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.
Predictably, I am not getting a lot of reading done right now. Starting a new job is tiring (but wonderful in every other way, I’m happy to say) plus I’m on day 10 of the head cold that will not die. However, the shock of the new at work is slowly wearing off, my cold will presumably end at some point, and when it does I have some really wonderful books to dive into. And even in my current pathetic state some of these are very good invalid reads: poetry and short comic essays in particular are just right for the evenings when my attention span is non-existent.
Where the Wild Winds Are by Nick Hunt – I love books about walking and I loved Hunt’s first book (about retracing Patrick Leigh Fermor’s footsteps across Europe) so am absolutely delighted to finally have my hands on his newest book. Here he chooses to follow very unique routes, following four winds across Europe.
Women & Power by Mary Beard – who better to write a manifesto about the historical relationship between women and power than Beard, noted classicist, public intellectual, and victim of absolutely absurd amounts of misogyny?
Turning by Jessica J. Lee – A memoir of the year Lee spent swimming in lakes in and around Berlin after a difficult time in her life, I spotted this in the bookstore just before I left for Europe last summer and have been longing to read it ever since. Germany? Swimming? Written by a Canadian(/British/Chinese) author? There are too many irresistible elements for me to ignore. Coincidentally, Virago just released a beautiful paperback edition last week.
A Treasury of Stephen Leacock – You know what’s even more fun than one Stephen Leacock book? Three books all in one collection. My interest is in the first (Literary Lapses) and third (Winnowed Wisdom) since, as a good Canadian, I am more than familiar with the middle book (Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town – Leacock’s most famous work by far).
Educated by Tara Westover – I am fascinated to read this much-talked-about new memoir about Westover’s quest for education (and multiple degrees from world-renowned universities) after an isolated childhood with her survivalist family kept her out of the classroom until she was seventeen.
The Five Nations by Rudyard Kipling – One of my favourite things about A Century of Books is that it pushes me to pick up things I wouldn’t usually, like this poetry collection. To be fair though, I don’t need ACOB to encourage me to read Kipling – just poetry.
What did you pick up this week?
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The Captive Reader 
Educated and the Nick Hunt book sound wonderful. Our library has the first book of Hunt’s and I have put it on my wishlist as I love travel books of walking, bicycling and motorbike riding. The other books look interesting too but can’t get all of them. Too many books look so good. Happy reading and I’ll try to publish my library loot I picked up yesterday in the next day or two.
There are definitely not enough travel books about walking to suit my desire for them so I’m so happy that Hunt’s books exist and are so good!
Have you read Rory Stewart’s books? They’re fantastic. The Places in Between is his journey through Afghanistan, Prince of the Marshes is Iraq, and then the one I haven’t read, The Marches, is about walking the border between England and Scotland. (I read the first two while my husband was in the Marines, so I had a vested interest in the region!)
I have indeed and I love his books. So much so that The Marches made my list of Top Ten Books of 2017!
What a fascinating bunch of reads.
Thanks!
Oo, I should pick up that Mary Beard book. Excited to be participating in Library Loot!
And we’re excited to have you participating! I hope you’re able to track down the Beard book soon; it’s very interesting.
Turning sounds interesting, ordered! Thanks!
Wow! A great collection of books. I’m not sure where I would begin but I think I’d start with Educated.
Enjoy!!
There’s a lot to be excited about here so it is certainly difficult to know where to start! I’ve gone with Where the Wild Winds Are.
I have my eyes on Women & Power and Turning 🙂 Happy reading!
Nice! I hope you enjoy them.
… and finished Turning. Was pretty good! It helps to know about the lakes around Berlin, even though it’s in the end not about the lakes.
Fast reading! I don’t know the lakes so we’ll see how I do when I read it.
Did you ever read and review Crompton’s MRS FRENSHAM?
I read it but, like most of the books I’ve read by Crompton, haven’t reviewed it. Her books can be a bit same-y for me, which rather destroys the desire to write about them.