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.

It is cold and snowy here, which is frankly ridiculous.  We do not live in Vancouver to be snowed upon in January.  The snowdrops were out and and the daffodils three inches out of the ground before this madness started.  Sigh.

But the positive of horrible weather is that it means I am not distracted by wanting to be outside and therefore have more time for reading!  Which is good because all my holds suddenly arrived at once (with more on the way for next week):

The Magnolia Sword by Sherry Thomas – IT’S HERE!!!  I love the story of Mulan and I adore Sherry Thomas’ writing, so this seems like an unbeatable combination.  Very, very excited to start on this.  (Book Depository)

A Half Baked Idea by Olivia Potts – I spend a fair amount of time perusing the Slightly Foxed website and noticed this on there (in the books from other publishers section).  Grieving after her mother’s unexpected death, Potts left her career as a barrister and retrained at Le Cordon Bleu.  How could I not want to read about that? (Book Depository)

The Lantern Bearers by Rosemary Sutcliff – Slightly Foxed is reissuing this in September (my order is already placed) but I’ve been having so much fun rereading Sutcliff’s Roman books (The Eagle of the Ninth and The Silver Branch) that I couldn’t wait that long.  (Book Depository)

Eggs or Anarchy by William Sitwell – After reading A Green and Pleasant Land in 2019 (it was one of my favourites for the year), I finally tracked this down via interlibrary loan after having had it on my to-read list for years.  It’s a biography of Lord Woolton, the man who was tasked with keeping Britain fed during the Second World War.  (Book Depository)

The Strange Case of the Alchemist’s Daughter by Theodora Goss – I honestly don’t know much about this but I saw people enthusing about subsequent books in the series (can’t remember where – possibly Tor.com) that I thought I’d give it a try.  (Book Depository)

A Castle in Wartime by Catherine Bailey – Praised by Kate Atkinson as a book that contains “more tension, more plot in fact, than any thriller”, I’m so looking forward to this.  It has also been published in the UK as The Lost Boys. (Book Depository)

Would Like to Meet by Rachel Winters – A good rom-com is a very welcome distraction at any time of year but especially when it is absolutely vile outside and you want to forget everything else.  It’s been ages since I read a book in a single evening but I raced through this fun story about a young woman whose famous screenwriter client is months behind on his promised rom-com script.  To help inspire him, she sets about engineering meet-cutes of her own and reporting back on her progress. (Book Depository)

In a Land of Paper Gods by Rebecca Mackenzie – Sarra Manning put this on her best books of the year list back in 2016 (!!! How have three years passed so quickly?) and I’ve finally been organized enough to track it down via interlibrary loan.  (Book Depository)

Salt on Your Tongue by Charlotte Runcie –  Another discovery on the Slightly Foxed website.  (Book Depository)

What did you pick up this week?