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 tosteal 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.
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.”
Keeping an Eye Open by Julian Barnes was the first book I read in 2026 but that alone does not make it special. No, it also holds two other distinctions: one, it is the first time I’ve both started and actually finished a book by Julian Barnes (after many aborted attempts with other titles) and two, it may be the fastest I’ve ever picked up something discovered on a year-end “Best Books of” list. Scott at Furrowed Middlebrow included this as one of his best books of 2025 on December 20 and by January 2 I’d both tracked it down and finished it.
The book contains seventeen essays that trace “the story of how art (mainly French art) made its way from Romanticism to Realism and into Modernism” and alternate between artists I know well – Manet, Delacroix, Cezanne, Degas, Vuillard – and those I had barely heard of – Bonnard, Redon, Braque.
Barnes is disappointingly focused on biography. After a promisingly personal and engaging introduction, his own feelings about most of the artists and works seem to disappear. Nor does he seem particularly interested in the unique styles of each artist. I love biography. I am nosey and interested in people and the times they lived in, but I want more. I want to know why Barnes cared enough about each of these artists to write about them and why he thinks people should continue to care about them.
The opening essay is the longest and was originally a chapter in Barnes’ novel A History of the World in 10 ½ Chapters. The subject is The Raft of the Medusa by Théodore Géricault and, though much of the piece is taken up with the history of the dramatic shipwreck of the Medusa and the ordeals experienced by the survivors, Barnes is able to reflect on the choices Géricault made to turn a desperate, sensational tragedy into a palatable work of art (for example, the famous cannibalism doesn’t make it onto the canvas). It’s an engaging and interesting essay and shows the best of Barnes’ skill.
My favourite essays were about Manet – where, though Barnes delves into plenty of biographical detail, he doesn’t entirely forget about the art – and Vallotton. Manet we all know well and I enjoyed Barnes’ thoughts on the variability of Manet’s works and especially his careful gradations of blacks and whites. Vallotton, on the other hand, I knew extremely little about so appreciated both the biographical details and the multiple illustrations that accompanied the essay. This was also one of the few essays where you heard Barnes’ thoughts on a piece as he wondered: who is the liar in The Lie? Even more enjoyably, you hear how his students disagreed and offered their own interpretations.
The Lie – Felix Vallotton
Overall, the book is strangely under-illustrated. When speaking of art, and especially of so many specific pieces, it’s so much more engaging to be able to see them. Poor Delacroix’s essay only had three illustrations and one of them was of another artist’s work. Paired with Barnes’ emotional distance from most of the works and occasional forays into pretension (no one ever needs to use the phrase “there was more than a touch of Yevtushenkoism about him”), it made it a hard book to fully sink into, unlike my joyful experience reading John Updike’s (well-illustrated) essays on art. Yet it was still an interesting and worthwhile book and a pleasant one to start the year with.
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 tosteal 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 New Year! I had a wonderful rest over the holidays and filled my time off work with lots of long walks, time with family and friends, and reading. Lots and lots of reading. After a hectic four or five weeks leading up to the holidays where I struggled to find time to read anything, I was lovely to be able to sit down and have concentrated long periods to just sink into books. I’ve already managed to read 3 of the books in this week’s loot thanks to all that free time – but there are more on the way!
The Alienation Effect by Owen Hatherley – a long-awaited hold that has finally come in! I can never resist anything about Central Europeans and Hatherley focuses on the influence of those who arrived in Britain during the inter-war period.
A Light in the Window by Jan Karon – I really loved the first book in Karon’s beloved Mitford series and am excited to continue reading about Father Tim and his friends.
The Miernik Dossier by Charles McCarry – Spy stories are a fun palate cleanser. I’m particularly excited about this one because it takes my favourite form: the epistolary novel.
Yours for the Season by Uzma Jalaluddin – I don’t tend to read many Christmas-focused books but I will read anything and everything by Uzma Jalaluddin!
Keeping an Eye Open by Julian Barnes – Scott included this collection of essays on art in his best books of 2025 list and I immediately went in search of it.
Evvie Drake Starts Over by Linda Holmes – this has been on my radar for years (it came out in 2019) but I was finally convinced to grab this after Constance read it in November.
2025 marked a new and hopefully not to be repeated milestone: I only wrote one book review here for the entire year. On the plus side, that means this will be a more exciting list than usual as it is full of surprises!
I had a nice 2025 though there were no exciting endeavours to explain my lax reviewing (just pure and unrepentant laziness). I took two excellent trips to Europe (Iceland in May and France in October), I was able to see my out-of-town nieces and nephews several times throughout the year, and a few things changed at work but in interesting rather than upsetting ways. I’m healthy, the people I’m closest to are healthy, and that’s enough to ask for as we head into 2026.
As always, I’ve had great fun putting together my list of favourite books from this year (ruthlessly ranked, of course).
10. The Whistling Season (2006) – Ivan Doig A perfectly formed novel about a man looking back on a pivotal period in his boyhood. Rose Llewellyn arrives in Montana in 1909 answering Paul’s widowed father’s request for a housekeeper. Along with her comes her unforgettable brother, Morris, whose boundless knowledge and adaptable morals open a whole new and complex world for the bright young Paul. Doig manages Paul’s perspective wonderfully.
