The Captive Reader

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.

Kings of the Yukon by Adam Weymouth – By the time I’d finished the first 30 pages of this book I’d already recommended it to three people.  Weymouth spent four months canoeing down the Yukon river, moving against the migrating Chinook (also known as King) salmon, and observing the relationship between the fish, the people who live along the river, and the landscape.  The writing is staggeringly good and it’s easy to understand why it won multiple awards on publication last year.  (Book Depository)

Expiation by Elizabeth von Arnim – A von Arnim novel I haven’t yet read!  There are only a handful of these left so I’ve been spacing them out for a bit.  Coincidentally, I just discovered (on searching to see if this was still in print) that Persephone will be reissuing it in October!

Handel in London by Jane Glover – I read a review of this in the Financial Times last autumn and have been looking forward to it ever since. (Book Depository)

Early Riser by Jasper Fforde – A new book from Fforde is always something to be excited about! (Book Depository)

Caught in the Revolution by Helen Rappaport – I’ve borrowed this before without ever getting to it but I’m still eager to read it.  It’s a history of the outbreak of the Russian Revolution told using first-hand accounts from foreigners who were in Russia at the time.  Rappaport is always wonderfully readable so, assuming I can make time for this, I’m sure I’ll enjoy it! (Book Depository)

Help Me by Marianne Power –  A memoir from a woman who set herself the challenge of spending a year living by the edicts of self-help books.  I couldn’t put this down once I picked it up, completely absorbed and unexpectedly moved by Power’s disastrous experiment.  (Book Depository)

Miss Palmer’s Diary by Gillian Wagner – I picked this up on a whim, always being intrigued by diaries – particularly Victorian ones.  There was a blurb from Roy Strong, whose taste in books is usually pretty trustworthy, and that’s really all I’m going on here.  (Book Depository)

Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho – I thought it would be fun to reread this (I loved it the first time around) while I wait for my library to get a copy of Cho’s new book, The True Queen. (Book Depository)

The Poppy War by R.F. Kuang – Oh dear.  This won several awards last year for best fantasy debut.  Sharlene even gave it five stars on Good Reads.  I picked it up and tried to understand why but found it absolutely unreadable.  It feels like YA (which it is not marketed as) in the worst possible way, with obnoxiously 21st century dialogue in a historical setting, no sense of time or place, and a loathsome heroine who has the Harry Potter-esque curse of being the Most Special Person Ever in lieu of having a developed character.  Awful stuff.  (No BD link for this.  Do not buy it, do not borrow it, do not read it, just banish it entirely from your mind.)

What did you pick up this week?

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