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 to steal 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.

Hello! And welcome to Library Loot!

As Claire mentioned last week, I’m the new co-host for Library Loot. If you’re new to my blog, hi there! Thanks for coming by! Hope you’ll have a look around.

A little bit about myself, I’ve been blogging for quite a while now, and I’ve been a fan of the library since I was a little girl. I’ve had library memberships in 3 different countries so far – Singapore (where I was born and grew up), the UK (where I did graduate school), and now in the US where I live. I have two boys, aged 5 and 7, and they love going to the library too!

Here’s my library loot this week:

I love cookbooks but I don’t love lugging them around when I already have two big tote bags full of kids’ books. So while I don’t really love e-cookbooks, sometimes they’re all I can manage. I’ve been wanting to check out Chrissy Teigen’s cookbook, and also, I am a big fan of Smitten Kitchen! I own her first cookbook and wanted to see what was in this one.

My hold for this book came in. This book won the Kirkus Prize for fiction and while I am not a fan of the cover, I am intrigued by the synopsis.

An offbeat office novel turns apocalyptic satire as a young woman transforms from orphan to worker bee to survivor

Candace Chen, a millennial drone self-sequestered in a Manhattan office tower, is devoted to routine. With the recent passing of her Chinese immigrant parents, she’s had her fill of uncertainty. She’s content just to carry on: She goes to work, troubleshoots the teen-targeted Gemstone Bible, watches movies in a Greenpoint basement with her boyfriend.

So Candace barely notices when a plague of biblical proportions sweeps New York. Then Shen Fever spreads. Families flee. Companies halt operations. The subways squeak to a halt. Her bosses enlist her as part of a dwindling skeleton crew with a big end-date payoff. Soon entirely alone, still unfevered, she photographs the eerie, abandoned city as the anonymous blogger NY Ghost.

Candace won’t be able to make it on her own forever, though. Enter a group of survivors, led by the power-hungry IT tech Bob. They’re traveling to a place called the Facility, where, Bob promises, they will have everything they need to start society anew. But Candace is carrying a secret she knows Bob will exploit. Should she escape from her rescuers?

A send-up and takedown of the rituals, routines, and missed opportunities of contemporary life, Ling Ma’s Severance is a moving family story, a quirky coming-of-adulthood tale, and a hilarious, deadpan satire. Most important, it’s a heartfelt tribute to the connections that drive us to do more than survive.  

Kids’ loot:

What did you get from your library this week?