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.

While I have some excellent books to share this week, this is far from everything that I’ve picked up from the library. I am reading away for next week’s 1961 Club and hope you are too! To create some (minimal) suspense, I’m keeping my choices out of my loot but if you’re looking for ideas check out my list of reviews by publication year. I recognize that not everyone is going to chose The Game of Kings by Dorothy Dunnett, but only grudgingly. In my dream world, the 1961 Club would turn into a Dunnett Appreciation Club. I will also award kudos (very valuable) to anyone who chooses to read Come Blossom-Time, My Love by Essie Summers (readily available as a Kindle eBook). I love Summers’ New Zealand-set romances and while this isn’t the best, it’s still great fun.

Head Over Wheels by Leonie Mack – I took a quick trip over the weekend to see family and ended up spending a few hours more than planned at the airport heading out. Happily, I had this romance about pro cyclists to keep me entertained during the delay. I really enjoyed it – it reminded me in ways of Lucy Parker and Chloe Angyal’s books – and look forward to the next book in the series being released this summer.

The Slow Road to Tehran by Rebecca Lowe – speaking of cyclists, this memoir recounts Lowe’s bicycle journey through Europe and the Middle East.

The Season by Helen Garner – I’ve not enjoyed my past encounters with Garner but I’m hopeful that moving away from fiction to this memoir of a season observing her grandson’s sports team will suit me better.

The Lost Language of Oysters by Alexander McCall Smith – the prolific McCall Smith always seems to have a new book out but all too rarely is it one about Professor Dr Dr Moritz-Maria von Igelfeld. Finally, it is!

Amuse Bouche by Caroline Boyd – subtitled “How to Eat Your Way Around France”, I suspect this is going to entertain me, make me hungry, and adds lots of places to my travel wish list (as Felicity Cloake’s similarly themed and absolutely joyous One More Croissant for the Road did).

The Perilous Gard by Elizabeth Marie Pope – I enjoyed Pope’s The Sherwood Ring a few weeks ago and am excited to read this YA novel about a young woman exiled by Queen Mary to a remote castle.

What did you pick up this week?

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 link this week.

I am finally reading again in a proper, immersive way. This year has been full of so many stops and starts, books abandoned half-done, hours spent wishing I could concentrate on my reading but too wound up from real life to settle down to them. This happens. It is always annoying but at least recognizable. But the relief once I’m on the other side is immense! Life is still chaotically busy right now but I’ve found the focus I was missing and, silly as it may seem, it really does make everything better when you can escape into a book for an hour or two at a time.

It’s a Love Story by Annabel Monaghan – this romantic comedy hit every right note for me. Loved it, would happily read a dozen more just like it.

The Holiday by Erica James – I am consuming everything I can find set on Corfu (which is a lot, a lot, a lot of romance novels with taverna-owning heroes) before I go in May and was intrigued to find this 2000 title by Erica James. Good news: no one seems to own a taverna (yet?).

A Fine Romance by Susan Branch – a delightful hand-lettered journal about a two-month trip Branch and her husband took to England. So delightful that it might actually prompt me to write a full review.

The New Age of Sexism by Laura Bates – Cheerfully subtitled “How the AI Revolution is Reinventing Misogyny”. If Karen Hao’s Empire of AI hadn’t already confirmed all my skepticism, I think this will manage it.

Scales of Gold by Dorothy Dunnett – continuing my first reading of the House of Niccolo series. Frustratingly, I’m listening to one of the Lymond audiobooks right now and these do not compliment each other, so saving this for once I’m done the audiobook.

Moonlight Murder by Uzma Jalaluddin – I was fast when the new eBooks were released yesterday and got my hands on this second entry in Jalaluddin’s Detective Aunty series.

What did you pick up this week?

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.

Song of Years by Bess Streeter Aldrich – probably the weakest of Aldrich’s books that I’ve read so far, but I still enjoyed this story of pioneers in Iowa in the 1850s and 1860s.

The Unselected Journals of Emma M. Lion, Volume One by Beth Brower – I’ve been hearing about these books for a while online but now finally have access – at least to the first one – through the library.

Grasping the Nettle by Tamsin Westhorpe – spring is time to both be in the garden and to read more gardening memoirs!

The Pretender by Jo Harkin – time for a bit of historical fiction. This featured on a number of “Best of” lists last year and I’m intrigued.

The Measure of Progress by Diane Coyle – I’m going to assume most of you aren’t interested in economic statistics but for those of us who are this is fascinating. When I picked up a pile of books over the weekend, this was what I chose to start reading first on the bus home.

The Traitors Circle by Jonathan Freedland – more non-fiction, this time about a German resistance group during the Second World War and its downfall.

What did you pick up this week?

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 link this week.

Empire of AI by Karen Hao – I have been stalking this book across libraries for a few weeks now, checking to see where Fast Read copies (7 day loan period, no holds) were available and then dashing to each location only to discover someone had gotten there before me. But not this week! I used the time change to my advantage and showed up at the library right at 9:30 on Sunday morning when the door opened. It pays to be a morning period when the clocks move forward an hour and no one else wants to be up.

Cabin by Patrick Hutchison – a memoir about building a cabin in the Pacific Northwest.

Buckeye by Patrick Ryan – I am really struggling with contemporary fiction right now (E.F. Benson was ideal though) but I’ve been looking forward to this for a while so I hope I can settle down to it.

