The Captive Reader

Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Claire from The Captive Reader and Marg from The Adventures of an Intrepid Reader 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!

A bit of everything this week, which is just as I like it!

A Stricken Field by Martha Gellhorn – While I’ve read some of Gellhorn’s non-fiction, I’ve never read any of her novels and this sounds perfect for me:
In 1938, before the Munich pact, Gellhorn visited Prague and witnessed its transformation from a proud democracy preparing to battle Hitler to a country occupied by the German army. Born out of this experience, A Stricken Field follows a journalist who returns to Prague after its annexation and finds her efforts to obtain help for the refugees and to convey the shocking state of the country both frustrating and futile. A convincing account of a people under the brutal oppression of the Gestapo, A Stricken Field is Gellhorn’s most powerful work of fiction.

Kornél Esti by Dezső Kosztolányi – I loved Kosztolányi’s Skylark and as soon as I finished it I rushed to the library to see what else was available by him in English.  This sounds absolutely wonderful: Tender and wild, funny and sad, Kornél Esti chronicles the adventures of a man when his wicked scamp of an alter ego (who breathed every forbidden idea of his childhood into his ear) reappears decades later – and they decide to write a book together. 

Sun in Winter: A Toronto Wartime Journal, 1942-1945 by Gunda Lambton – When World War II started, Gunda Lambton was living in England with her husband, illustrator Garth Williams, and their two children.  In 1942, she became a ‘war guest,’ a single mother sent from England to Toronto to avoid the war.  Sun in Winter richly details Lambton’s first years in a new country, capturing her keen interest in life in Canada and drawing vivid pictures of the many people who helped her survive. 

Prague Tales by Jan Neruda – A collection of tales set in the Malá Strana district of Prague.

Extraordinary Canadians: Tommy Douglas by Vincent Lam – I love the Extraordinary Canadians brief biographies and this is one of the newest and most-praised additions to the series.

O Come Ye Back to Ireland: Our First Year in County Clare by Niall Williams & Christine Breen – I added this to my TBR list after reading Nancy Pearl’s Book Lust to Go earlier this year.  Published in 1987, this is the story of how Williams and Breen abandoned “their urban existence to settle in the tiny village of Kilmihil on Ireland’s west coast.”

Venetia by Georgette Heyer – Listening to Richard Armitage read Georgette Heyer is perfection.  I don’t listen to a lot of audiobooks but I think they are a fun way to re-‘read’ an old favourite (and to appreciate a gorgeous man’s gorgeous voice).

Kaffeehaus: Exquisite Desserts from the Classic Cafes of Vienna, Budapest, and Prague by Rick Rodgers – I’ve been waiting for this since last May when, of course, they discovered it was missing as soon as I placed my hold (the same thing happened when I requested Castles in the Air).  I flipped through it quickly as soon as it arrived and the recipes look great (though the text would have benefited from a more rigorous editor).

Love and Freedom: My Unexpected Life in Prague by Rosemary Kavan – a memoir of Kavan’s life in communist Czechoslovakia.  I was quite impressed by those whose opinions of the book are quoted on the back cover: Graham Greene, Iris Murdoch, Timothy Garton Ash and Václav Havel.

What did you pick up this week?