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.

The last couple of months have been messy blog-wise.  I hate to have abandoned you all so completely but hopefully things will calm down in the next few weeks.  I only have one big exam left this year and I should be done with that after this weekend.  Happily, the exam is followed by a long-weekend, so after I put my coursework away I’ll have plenty of time to spend with these wonderful books I’ve recently picked up from the library:

Jambusters by Julie Summers – The story of the Women’s Institute in the Second World War.

Letters From England by Karel Čapek – First published in the nineteen twenties in Lidovc Noviny, the Czechoslovak national newspaper, Capek’s Letters from England quickly established themselves as masterpieces of observation, and classics of modern Czech prose. The letters described Europe’s oldest democracy for the benefit of the citizens of Europe’s newest, and Capek was acutely aware of the deep-down affinity between his countrymen and the English. The same understated humour, the same unflappability, the same quiet search for peace, home and comfort, the same love of nature and animals, served to unite the two people, both then and now.

Almost English by Charlotte Mendelson – In a tiny flat in West London, sixteen-year-old Marina lives with her emotionally-delicate mother, Laura, and three ancient Hungarian relatives. Imprisoned by her family’s crushing expectations and their fierce unEnglish pride, by their strange traditions and stranger foods, she knows she must escape. But the place she runs to makes her feel even more of an outsider.

The Woman Reader by Belinda Jack – This lively story has never been told before: the complete history of women’s reading and the ceaseless controversies it has inspired. Belinda Jack’s groundbreaking volume travels from the Cro-Magnon cave to the digital bookstores of our time, exploring what and how women of widely differing cultures have read through the ages.

The Gallery of Vanished Husbands by Natasha Solomons

My Education by Susan Choi

What did you pick up this week?