What did you pick up this week?

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.

Harold Nicolson Diaries and Letters, 1930-1939 (Volume 1) edited by Nigel Nicolson – as warned last week, reading Nicolson’s Some People was the nudge I needed to go back to his diaries and letters. I loved the condensed single volume so am interested to see what else is in this three volume collection.

Mr Teddy by E.F. Benson – Simon put this on my radar last year and I’d forgotten much about it by the time it arrived via ILL. By kismet, I started it just after turning 40 – the same birthday the hero is experiencing as the book opens.

A House in Corfu by Emma Tennant – I have my first ever trip to Greece – specifically Corfu – coming up in May so am excited to have something to get me in the mood.

And the Crowd Went Wild by Susan Elizabeth Phillips – Phillips’ newest romance novel in her Chicago Stars series.

No Matter What by Cara Bastone – I’ve loved Bastone’s last two novels – Ready or Not and Promise Me Sunshine – and am excited to read this newest release (officially it came out yesterday but my library miraculously had it ready for me on Friday).

Bricks and Mortality by Ann Granger – continuing with this cosy Cotswold-set mystery series.

What did you pick up this week?

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 link this week.

I’m reading again! Not only do I have new books to share, I’ve already managed to read all three of them.

Some People by Harold Nicolson – delightful collection of fictionalized portraits of characters Nicolson encountered in his wide-roaming youth and early adulthood. Any time I read Nicolson I can’t help remember my favourite passages from his diaries – perhaps it is time for a reread of those? Maybe even the full three volume set this time rather than the single collected volume.

The Sherwood Ring by Elizabeth Marie Pope – an excellent recommendation from Nancy Pearl, this is the kind of ghost story that even I can stomach. After her father’s death, Peggy arrives to live with her uncle at the family’s home in New York state. While her uncle remains aloof, Peggy begins encountering the ghosts of the men and women who passed through the house during the Revolutionary War and learning about the family’s history through them.

Rack, Ruin and Murder by Ann Granger – a nice, easy mystery that I sped through on Sunday afternoon. It is the second in a series but makes absolutely no difference if you haven’t read the first (I did but it was 16 years ago and I remembered nothing).

What did you pick up this week?

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.

Two weeks later and not much has changed: I’m continuing to struggle with my reading. I am optimistically checking things out, hoping they will be just what I need, but I’m definitely having more misses than hits.

Part of the problem is absolutely the Olympics: I am having too much fun watching all the various events and my usual early morning pre-commute reading time is now taken up watching cross-country skiers or curlers or whatever else I can find that doesn’t completely terrify me (like flying off ski jumps, flipping around endless times, and landing backwards).

Thankfully for my productively, the Olympics will soon end and maybe then my powers of concentration will return!

Adventures in the Louvre by Elaine Sciolino

Lifelines by Julian Hoffman

Vigil by George Saunders

And Then There Was the One by Martha Waters

What did you pick up this week?

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.

January was intense, wasn’t it? In addition to the geopolitical stress, my work life has been extremely busy. I’m hoping for more balance in February – and more time to read!

These High, Green Hills by Jan Karon – Karon’s Mitford books about Father Tim and his friends are exactly the right speed for my tired brain right now.

Muybridge by Guy Delisle, translated by Helge Dascher & Rob Aspinall – a graphic biography of Eadweard Muybridge, creator of time-lapse photography, by the always good Delisle.

Race of Scorpions by Dorothy Dunnett – I was racing through Dunnett’s books last year at an alarming rate and forced myself to put this aside then to pace myself. Now I’m ready and eager to jump back into the adventures of Nicholas.

What did you pick up this week?

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.

Up a Road Slowly by Irene Hunt – I can’t remember a year when I’ve been so fast to act on so many recommendations from year-end Best Books lists, but here’s another one, this time from Elisabeth Grace Foley’s list.

My Father’s House and The Ghosts of Rome by Joseph O’Connor – Set in Rome and Vatican City during WWII, I enjoyed My Father’s House enough when I read it on Saturday that I quickly picked up the sequel so I could keep reading.

The Jukebox Queen of Malta by Nicholas Rinaldi – an old Nancy Pearl recommendation about “the awkward coming-of-age of Corporal Rocco Raven, a young Brooklynite assigned to an intelligence unit based on the island of Malta, under German and Italian air attack, in 1942.”

The Tears of Autumn by Charles McCarry – continuing the adventures of Paul Christopher following The Miernik Dossier.

Patchwork by Maddie Ballard – This sewing memoir been on my radar since Kate wrote about it last year (under its original title of Bound) and it’s now finally available here.

What did you pick up this week?

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 link this week.

Mrs Endicott’s Splendid Adventure by Rhys Bowen – I placed a hold on this after reading Constance’s review and am now even keener to read it after she named it one of her favourite books of 2025.

An Academic Affair by Jodi McAlister – I was intrigued after seeing this reviewed at Miss Bates Reads Romance.

Mysteries of the Mall by Witold Rybczynski – architect-author Rybczynski was one of my happy discoveries last year when I read three of his books. Luckily, there are many more! This collection of thirty-four essays “ponders the role of global metropolises in an age of tourism and reflects on what kinds of places attract us in the modern city.”

What did you pick up this week?