The Captive Reader

Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Claire from The Captive Reader and Linda from Silly Little Mischief 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.

Pillar to Post by Osbert Lancaster – after reading about a recent reissue of Lancaster’s works, I was keen to check this out.

Kitchens of the Great Midwest by J. Ryan Stradal – I’ve seen this on a few “Best of 2015” lists (including NPR’s) lately and am looking forward to it.

Farthest Field by Raghu Kamad – So, so looking forward to this history of one Indian family’s experiences during the Second World War.

Their Finest Hour and a Half by Lissa Evans – I loved Evans’ most recent novel, Crooked Heart, but this earlier novel about the production of a wartime propaganda film was very underwhelming.  Still intrigued by the upcoming film version, though.

The Shelf by Phyllis Rose – Simon named this as his number one book of 2015.  That, obviously, is reason enough for me to want to read it.

Whisky Galore by Compton Mackenzie – I check this out annually during the holidays…and then never manage to read it.  Maybe this year!

Twelve Kings in Sharakhai by Bradley P. Beaulieu – Sharakhai, the great city of the desert, center of commerce and culture, has been ruled from time immemorial by twelve kings — cruel, ruthless, powerful, and immortal. With their army of Silver Spears, their elite company of Blade Maidens and their holy defenders, the terrifying asirim, the Kings uphold their positions as undisputed, invincible lords of the desert. There is no hope of freedom for any under their rule.

Or so it seems, until Çeda, a brave young woman from the west end slums, defies the Kings’ laws by going outside on the holy night of Beht Zha’ir. What she learns that night sets her on a path that winds through both the terrible truths of the Kings’ mysterious history and the hidden riddles of her own heritage. Together, these secrets could finally break the iron grip of the Kings’ power…if the nigh-omnipotent Kings don’t find her first.

The Way Things Were by Aatish Taseer – The Way Things Were opens with the death of Toby, the Maharaja of Kalasuryaketu, a Sanskritist who has not set foot in India for two decades. It falls to his son, Skanda, to return Toby’s body to his birthplace, “a tin-pot kingdom” not worth “one air-gun salute.” This journey takes him halfway around the world and returns him to his family, the drawing-room elite of Delhi, whose narcissism and infighting he has worked hard to escape. It also forces him to reckon with his parents’ marriage, a turbulent love affair that began in passion but ended in pain and futility.

Hild by Nicola Griffith – a much-praised historical novel about St. Hilda.

High Minds by Simon Heffer – Britain in the 1840s was a country wracked by poverty, unrest and uncertainty, where there were attempts to assassinate the Queen and her prime minister, and the ruling class lived in fear of riot and revolution. By the 1880s it was a confident nation of progress and prosperity, transformed not just by industrialisation but by new attitudes to politics, education, women and the working class. That it should have changed so radically was very largely the work of an astonishingly dynamic and high-minded group of people – politicians and philanthropists, writers and thinkers – who in a matter of decades fundamentally remade the country, its institutions and its mindset, and laid the foundations for modern society.

Sophia: Princess, Suffragette, Revolutionary by Anita Anand – Shortlisted for the Slightly Foxed Best First Biography Prize this year

The House of Twenty Thousand Books by Sasha Abramsky – The House of Twenty Thousand Books is journalist Sasha Abramsky’s elegy to the vanished intellectual world of his grandparents, Chimen and Miriam, and their vast library of socialist literature and Jewish history.

What did you pick up this week?