Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Claire from The Captive Reader and Linda from Silly Little Mischief 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 Chelsea Concerto by Frances Faviell – This WWII memoir arrived just as Scott announced he will be releasing it in October when he launches Furrowed Middlebrow Books. I’ll know exactly where to go if I love it so much I have to have a copy!
The German War by Nicholas Stargardt – So ridiculously excited to read this social history of Germany during WWII.
The Queen of the Tearling by Erika Johansen – Was browsing the fantasy section and picked this one up. The cover looks familiar from other blogs but I don’t know much about it.
It’s Only the Himalayas by S. Bedford – A humorous travel memoir from a young backpacker about her misadventures around the world.
We Should Hang Out Sometime by Josh Sundquist – also humorous, also a memoir, also by a young person – but in this case focused on dating rather than travel misadventures.
Eden’s Outcasts by John Matteson – (Not a memoir, not humorous, not about young people – aka “one of these things in not like the other ones”) A joint biography of Louisa May Alcott and her father. I recently re-read Alcott’s An Old-Fashioned Girl (my favourite of her books), which has me wanted to read more about her. I remember starting and enjoying this when it first came out but sadly having to return it to the library unfinished.
The Scent of Water by Elizabeth Goudge – I’ve heard so much praise for Goudge from other book bloggers but have always been slightly scared off by her religious overtones. Finally decided to give her a try for myself.
The Dearly Departed by Elinor Lipman – I did warn you that I’d be rereading lots of Lipman this year. After finishing My Latest Grievance (so good) and listening to the audiobook of I Can’t Complain, I’m returning to The Dearly Departed, one of my favourites of her books.
Endless Night by Agatha Christie – I’ve been catching up on Simon and Rachel’s Tea or Books? podcasts (almost done!) and listening to them compare the merits of M. Poirot and Miss Marple had me longing to read Christie (sans Poirot or Marple, in this case).
What did you pick up this week?
The U.S. National Park Service is celebrating its hundredth anniversary this year, which would usually have very little impact on my life as I am a) not American and b) not planning to travel to any American National Park any time soon. But, to celebrate the anniversary, PBS decided to reair Ken Burns’ magnificent documentary series on the National Parks earlier this spring, which made for fascinating and deeply informative viewing over a weekend when I was otherwise immobilized with a head cold. It inspired me to search out a novel I vaguely remembered reading a few times during my high school years, about scientists conducting a field study in Yellowstone National Park in the late 19th Century. Except I couldn’t remember the title. Or the author’s name. But at least I remembered what the covered looked like! After some diligent searching, I tracked it down.
I woke up early this morning to finish reading More Was Lost by Eleanor Perényi. In 1937, the American Eleanor was travelling in Europe with her mother when she met her future husband, Zsiga Perényi, a minor Hungarian nobleman almost twice her age (not difficult when you are still in your teens). After a brief courtship, they married and returned to the Perényi family home in Hungarian lands that had been given over to Czechoslovakia after the First World War (lands that are now part of the Ukraine).
