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.
Kamila Knows Best by Farah Heron – a modern retelling of Emma and by a Canadian author no less? No surprise I’ve been waiting for this release for a while.
Jameela Green Ruins Everything by Zarqa Nawaz – another anticipated release from another Canadian. First time novelist (but excellent memoirist and television writer) Nawaz gives us “a hilarious black comedy about the price of success, and a biting look at what has gone wrong with American foreign policy in the Middle East”.
Under the Whispering Door by TJ Klune – I finally read The House in the Cerulean Sea and was happy to find this tale of finding family and love after death just as sweet and warm.
Whistle and I’ll Come to You by Agnes Sligh Turnbull – I’ve had one success with Turnbull and one failure. Here’s hoping this lands somewhere in between!
Out of the Rain by Elizabeth Cadell – I went through a Cadell kick a few years ago but hadn’t read this light romance about a lawyer and a young widow before.
A Strange Enchantment by Mabel Esther Allan – For such a prolific author, it’s surprisingly hard to track down Allan’s books through ILL here. This slim children’s novel looks at a young woman’s experiences when she joins the Women’s Land Army during WWII.
What did you pick up this week?
The Captive Reader 
When I was a teenager my local library had shelves of Cadell novels but now I can’t find them anywhere. I don’t remember this one so now I am going to see if I can request it from my current library. Her books are so soothing.
Isn’t that always the way? You see books around and then by the time you actually want to read them, they’ve disappeared. But the trade off is then the fun of the hunt.
I have only read Agnes Sligh Turnbull’s short Little Christmas but plan on heading to Queens University’s library (the joy of a community membership) next week to pick up Gown of Glory. May I ask what two you have read and which one was the success and which the failure? Thanks.
The Gown of Glory was the success, so delighted to hear you’re about to pick it up! The Two Bishops was the failure, and I also ended up abandoning this. It wasn’t as bad as The Two Bishops but it also wasn’t worth spending time reading.
For Queen’s, is that the one in Kingston? (Hard to tell where readers are from!) If so, I have fond memories of the libraries there from when I was a student. I spent three years in a townhouse on Alfred, right across the parking lot from Stauffer, but I ended up doing most of my studying at Douglas or the Law library.
I am, indeed, in Kingston. I work at the public library here and use our ILL department frequently, but I love the access to the older editions and titles available at Queens. I read a lovely 1931 second impression Hogarth Press copy of All Passions Spent, borrowed from Stauffer. The paper was absolutely lovely, each page turn was a delight. I have been on a bit of a Margery Sharp kick of late and reading the old 1940s editions is such a treat.
It’s so nice to have a university library available for access to all the old titles – I certainly appreciate being near UBC now for that. (Though I definitely borrowed WAY more books from KFPL’s Central branch while I was in Kingston than I ever did from the university libraries – wasted opportunities!)
I wrote a second “Library Loot” post this week, which is why I left TWO links to my blog on Mr. Linky. I see that you only commented on one, so I’m leaving this note to explain why I left TWO links. The second one is a different post on a different day, but all the books mentioned are “loot” from my library.
Oo lots sound wonderful here – the Cadell and the retelling of Emma stand out.
Although I read every Mabel Esther Allan I could find as a teen, I had somehow missed A Strange Enchantment and I really enjoyed it about two years ago. That being said, I would have picked nearly any degrading type of war work rather than be a Land Girl!