted in Library Lust | 1 Comment »
Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Claire from The Captive Reader and Sharlene from Real Life Reading that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library. If you’d like to participate, just write up your post-feel free to steal the button-and link it using the Mr. Linky any time during the week. And of course check out what other participants are getting from their libraries.
Sharlene has the Mr Linky this week.
After starting and abandoning several books last week, I seem finally to be back on stride – so much so that I’ve already read three of this week’s books! It feels so satisfying to finish a book again. Work life has been tiring lately – not from any specifically trying situation, just the usual exhaustion of perfectionists who can’t quite grasp the fact that we are all too overcommitted and burnt out to do all of the things we feel we should do, even when our excellent employer is telling us to go easy on ourselves – and that is bleeding over into everything. Being able to gain a sense of completion even from something as simple as a book feels like a victory right now – one I’ll happily take!
The Ivington Diaries by Monty Don – I can hardly believe I finally have this in my hands! Copies are bizarrely expensive and there are none available in the BC library system but the stellar inter-library loan team was able to source this from out of province.
Agent Sonya by Ben MacIntyre – spy stories are always fun, especially when they’re true.
The Book Collectors by Delphine Minoui – a slim book about the Syrian rebels who built an underground library in the midst of war.
Pine Island Home by Polly Horvath – I found this when looking at the list of Governor General’s Awards finalists, in the children’s fiction category. It’s the story of four orphaned sisters who, when they arrive on a small island in British Columbia, discover that their new guardian has also died. In the grand tradition of literary orphans, they then concoct a plan to take care of themselves.
Just Last Night by Mhairi McFarlane – The newest from McFarlane (published as Last Night in the UK), this just came out last week and I sped through it as soon as my e-book hold came through on Monday. One night changes everything for a group of close knit friends and soon secrets are emerging and they are seeing each other in a new light. My favourite of McFarlane’s books to date.
A Wedding in the Country by Katie Fforde – after being disappointed by most of Fforde’s recent books, I was pleasantly surprised by this new release which gets around Fforde’s awkward grasp of modern sexual politics by being set in the early 1960s. The second half is useless but the first half, about young women who meet on a cookery/domestic arts course and then become housemates, was just the right level of frivolity for me this weekend.
What did you pick up this week?
Posted in Library Loot | 9 Comments »
Posted in Library Lust | 3 Comments »
Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Claire from The Captive Reader and Sharlene from Real Life Reading that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library. If you’d like to participate, just write up your post-feel free to steal the button-and link it using the Mr. Linky any time during the week. And of course check out what other participants are getting from their libraries.
We’ve made it to May! Inside there are books and outside there are flowers and that’s reason enough to celebrate this month.
Who Has Seen the Wind by W.O. Mitchell – somehow this Canadian classic about depression-era boyhood on the Prairies never made it onto my school’s reading list but it’s just the right thing for my current mood.
Waterlogged by Roger Deakin – the classic “swimmer’s journey through Britain”.
City Dreamers – I don’t often share the DVDs I pick up but I really intrigued by this portrait of four female architects and their impact on urban planning.
Homebrew and Patches by Harry J. Boyle – On the weekend I was browsing the list of books that have won the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour (as you do) and this winner from 1964 caught my eye. It is an autobiographical novel about growing up in southern Ontario between the wars.
The Potting Shed Papers by Charles Elliott – a collection of essays on gardening (there can never be enough!).
Courting Samira by Amal Awad – Very excited to have tracked this down through the inter-library loan system! There have been a flurry of recent romcom novels with Muslim protagonists but this Australian book – almost ten years old now – used to be one of the only ones around and impossible to find.
What did you pick up this week?
Posted in Library Loot | 6 Comments »
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