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.

Marg has the Mr Linky this week!

I am working hard at writing reviews but I have a truly overwhelming number of books I want to review and barely know where to start.  Do you want to hear about Trollope?  About what matters in Jane Austen?  Or perhaps about one of the many, many D.E. Stevenson books I’ve read but never got around to reviewing?  So, instead of trying to beat my backlog of reviews into submission, I shall just continue reading more than I should and perpetuate the problem.

Hannah Fowler by Janice Holt Giles – when I was younger, my reading diet was almost exclusively devoted to pioneer stories.  I read a few of Janice Holt Giles’ books then (The Kentuckians and a few others) but never Hannah Fowler.

Wolf Willow by Wallace Stegner – Pulitzer Prize-winning author Wallace Stegner’s boyhood was spent on the beautiful and remote frontier of the Cypress Hills in southern Saskatchewan, where his family homesteaded from 1914 to 1920. In a recollection of his years there, Stegner applies childhood remembrances and adult reflection to the history of the region to create this wise and enduring portrait of pioneer community existing in the verge of a modern world.

Inside the Kingdom by Robert Lacey – Though Saudi Arabia sits on one of the richest oil deposits in the world, it also produced fifteen of the nineteen 9/11 hijackers. In this immensely important book, journalist Robert Lacey draws on years of access to every circle of Saudi society giving readers the fullest portrait yet of a land straddling the worlds of medievalism and modernity. Moving from the bloody seizure of Mecca’s Grand Mosque in 1979, through the Persian Gulf War, to the delicate U.S.-Saudi relations in a post 9/11 world, Inside the Kingdom brings recent history to vivid life and offers a powerful story of a country learning how not to be at war with itself.

Letters from Berlin by Margarete Dos and Kerstin Lieff – When Margarete Dos moved with her family to Berlin on the eve of World War II, she and her younger brother were blindly ushered into a generation of Hitler Youth. Like countless citizens under Hitler’s regime, Margarete struggled to understand what was happening to her country. Later, as a nurse for the German Red Cross, she treated countless young soldiers—recruited in the eleventh hour to fight a losing battle—they would die before her eyes as Allied bombs racked her beloved city. Yet, her deep humanity, intelligence, and passion for life—which sparkles in every sentence of her memoir—carried Margarete through to war’s end. But just when she thought the worst was over, and she and her mother were on a train headed to Sweden, they were suddenly rerouted deep into Russia…

The Penderwicks by Jeanne Birdsall – This summer the Penderwick sisters have a wonderful surprise: a holiday on the grounds of a beautiful estate called Arundel. Soon they are busy discovering the summertime magic of Arundel’s sprawling gardens, treasure-filled attic, tame rabbits, and the cook who makes the best gingerbread in Massachusetts. But the best discovery of all is Jeffrey Tifton, son of Arundel’s owner, who quickly proves to be the perfect companion for their adventures.

The Bannister Girls by Jean Saunders – The bright dawn of the twentieth century finds itself shadowed by the strictures of the Victorian Age. Women, whatever their status in society, are still women and are expected to conform to their well-defined role in life as a mother and wife. For the Bannister girls, daughters of a wealthy and respected family, this is not enough.

 What did you pick up this week?