When all but 8 teams are tied with 0 medals, it's time for anarchy in the Globe & Mail medal count list. Who needs alphabetization?

This week's Library Loot thecaptivereader.com/2026/02/04/l...

This week's Library Loot thecaptivereader.com/2026/01/22/l...

Beautiful frosty, foggy morning with hopeful signs of spring

New review: Keeping an Eye Open by Julian Barnes thecaptivereader.com/2026/01/11/k...

Excellent epigraph to start Owen Hatherley's The Aliention Effect, about Central Europeans who came to Britain between the wars and the impact they made

First Library Loot of 2026: thecaptivereader.com/2026/01/07/l...

Twelve excellent months of reading and it all boils down to this: my Top Ten Books of 2025 thecaptivereader.com/2025/12/31/t...

Twelve excellent months of reading and it all boils down to this: my Top Ten Books of 2025 thecaptivereader.com/2025/12/31/t...

What fun you can have for less than $10 at a good used bookstore! I went in looking for Csardas (all fine bookstores have at least one copy), was delighted to find favourite Voices of Summer (about an operetta festival in an Austrian village), & picked up the Barshinskeys because why not?

Well this is lovely!

Christmas Eve Library Loot, featuring my favourite seasonal reread: Doomsday Book by Connie Willis thecaptivereader.com/2025/12/24/l...

My stacks of library books at home are approaching danger-to-health levels...so I added a few more thecaptivereader.com/2025/12/17/l...

Happy birthday to Jane Austen, and to this very on-brand Economist chart www.economist.com/christmas-sp...

This week's Library Loot (delayed by Margaret Atwood, disturber of schedules) thecaptivereader.com/2025/12/10/l...

Who needs a top 10 list when you could have almost 400 book recommendations? Always deadly for my TBR.

Was my top priority on my vacation day travelling to a neighboring city, signing up for their library system, and borrowing a single book - all to avoid the months-long wait across all the other library systems I'm part of? Obviously.

THREAD. A collection of photographs of excellent cattle I have met on walks. You will find the captions to each photo in the alt text.

This week's library loot: thecaptivereader.com/2025/11/12/l...

I did not anticipate that the highlight of my weekend would be a 41-year-old history of Ottawa around the time of confederation but here we are

flip.it/FchnW8 Candidate for the most French story ever reported.

Fresh Library Loot thecaptivereader.com/2025/10/29/l...

A slim Library Loot: thecaptivereader.com/2025/10/01/l...

I spent a fantastic week in Iceland earlier this year (during a heatwave!) and finally shared some photos and thoughts thecaptivereader.com/2025/09/29/e...

This feels such a loss, a fine athlete and by all accounts I ever heard, a fine man. Part of a generation of hockey fans’ memories. That image, as the P.M. says here, of him casually leaning, from a great height, on his stick. Those Habs were ‘my’ team, he was their bulwark. Rest In Peace, sir.

A journey to Hell, a Byzantine slave, a classic Western, an Icelandic mystery, a frustrated music teacher, and life in the south of France: this week's Library Loot thecaptivereader.com/2025/09/03/l...

Is there any better end of summer tradition than an agricultural fair? This one had a rodeo but, let's be serious, can that beat the excitement of finding out who arranged the most attractive sheaf of wheat?

My summer luxury has been leaving a blanket at the office so each lunch hour I can take it and a book to a nearby park. Reading under a tree on a hot day is always idyllic but there's something especially wonderful and transgressive when it's sandwiched between hours of playing with Excel.

Almost Perfect: on Dorothy Evelyn Smith's "O, The Brave Music"

This week's Library Loot: thecaptivereader.com/2025/08/20/l...

This week's Library Loot thecaptivereader.com/2025/08/06/l...

This week's Library Loot thecaptivereader.com/2025/07/23/l...

A time-travelling detective, amateur theatrics, a loner math teacher finds love, a grandfather tries to save his family from a Christian militia, a not-quite-memoir, and essays on food and farming: this week in my Library Loot thecaptivereader.com/2025/07/09/l...

I heard zero enthusiasm for Robertson Davies from the adults in my life while growing up so never read him. Surprise: he is funny!

This week's Library Loot: short stories from Armenia, art history, and, most exciting of all, more Dorothy Dunnett thecaptivereader.com/2025/06/25/l...

Raiding a new library in this week's Library Loot thecaptivereader.com/2025/06/18/l...

Books, glorious books! This week's Library Loot thecaptivereader.com/2025/06/11/l...

Hurrah for the weekend! But also, how is it already Saturday? Time for a very belated bare-bones Library Loot: thecaptivereader.com/2025/06/07/l...

Fresh Library Loot thecaptivereader.com/2025/05/28/l...

So sorry to hear about the untimely death this week of Jill Sobule. I loved so many of her songs as teen (and still do), which had a sense of humour missing from many of my other favourite singer-songwriters youtu.be/xlsAdYjUzI4?...

I seem to finally be shaking off the reading curse that hung over me through most of April. Huzzah! Time to celebrate with more library books thecaptivereader.com/2025/04/30/l...

Shakespeare and Myself by George Mikes for the #1952Club thecaptivereader.com/2025/04/24/s...

This book provided a real flavor of 1952, which I wasn't expecting but found fascinating - The Far Country by Nevil Shute perfectretort.blogspot.com/2025/04/the-...

This week's Library Loot: thecaptivereader.com/2025/04/02/l...

I just finished The Clarinet Polka & it was the best kind of reading experience. It pulled me into a Polish-American community in West Virginia at the end of the 1960s & held me with its good-hearted-but-self-destructive narrator. Loved it all.

Fresh Library Loot thecaptivereader.com/2025/03/19/l...

Satisfyingly eclectic Library Loot thecaptivereader.com/2025/03/05/l...

Flipping through old reading diaries, was reminded of how fun and sassy some of Sara Jeannette Duncan's heroines are. Particularly love A Voyage of Consolation (1898), in which our American heroine is back in Europe (see An American Girl in London) & still not able to shake off annoying Englishmen