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.
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 just back from two weeks in Europe and, as always, giving thanks for ebooks. How miraculous to be able to travel with hundreds of books in one tiny rectangle! And to be able to borrow them from the library and have them download directly to my Kobo while travelling! I may be a luddite in other ways but will always give thanks for my e-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 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.
Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner – Stegner’s Pulitzer-Prize-winning Angle of Repose was my favourite book in 2024 so I have high hopes for this.
What We Can Know by Ian McEwan – newest release from the prolific McEwan which, in the words of the Guardian’s reviewer, “compels us to consider the moral consequences of global catastrophe”.
Dream When You’re Feeling Blue by Elizabeth Berg – a novel about three Chicago sisters during WWII.
The Librarians by Sherry Thomas – genre-hopping Thomas (who so far has written YA fantasy, excellent historical romances, contemporary romance, and the Lady Sherlock history mystery series) tries her hand at a contemporary mystery.
Three to Get Deadly and Four to Score by Janet Evanovich – I am having so much fun with the Stephanie Plum books!
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.
History Matters by David McCullough – a collection of essays by the late historian.
Two for the Dough by Janet Evanovich – I had a lot of fun with the first Stephanie Plum novel and just as much with this second book in the series. The best thing about picking up a series that was started thirty years ago is that there’s no awkward wait for the next book! (Though there are still library hold queues given how popular this series remains.)
Cupid and Diana by Christina Bartolomeo – an old Nancy Pearl chick lit recommendation.
Cool fall weather – and rain! glorious rain! – has finally arrived here after a long, warm summer and I am delighted. But summer felt especially long for me as it began in, of all places, Iceland.
A friend and I took a quick one-week trip to Iceland in May where all guidebooks and conventional wisdom advised it would be wet, windy, and a chilly 8 to 11 degrees. Serious conversations were had about the hardiness of our well-used rain jackets and if they would stand up to an outdoors-focused holiday. But at the date got closer, the weather forecast remained shockingly abnormal, promising 20+ degrees for the start of our holiday. I optimistically threw in a pair of shorts and a dress and off we went.
Friends, I wore nothing other than the shorts and the dress for the first five days as we managed to hit the country’s most significant May heatwave ever recorded. I felt like the most prepared tourist in the entire country.
As much as every local lamented that we weren’t getting to experience real Icelandic weather (while they sunned themselves in parks and restaurant terraces, clearly not missing the gale-force winds), it was perfect for what we were there for. My friend and I joined a G Adventures Tour (“Wellness Iceland”) that had the ideal itinerary for us: a glimpse of Reykjavik at the start (we came in a day early to have more time to explore) and then five nights based in Hveragerði to explore more of the south coast. The tour had a great mix of hiking, yoga, hot springs, and touring – it was the dream mix of activity and sightseeing for me! We had a great small group of 8 travellers (3 Canadians, 3 Americans, 1 Kiwi, 1 Aussie) plus our guide.
Fantastic experience hiking on the Solheimajokul glacierClouds finally appeared towards the end of the week as we visited Reynisfjara black sand beach
Magical Gjáin
We saw and did so much. There were endless waterfalls, huge blue drifts of extra-early flowering lupins, a long and beautiful day on the Golden Circle route, a memorable evening at an Icelandic horse farm, a fantastic hike up to a hot springs river followed by a long soak, yoga sessions in a variety of settings (much to the entertainment of some local school kids during a park session in Hveragerði), a fun stop at a recreated Viking farm at Þjórsárdalur, a magical wander through a gorge at Gjáin …as I said, so much. And on top of that my friend and I fit in a delicious food tour in Reykjavik and a visit to the hot springs at Hvammsvik before our G Adventures Tour even started.
Hvammsvik
The swimming culture in Iceland is fantastic and I’d love to go back for that reason alone in cooler weather. I managed to visit three commercial spas (Hvammsvik, Fontana, and Sky Lagoon), the Reykjadalur hot springs river, and the city pool at Vesturbæjarlaug in Reykjavik. Hvammsvik is on the ocean and Fontana is on a lake, with these natural bodies of water meant to work as cold plunges (though at Fontana the lake is warmed by the hot springs). I ended up spending most of my time in both places in the natural bodies of water rather than the heated pools because the weather was so warm (admittedly, I didn’t have a lot of companions while doing this so not everyone agreed). I’m sure I’d appreciate the warm pools more if it were 5 or 10 degrees outside but loved the experience I had!
I’d only done one group tour before, ten years ago when I spent a week hiking in Tuscany, and was a bit nervous about it but it ended up being the perfect way to see Iceland and get to know some lovely other travellers. The group ranged from people in their 20s to their 60s and it was so great to hear about everyone’s different travel experiences around the world and get more inspiration. I came back with lots of trip ideas and my friend and I are already considering something more exotic for next year after the success of our first trip together.
The Captive Reader 
