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.

What did you pick up this week?

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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.

Café Europa Revisited by Slavenka Drakulić – more than thirty years after the fall of Communism in Central and Eastern Europe, Drakulić looks at how countries and people have – or haven’t – changed.

The Way of the Gardener by Lyndon Penner – a unique look at the Camino de Santiago from a gardener’s perspective.

Cuckoo in the Nest by Michelle Magorian – I was in the mood to reread Magorian’s A Little Love Song for the gazillionth time but as this requires a) a complicated search through my books in storage or b) wait for an interlibrary loan, I decided to try this new to me novel about a working-class boy determined to have a career in theatre set following the end of WWII.

Beginners by Tom Vanderbilt – so looking forward to this book about the benefits of lifelong learning.

The Wildflowers by Harriet Evans – continuing my reading/rereading this year of many of Evans’ books.

Diary of a Young Naturalist by Dara McAnulty – SO many UK-based bloggers, newspapers and podcasts raved about this last year and finally I can read it for myself!

What did you pick up this week?

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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 has been insanely hot here recently so the only thing my brain is capable of is very, very light reading. All of my super-light summer reading holds came through at once so I’m well equipped for this:

What did you pick up this week?

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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.

I’m taking a little break from work to try and sort out some health issues but, annoyingly, somehow removing work from my schedule hasn’t equated to more reading time.  More appointments – yes.  More worrying – yes.  More time to focus intently on a book and escape for a few hours – no.  My concentration is really suffering through this so it’s mostly light reading for me.  Luckily, I have plenty available:

What did you pick up this week?

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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’s been a strange, strange week.  The good news is that I’ve had my first Covid vaccination – hurrrah! – but I had a scary health event a couple of days before that which involved calling 911 and going to hospital.  I’ve had more appointments and tests since then and everything seems to be fine but it wasn’t how I would have chosen to spend the last five days.  Hopefully everything will be less eventful going forward!

V for Victory by Lissa Evans – It’s here! This was published here last month and, having loved Evans’ earlier books which link to this (Crooked Heart and Old Baggage), I can’t wait to start reading.

Last Waltz in Vienna by George Clare – Slightly Foxed will be releasing this memoir in September but I didn’t want to wait until then to read it.

A Swim in the Pond in the Rain by George Saunders – essays aren’t always my thing, or short stories, or Russians, but the combination here – of Saunders’ essays about a selection of stories by four great Russian authors – seems irresistible.

More Than Just a Pretty Face by Syed M. Masood – I recently read Masood’s first adult novel – The Bad Muslim Discount – and loved it so quickly searched out this YA novel. I read it over the weekend and it was a delight.

Revolt – and Virginia by Essie Summers – I’d never heard of Summers before but was intrigued by this review back in April.

So Comes Tomorrow by Essie Summers – Since I had to use inter-library loan for one Essie Summers book, why not go for another at the same time?

What did you pick up this week?

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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.

Exciting news on the Covid front: I have a vaccine appointment for my first shot!  We finally have lots of vaccine flowing into the country and are making huge strides – Canada is even expected to surpass the US in first doses administered within the next few days.  My appointment isn’t until the end of the month (it was the first one available at a location near me) but it is booked and that is a great feeling!

The Price of Peace by Zachary D. Carter – you can keep your artists and authors; for me, John Maynard Keynes is the most interesting and influential member of the Bloomsbury Group and I’m very excited for this biography.

A House in the Mountains by Caroline Moorehead – I read several books earlier this year about wartime Italy and resistance groups and wanted to learn more. Moorehead has written several books about wartime resistance across Europe and here she profiles four women and their efforts in Northern Italy.

People We Meet on Vacation by Emily Henry – I enjoyed Beach Read by Henry last year so have been looking forward to this new release.

The Funny Thing About Norman Foreman by Julietta Henderson – I can’t remember where I heard about this but it sounds uplifting and charming.

The Widow Queen by Elzbieta Cherezinska – This, on the other hand, I can remember exactly when I first heard about: way back in 2018 when Tor announced they’d acquired the English translation of this Polish bestseller. So excited to finally be able to read it!

Promised to the Crown by Aimie K. Runyan – I saw a mention of this on Carla‘s blog and had to track it down. It’s about the filles du roi, women sent from France to New France (now Quebec) in the 17th Century to marry the men who had been sent earlier to settle the new territory. I loved reading about them when I was young and am looking forward to this.

What did you pick up this week?

Read Full Post »

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.

Sharlene has the Mr Linky this week.

After starting and abandoning several books last week, I seem finally to be back on stride – so much so that I’ve already read three of this week’s books! It feels so satisfying to finish a book again. Work life has been tiring lately – not from any specifically trying situation, just the usual exhaustion of perfectionists who can’t quite grasp the fact that we are all too overcommitted and burnt out to do all of the things we feel we should do, even when our excellent employer is telling us to go easy on ourselves – and that is bleeding over into everything. Being able to gain a sense of completion even from something as simple as a book feels like a victory right now – one I’ll happily take!

