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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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’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).
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The Captive Reader 
