The Captive Reader

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.

Happy awkward week between the holidays!  If you are one of those amazingly lucky people who doesn’t have to work this week, congratulations.  If you are not, I hope your offices are well-stocked with leftover holiday chocolates and enough people are on vacation that your work is not too onerous (this is certainly what I’m hoping for).

There were not a lot of books under my Christmas tree this year so I found myself lurking at the library on Tuesday, trying to fill the void.  I think I did quite well.

The Nordic Theory of Everything by Anu Partanen – as far as I can tell, a guide to better living through all things Scandinavian.  Pretty much the opposite of Michael Booth’s The Almost Nearly Perfect People, which I really enjoyed earlier this year.

Lab Girl by Hope Jahren – a fascinating-looking memoir that is featuring on a lot of “Best of 2016” lists.

The House at the Edge of Night by Catherine Banner – don’t know much about this one but the promise of a multi-generational family saga set off the coast of Italy was enticing enough.  Looks like a good book to distract me from the snow and ice that have rudely accumulated here.

The German War by Nicholas Stargardt – second time checking this excellent-looking social history out of the library.  Hopefully I’ll actually get a chance to read it this time!

For the Glory by Duncan Hamilton – a biography of Eric Liddell, the Scottish missionary and athlete immortalized in Chariots of Fire.

Tender at the Bone by Ruth Reichl – I loved Comfort Me with Apples but somehow never managed to read this first memoir.

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 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.

Ghost Talkers by Mary Robinette Kowal

All the Single Ladies by Rebecca Traister

Shanghai Grand by Taras Grescoe

Hungry Heart by Jennifer Weiner

The Wangs vs. the World by Jade Chang

My Paris Dream by Kate Betts

Will You Won’t You Want Me? by Nora Zelevansky

Family Happiness by Laurie Colwin

The Hating Game by Sally Thorne

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 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.

The Maisky Diaries edited by Gabriel Gorodetsky – you know how I love a good volume of diaries and when they are political ones, so much the better.  This featured on a number of “Best of 2015” book lists and I’m excited to get into it.

A Study in Scarlet Women by Sherry Thomas – a gender-bending twist on Sherlock Holmes.  Thomas is an interest writer of YA fantasy and adult romances so I’m intrigued to see how she does with Holmes as her inspiration.

The Atomic Weight of Love by Elizabeth J. Church – No idea.  Apparently I’d placed a hold on this at some point in the distant past and now it has arrived.  I do love surprises.

Crosstalk by Connie Willis – A new release from Willis is always something to be excited about!  Really looking forward to this one.

The Marriage Bureau for Rich People by Farahad Zama -this has been on the cosy-books-to-save-for-winter reading list for a long time.

The City Baker’s Guide to Country Living by Louise Miller – comfortingly fluffy escapist novel about a young baker who moves to rural Vermont.  I read it as soon as it arrived and, while I don’t think I’ll review it, quite enjoyed it.  Check out Danielle’s review for more details.

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 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.

Party Animals by David Aaronovitch – I learned about this entertaining memoir of growing up in a communist family in post-war Britain from Slightly Foxed.  It was short-listed for their Best First Biography prize this year and deservedly so.  I’m almost done and have had such fun reading it.

Letters from Boy edited by Donald Sturrok – interesting looking collection of letters from Roald Dahl to his mother.

Sarong Party Girls by Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan – Absolutely no memory of how this novel about party girls in Singapore came to my attention but the publisher hooked me by calling it “Emma set in modern Asia”.  Not sure I buy that but a mention of Emma is literally the surest way to get me to read a book.

A Little Love Song by Michelle Magorian – I’ve been wanting to reread this novel for a while but have been unable to unearth my copy from storage.  Library to the rescue!

The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey – having adored Ivey’s newest release, To the Bright Edge of the World, I felt it was time to read her much-praised debut novel.

Reading Claudius by Caroline Heller – okay, I might have lied above when I said a mention of Emma was the surest way to get me to read something: I suspect my weakness for books set in Prague, like this one, is slightly more dominant.  It certainly sounds right up my alley: “A stunning elegy to a vanished time, Caroline Heller’s memoir traces the lives of her parents, her uncle, and their circle of intellectuals and dreamers from Central Europe on the eve of World War II to present-day America.”

