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.
Marg has the Mr Linky this week.
I had pretty much given up on the Eastern European Reading Challenge. My focus the last month or two has been on making sure that I was on track to finish A Century of Books by the end of the year. The Eastern European challenge I enjoy but – with an aim of only 12 books – it is not a point of pride for me like A Century of Books. However, with only ten books now left to read for my Century, I realised that I might just be able to meet my goal for the Eastern European Reading Challenging as well. Of course, on realising that, I immediately placed a number of library holds and here are the results:
The Balkan Express: Fragments from the Other Side of the War by Slavenka Drakulić – I read and love two of Drakulić’s non-fiction books for the challenge last year (How We Survived Communism and Even Laughed and Café Europa) so am looking forward to this. Her writing is wonderful and I always feel that I learn so much from her books, about people and events I would never otherwise have known about.
The Birch Grove and Other Stories by Jaroslaw Iwaszkiewicz – Jaroslaw Iwaszkiewicz’s work is familiar to every Polish reader, yet remains unknown to the outside world. The stories in this selection were all written in the 1930s, and provide an extraordinary evocation of Poland’s first brief era of independence between the wars. They are also timeless sonatas of love and loss.
When Eve Was Naked: Stories of a Life’s Journey by Josef Škvorecký – rather than write a conventional memoir, Škvorecký published this collection of autobiographical short stories featuring his fictional alter-ego Danny Smiricky. Škvorecký had a fascinating life, from his childhood and early adulthood in Czechoslovakia to, after he immigrated to Canada in 1968, his work as a publisher and professor in Toronto. But, as interesting as I find him, I do not always get on well with his writing so we’ll see how this goes.
Kafka’s Milena by Jana Černa – I knew nothing about this book when I placed a hold on it, except that I have no interest in Kafka. But Milena Jesenska sounds like a fascinating woman – the flyleaf describes her as a “prominent journalist and translator, one of the most famous women in 1930s Prague” – so I am looking forward to learning more about her.
Silver Moon: Stories from Antonín Dvořák’s Most Enchanting Operas by Ian Krykorka (illustrations by Vladyana Krykorka) – I read this just as soon as I picked it up so I may as well give a mini-review now and check it off my challenge list. This is a lovely children’s book from the Czech-Canadian mother and son team of Ian and Vladyana Krykorka, retelling the stories that Dvořák used as the basis for three of his operas. They are all fairy tales with happy endings so it is quite natural to present them as stories for children this way – I wouldn’t necessarily do the same with La Traviata. Silver Moon begins with “Rusalka”, the most famous of Dvořák’s operas. It is a Czech version of “The Little Mermaid” about a water nymph who falls in love with a man. Thankfully, it has a happier ending and a less suicidal heroine than “The Little Mermaid”. The other two are stories I was not familiar with before: “The King and the Charcoal Burner” and “Kate and the Devil”. “The King and the Charcoal Burner” plays with the always popular (especially with the Czechs) idea of a king wandering unrecognized among his people and then, revealing himself later on, rewarding them for the generosity they had shown. Here he also manages to play match-maker, between a girl whose family had helped him when he was lost and hungry and a young man who saved his life in battle. The final story, “Kate and the Devil”, about a shrewish girl who is so irritating that even the Devil himself doesn’t want her in Hell, is the most amusing and I would love to see it performed. The illustrations are more impressive than the text but this is still a charming book.
What did you pick up this week?
The Captive Reader 
All those are new to me. Enjoy your loot.
Thanks, Linda!
Not familiar to me either but I love the sound of Silver Moon and it’s illustrations. Happy reading!
Thank you, Cat!
Also unfamiliar to me, but they sound fascinating. (Adding some to my “books to look at” list…I really need to get to the library.) Out of curiosity, do you have a particular connection to the CR/Eastern Europe, or is it just an area of interest?
My mom, my aunt and my grandmother (my grandfather had died several years before) left Prague in ’68, Jordan, so yes, there is definitely a connection! Mom was only fourteen when she came so she is thoroughly Canadian but my aunt, though based in Vancouver these days, lived there for much of the ’90s and still keeps an apartment in Prague. We try to go back as often as possible – around once a year – to see family and are in quite close contact with the cousins.