The Captive Reader

Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Claire from The Captive 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.

First off, as mentioned in my last Library Loot post, I am looking for a new co-host.  I’ve had a couple of excellent volunteers step forward but it’s not too late if you’d like to throw your name in the hat.  I’ll be reaching out shortly to everyone who has contacted me.

Second, I have for perhaps the first time absolutely no new books out from the library.  It’s been a hectic and productive month for everything but reading.  When I’m at home, I’m happy catching up on the books I checked out ages ago or relaxing with a DVD.  DVDs, at least, I have been checking out.  Mostly foreign films, like Bába z ledu (which is definitely not as heart-warming as the premise – of a  Czech widow finding love in a year-round swimming club – suggests) and Le Voyage de Fanny (which is a beautifully done story of Jewish children fleeing authorities in wartime France).

But my main delight this week has been starting to rewatch To Serve Them All My Days.  Delderfield was one of several authors who all members of my family – on both sides – loved, so I grew up able to find his books in whatever house I was visiting.  The family favourite is the “A Horseman Riding By” series (witness the fact that I am named at least in part for Claire Derwent – which gave me extra delight when I read Delderfield’s autobiography and learned of his feelings for his Claire) but all the series were loved.  Still, it was years before I learned that both the Horseman books and To Serve Them All My Days had, long before my birth, been turned into television series – and longer still before they were available for me to watch in North America.  The adaptation of A Horseman Riding By horrifies me a bit (Prunella Ransome as Claire?  Ye gods!) but this Andrew Davies-penned adaptation of To Serve Them All My Days is delightful.

What did you pick up this week?