9. The Sisterhood of Ravensbrück (2025) – Lynne Olson Olson cleverly chooses to tell the story of life in Ravensbrück, the women-only concentration camp, through the lives and experiences of four members of the French resistance. Her subjects, including an anthropologist, a young countess, a student, and the niece of Charles de Gaulle, are inspiring and Olson, always a master of colourful anecdotes, brings both them and the period fully to life. I think Olson is the most entertaining and engaging popular historian writing today and this book is a perfect example of her powers.
8. Tempest-Tost (1951) – Robertson Davies What fun! I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t aware of Davies, who was one of the first giants of CanLit, but I’d always been a bit scared of his books by reputation. But there is nothing to fear in this excellent Trollope-esque novel about an amateur production of The Tempest in a university town.
7. The Deepening Stream (1930) – Dorothy Canfield Fisher I had abandoned this once before but I picked it up in just the right mood this summer, ready to drift into Canfield Fisher’s slow tale of Matey Gilbert from her unsettled childhood to a happy marriage into a Quaker family and on to her experiences in France during the First World War.
6. Lonesome Dove (1985) – Larry McMurtry I now fully understand why everyone loves and recommends this Pulitzer Prize-winning Western about a cattle drive from Texas to Montana. Few characters I encountered this year felt as real to me as these ones – which made their fates all the more devastating.
5. The Private Capital (1984) – Sandra Gwyn The best books can take an odd or obscure topic and turn it into something you can’t put down. That is exactly what Gwyn did with this social history of Ottawa and the fascinating political and social figures who populated it from Confederation through to the early twentieth century. There are grumbling middle-class bureaucrats frustrated when the capital moves from lovely, civilized Quebec to this small, frigid lumber town, Governors-General both happy and unhappy to find themselves in a snowy capital with society ready to take every direction from them, promising politicians with complicated love lives, and quick-witted journalists on the rise. It’s absolutely marvellous.
4. Pawn in Frankincense (1969) – Dorothy Dunnett I started the Lymond Chronicles last year and, of course, the first book made my 2024 Top Ten list. I then sped through the remaining five books in January, February, and March – but how to choose between them for my favourite this year? They all have such rich plots, incredible tension, immaculate historical detail, and characters I think will now always live in my mind. By a very narrow margin, Pawn in Frankincense wins my favour for two reasons: it moves our characters across Europe and into the Ottoman world (which I have long been fascinated by), and Philippa’s expanded presence.
3. Homestead (1998) – Rosina Lippi A wonderful collection of linked stories about the women in a small Austrian mountain village across the decades of the twentieth century. Everything is beautifully and carefully observed and, though I read this at the beginning of the year, my heart is still broken over some of the moments in it.
2. The Granddaughter (2021) – Bernhard Schlink, translated by Charlotte Collins A superbly thought-provoking novel about gaps in understanding and the legacies of the past. After his wife’s death, Kaspar discovers that before she escaped from East Germany in the 1960s to join him in the West his wife had a daughter with an earlier boyfriend. When he tracks the woman down, he discovers that she has found meaning and peace in the neo-Nazi movement after a difficult youth and is raising her own daughter with beliefs that horrify gentle bookseller Kaspar. As he builds a relationship with his step-granddaughter, Kaspar struggles to share his own view of the world with her without endangering her relationship with her family.
1. The Clarinet Polka (2002) – Keith Maillard I fell so hard for this novel back in March and no other reading experience this year came close to recreating the magic I felt reading about good-hearted but self-destructive Jimmy Koprowski who seems fated to make one bad decision after another following his return to West Virginia after his time in the air force during the Vietnam war. Jimmy is an entertaining and occasionally heartbreaking narrator and I loved the close-knit Polish-American community that surrounds him.
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 tosteal 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 holidays! I am now officially on holiday for the rest of the year and, after a furiously busy last month at work, am looking forward to having plenty of time to read, walk, and catch up with friends and family over the holidays.
Snowed In by Christina Bartolomeo – I have had a lot of fun this year reading Bartolomeo’s three novels (the other two are Cupid and Diana and The Side of the Angels). They are light novels but the voice in each is so strong and entertaining that I’ve sped through them all.
Doomsday Book by Connie Willis – a favourite to reread at Christmas.
Summers at Castle Auburn by Sharon Shinn – I read and enjoyed this back in 2012 (thanks to Alex’s enthusiasm for it) and a recent mention of it by a friend convinced me it’s time for a reread.
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 tosteal 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.
At Home in Mitford by Jan Karon – I was so ready for a nice, quiet book about nice people and this first volume in the much-loved Mitford series was exactly what I needed.
Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life by Amy Krouse Rosenthal – Using mostly short entries organized from A to Z, many of which are cross-referenced, Rosenthal captures in wonderful and episodic detail the moments, observations, and emotions that comprise a contemporary life.
