Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Eva and Alessandra  that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library.

I must confess that I always have far more books out from the library than I could ever read in the loan period and I take back a number of them unread or keep renewing them as long as I can. But I do enjoy browsing and taking books home that I think I may want to read. It’s a great way of trying out books I may never read otherwise.

Yesterday I was going to go to my course on the Impressionists in the morning and food shopping in the afternoon. That was the plan, but the snow changed all that. The course was cancelled as the tutor couldn’t get there. But the snow wasn’t too bad so we went shopping in the morning and as we were passing the library I popped in. I quickly scanned the shelves and came out with four books, which all seemed to just jump off the shelves into my hands.

• Blackbird House by Alice Hoffman – a book of short stories. This appeals to me because the stories are about the families who have lived in Blackbird House on the wild coast of Massachusetts for over two hundred years. It promises to be a magical tale. I haven’t read anything by Alice Hoffman yet although I have got Practical Magic.
• The View From Castle Rock by Alice Munro – biographical fiction, “a brilliantly imagined version of the past.” Munro’s family emigrated  from Edinburgh to Canada in the 18th century.
• Ferney by James Long. Cornflower wrote about this book and I added it to my wishlist, so I was really pleased to see it in the library. It’s set in a broken-down old cottage in Somerset , a couple’s dream and financial nightmare.
• A Severed Head by Iris Murdoch. I may have read this many years ago, but I’ve been thinking about reading Murdoch’s books recently and this was the only one in the library that I thought I hadn’t read. Elizabeth Jane Howard’s quote on the book describes the book as a “comedy with that touch of ferocity about it which makes for excitement.”

The question now is will I read them before 26 February when they’re due back. That all depends upon what I feel like reading and I have plenty to choose from – another 8 books from the library or any of the other books sitting around waiting to be read.