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.
More Home Cooking by Laurie Colwin – I read Home Cooking by Colwin just about two years ago and loved it. She is undoubtedly one of the best food writers I’ve come across so I am really looking forward to this second volume. The librarian is also a big fan – when I picked this up (it’s an inter-library loan) we commiserated over how sad it was that Colwin died so young and what a wonderful writer she was.
Model Woman by Robert Lacey – A biography of Eileen Ford, of the Ford modelling agency.
Commonwealth by Ann Patchett – Really looking forward to this (so much so that I placed a library hold even though I gave a copy to my mother for her birthday last weekend – I don’t want to wait until she’s done!).
Red Plenty by Francis Spufford – Strange as it may seem, the gray, oppressive USSR was founded on a fairy tale. It was built on the twentieth-century magic called “the planned economy,” which was going to gush forth an abundance of good things that the lands of capitalism could never match. And just for a little while, in the heady years of the late 1950s, the magic seemed to be working. Red Plenty is about that moment in history, and how it came, and how it went away; about the brief era when, under the rash leadership of Khrushchev, the Soviet Union looked forward to a future of rich communists and envious capitalists, when Moscow would out-glitter Manhattan and every Lada would be better engineered than a Porsche. It’s about the scientists who did their genuinely brilliant best to make the dream come true, to give the tyranny its happy ending.
Bloodlands by Timothy Snyder – a record of the mass killings by both the Soviet and Nazi regimes in the vast lands that lay between their two capitals.
The Fall of the Ottomans by Eugene Rogan – A look at the First World War in the Middle East and its immediate aftermath, resulting in the end of the Ottoman Empire and the creation of the modern Middle East.
What did you pick up this week?
The Captive Reader 
Being a librarian myself means I’m constantly envying the students borrowing interesting-looking books! So this Monday one of the students returned one that I immediately grabbed: Word Crime by John Olsson. It’s a Forensic Linguistics detective-y, short “stories” book. The writer is a forensic linguist telling all about his linguistic detective work. It’s a bit gruesome as most of what I read so far are real murders, but it’s a very interesting, easy to read linguistic work in action!
Sounds very interesting! Happy reading!
Claire, I am 3/4 of the way through Commonwealth, just renewed it, and hope to finish it this afternoon. Loving it – and confused by all the characters. As long as I was in the library, I grabbed Ruth Reichl’s “Delicious” and once again checked out her memoir/cookbook on how cooking saved her life. I think I need to buy that one. 🙂
So glad you’re enjoying Commonwealth! As for Reichl, I love her food writing but was disappointed by Delicious, hope you have a better experience!
Red Plenty is wonderful – I read it pre-blog and loved it!
It seems very intriguing so far!
I’ve been listening to the audiobook of Home Cooking and wishing More Home Cooking had been recorded as well, because I read both years ago and love this new way of ‘reading’ them. I’m also reading Francis Spufford’s new novel about 18th century New York and enjoying his writing (all 10 pages of it so far!)
I have jumped right into the Colwin and it is, of course, wonderful. I pick it up intending to read just one or two pieces and then get on to something else but I find myself reading on and on and on. So, so good.
Tregaron’s Daughter by Madeline Brent. Definitely falls in the Mary Stewart, Daphne du Mauer read rack. Halfway through and enjoying it quite well.
Good! Happy reading!
Just finished it and rated it a rare 5 on Good Reads!
All of these look so good. Enjoy!
Thanks, Linda!
[…] week, Claire over at TheCaptiveReader posted her Library Loot for the week, and two of her reads caught my eye: The Fall of the […]
Both Red Plenty and Fall of the Ottomans look great! Can’t wait to read your reviews!
I LOVED Bloodlands! It was a strong contender for my favorite book from last year.
https://maphead.wordpress.com/2015/05/13/about-time-i-read-it-bloodlands-by-timothy-snyder/