The Ivington Diaries by Monty Don – I can hardly believe I finally have this in my hands! Copies are bizarrely expensive and there are none available in the BC library system but the stellar inter-library loan team was able to source this from out of province.

Agent Sonya by Ben MacIntyre – spy stories are always fun, especially when they’re true.

The Book Collectors by Delphine Minoui – a slim book about the Syrian rebels who built an underground library in the midst of war.

Pine Island Home by Polly Horvath – I found this when looking at the list of Governor General’s Awards finalists, in the children’s fiction category. It’s the story of four orphaned sisters who, when they arrive on a small island in British Columbia, discover that their new guardian has also died. In the grand tradition of literary orphans, they then concoct a plan to take care of themselves.

Just Last Night by Mhairi McFarlane – The newest from McFarlane (published as Last Night in the UK), this just came out last week and I sped through it as soon as my e-book hold came through on Monday. One night changes everything for a group of close knit friends and soon secrets are emerging and they are seeing each other in a new light. My favourite of McFarlane’s books to date.

A Wedding in the Country by Katie Fforde – after being disappointed by most of Fforde’s recent books, I was pleasantly surprised by this new release which gets around Fforde’s awkward grasp of modern sexual politics by being set in the early 1960s. The second half is useless but the first half, about young women who meet on a cookery/domestic arts course and then become housemates, was just the right level of frivolity for me this weekend.

What did you pick up this week?

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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.

We’ve made it to May!  Inside there are books and outside there are flowers and that’s reason enough to celebrate this month.

Who Has Seen the Wind by W.O. Mitchell – somehow this Canadian classic about depression-era boyhood on the Prairies never made it onto my school’s reading list but it’s just the right thing for my current mood.

Waterlogged by Roger Deakin – the classic “swimmer’s journey through Britain”.

City Dreamers – I don’t often share the DVDs I pick up but I really intrigued by this portrait of four female architects and their impact on urban planning.

Homebrew and Patches by Harry J. Boyle – On the weekend I was browsing the list of books that have won the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour (as you do) and this winner from 1964 caught my eye.  It is an autobiographical novel about growing up in southern Ontario between the wars.

The Potting Shed Papers by Charles Elliott – a collection of essays on gardening (there can never be enough!).

Courting Samira by Amal Awad – Very excited to have tracked this down through the inter-library loan system!  There have been a flurry of recent romcom novels with Muslim protagonists but this Australian book – almost ten years old now – used to be one of the only ones around and impossible to find.

What did you pick up this week?

Read Full Post »

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’s holiday time for me!  Which means…not a lot under our current circumstances, other than a very welcome mental break from work.  I am having a lovely vacation from my computer (hence the brevity of this post), taking lots of long walks in the beautiful summer-like weather, and, as always, reading.  There are worse ways to spend a week!

What did you pick up this week?

Read Full Post »

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 feels properly like spring here: the cherry trees are in glorious full bloom, the daffodils are hanging on, and the early tulips are bursting into riotous colour everywhere you turn.  It’s beautiful and cheering and a helpful counterpoint to everything else – much like books.

The 1936 Club (hosted by Simon and Karen) is taking place next week so I’ve checked out a few books to give me even more options than what I’ve found on my own shelves: Murder in Mesopotamia by Agatha Christie, Live Alone and Like It by Marjorie Hillis, and War with the Newts by Karel Čapek.  My biggest problem with 1936 is that I’ve read most of the books that interest me- two of these three are rereads! 

The Olive Farm by Carol Drinkwater – the first of Drinkwater’s books about her olive farm in southern France.  I am always game for books about finding the good life in a warm, sunny place.

Thinking on My Feet by Kate Humble – Audrey recommended this back in January and, thanks to the inter-library loan system, I’ve now got my hands on it.  

The Gown of Glory by Agnes Sligh Turnbull – I flagged a review of this by Bree over at Another Look Book (which no longer seems to be accessible?) four years ago.  It sounds like a lovely, gentle story about a minister and his family in their small community.

Ravenna by Judith Herrin – a fascinating-sounding history of the city.  I visited Ravenna on a quiet, rainy day back in 2017 and have amazing memories of its extraordinary mosaics but only the haziest understanding (thanks mostly to the fantasy novels of Guy Gavriel Kay) of how the city became important enough to warrant such buildings and art.  I am looking forward to learning more. 

House of Glass by Hadley Freeman – Off the Slightly Foxed Best First Biography shortlist.

Eat the Buddha by Barbara Demick – Demick’s portrait of life in North Korea (in Nothing to Envy) was wonderful and here she turns her reporting skills to a small Tibetan community.

English Gardens: From the Archives of Country Life Magazine – the ultimate coffee table book in that it weighs as much as a table.  Not a fun walk home from the library with this in my bag but it looks gorgeous!

Rhapsody in Green by Charlotte Mendelson – this wonderful gardening memoir is being reissued as a paperback (out now in the UK and coming this summer in North America), which is wonderful news for those of us who love it and have been unable to track down copies.  I’ll doubtlessly buy my own copy but it’s always nice to reread at this time of year, to aid in the garden planning and dreaming.

What did you pick up this week?

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