Happy All the Time and Shine On, Bright and Dangerous Object by Laurie Colwin – after finishing Colwin’s More Home Cooking, I felt it was time to try some of her fiction.  I was impatient when I picked these up, read them both quickly, and had very different reactions to them.

An Omelette and a Glass of Wine by Elizabeth David – also inspired by More Home Cooking.  Colwin referred to David frequently in her essays and to this book in particular.

Taste of Persia by Naomi Duguid – Duguid’s newest.

The New Book of Middle Eastern Food by Claudia Roden – a classic and always a favourite to return to.

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 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.

More Home Cooking by Laurie Colwin – I read Home Cooking by Colwin just about two years ago and loved it.  She is undoubtedly one of the best food writers I’ve come across so I am really looking forward to this second volume.  The librarian is also a big fan – when I picked this up (it’s an inter-library loan) we commiserated over how sad it was that Colwin died so young and what a wonderful writer she was.

Model Woman by Robert Lacey – A biography of Eileen Ford, of the Ford modelling agency.

Commonwealth by Ann Patchett – Really looking forward to this (so much so that I placed a library hold even though I gave a copy to my mother for her birthday last weekend – I don’t want to wait until she’s done!).

Red Plenty by Francis Spufford – Strange as it may seem, the gray, oppressive USSR was founded on a fairy tale. It was built on the twentieth-century magic called “the planned economy,” which was going to gush forth an abundance of good things that the lands of capitalism could never match. And just for a little while, in the heady years of the late 1950s, the magic seemed to be working. Red Plenty is about that moment in history, and how it came, and how it went away; about the brief era when, under the rash leadership of Khrushchev, the Soviet Union looked forward to a future of rich communists and envious capitalists, when Moscow would out-glitter Manhattan and every Lada would be better engineered than a Porsche. It’s about the scientists who did their genuinely brilliant best to make the dream come true, to give the tyranny its happy ending.

Bloodlands by Timothy Snyder – a record of the mass killings by both the Soviet and Nazi regimes in the vast lands that lay between their two capitals.

The Fall of the Ottomans by Eugene Rogan – A look at the First World War in the Middle East and its immediate aftermath, resulting in the end of the Ottoman Empire and the creation of the modern Middle East.

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 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.

Another slightly slow library week for me as I am pulling more books off my shelves to read these days.  A good practice but I feel a bit odd coming home from the library with a mostly empty bag!

When in French by Lauren Collins – a memoir from Collins, a writer for The New Yorker magazine, about her experiences as an anglophone married to a Frenchman, living in Geneva.  I am fascinated by this sort of foreign language memoir and read it as soon as it arrived.

The Mighty Dead by Adam Nicolson – an exploration of why Homer matters (now and always).

Chance Developments by Alexander McCall Smith – a very light collection of short “unexpected love stories”, each inspired by a photograph.

Mrs Tim Gets a Job by D.E. Stevenson – my inter-library hold on this came in last Friday, just in time for me to read it for the 1947 club.

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 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.

Slim pickings this week, mostly because I’m still wading through The Romanovs.  It continues to be a bit overwhelming so I am breaking it up with I Was a Stranger by John Hackett, which is so full of love and kindness that it quite balances out all the mutilations and assassinations.

Last Curtsey by Fiona MacCarthy – a look at the English debutante season of 1958, the last season before the court presentation custom was abolished.

The Dancehall Years by Joan Haggerty – very excited to read this well-reviewed locally-set novel, tracing four families for several decades, starting during the Depression.

Mrs. Mike by Benedict and Nancy Freeman – as I mentioned last week, I am considering this for the upcoming  1947 Club.

By far my favourite thing I picked up at the library this week is the DVD of “Fortunes of War”.  I have vague memories of watching it (or parts of it?) a decade ago, when it acted as a very effective distraction during exam season at university.  Now I can enjoy it at my leisure  and am having a wonderful time.  It is making me feel slightly shameful that I still haven’t read Olivia Manning’s books, though.

What did you pick up this week? 

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