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 tosteal 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 usually try to have my library loot ready on Tuesday nights but I have the best possible excuse for being late today: I saw Margaret Atwood speak yesterday! She was in Vancouver as part of the book tour for her memoir Book of Lives (very entertaining and full of great photos) and it was so much fun to see her in person. At eighty-six, she is still so quick-witted and funny.
War and Remembrance by Herman Wouk – I thoroughly enjoyed The Winds of War (though I was disappointed by Wouk’s handling of his female characters) and am excited to continue the WWII experience of the Henry family in this second volume.
The Correspondent by Virginia Evans – I love an epistolary novel and this one has been getting excellent reviews. I enjoyed Constance’s review of it last month (at which point I was #22 in the hold queue at my library).
The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai – it’s here! But it’s much too big to take to work, which is always a challenge: do you save it up for the weekend for full immersion, or juggle two books at once (one for the commute, this for at home)? I’ve gone for the juggling approach and am enjoying it very much.
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 tosteal 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 Rose Field by Philip Pullman – after racing through the first two books in Pullman’s The Book of Dust trilogy, I couldn’t face the idea of a months-long wait for this recently-released final volume. Luckily, it was on the shelf in a neighbouring city’s library so I dashed there to pick it up on Friday. I read it on Sunday and sadly found it very disappointing – a dull end to the trilogy.
Nobody Leaves by Ryszard Kapuściński, translated by William R. Brand – in between foreign assignments, Polish journalist Kapuściński was sent to forgotten corners of his own country and this slim collection of pieces from 1962 captures those experiences.
The Marriage Method by Mimi Matthews – the newly-released second book in Matthews’ new Crinoline Academy series. I didn’t love the first book but I’m eternally optimistic about Matthews.
Letters of E.B. White, Revised Edition edited by Dorothy Lobrano Guth – I had fun reading some of White’s essays a few years ago in The Points of My Compass and flagged this collection of letters as something to read. Two years later, I’m finally making progress!
High Minds: the Victorians and the Birth of Modern Britain by Simon Heffer – I was looking forward to this history but then it arrived and I’m feeling fairly daunted by its 900 pages. It will have to be exceedingly good to hold my attention that long!
Here’s England by Ruth McKenney and Richard Bransten – picked up as an oddity more than something I intend to read through fully. McKenney is famous for a collection of comic autobiographical stories called My Sister Eileen, which were turned into a play, a film, a musical, and a TV series. This is something totally different: a “highly informal guide” to England written in the early 1950s by McKenney and her husband.
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 tosteal 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.
Books of Lives by Margaret Atwood – I placed holds everywhere and on every format in my eagerness to read this memoir ahead of seeing Atwood speak in December. The ebook arrived first so this is making my bus rides to and from work very entertaining.
The Winds of War by Herman Wouk – For the first three and a half decades of my life, this book always lived on my parents’ bookshelf. It was released back into the world a few years ago during an annual purge so of course now is when I want to read it. I started by reading it as an ebook but realised that what I really wanted was the hefty paperback for the full immersive experience – library to the rescue!
La Belle Sauvage and The Secret Commonwealth by Philip Pullman – with the recent release of The Rose Field, I decided over the weekend that it was finally time to start The Book of Dust trilogy. But I didn’t anticipate how much I would love La Belle Sauvage or how quick these YA books are to read so now I’m almost done The Secret Commonwealth and mournfully planning for a long wait in the library hold queue for The Rose Field.
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 tosteal 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.
Bookish by Lucy Mangan – My local library still doesn’t even have this on order, but that is why I have so many different library cards to choose from. I took a three hour return bus trip in Friday rush hour traffic to pick this up in a neighbouring city and it was absolutely worth the journey. A companion to Mangan’s wonderful memoir of childhood reading, Bookworm, this covers her adult life and I had a fabulous time reading it over the weekend.
The Eleventh Man by Ivan Doig – a Nancy Pearl recommendation, this sounds excellent and I’ve enjoyed two other books by Doig this year already.
Remember Me to Harold Square by Paula Danziger – picked this up on a whim for a reread. Danziger was a favourite when I was in elementary school and the library was full of her books.
Pennington’s Seventeenth Summer, The Beethoven Medal, and Pennington’s Heir by K.M. Peyton – when Rohan Maitzen wrote enthusiastically about O, the Brave Music earlier this year she mentioned these as favourite books from her own childhood and got me deeply intrigued. I know Constance is also a KM Peyton fan so between the two of them I decided it was time to give Peyton a try.
Everything is Tuberculosis by John Green – this was on the Fast Reads shelf but it’s so slim I only needed a few hours rather than the one week loan period. It’s a good reminder of the continued prevalence of and battle against tuberculosis (something we may be more aware of in Canada compared to other Western countries given our high infection rate in the North) but I wanted more facts and figures.
The Side of the Angels by Christina Bartolomeo – I had fun with Bartolomeo’s debut novel, Cupid and Diana, earlier this year and am looking forward to reading more.
Thus Was Adonis Murdered by Sarah Caudwell – I have lost count of the number of people who have recommended this mystery but it has been brutal to track down; there are currently 28 people in the hold queue for one copy at my regular library. But I went abroad to nab it and am looking forward to discovering why so many people praise it.
The Captive Reader 
