Library Loot 16.6.2010

It's been quite a while since my last Library Loot post. I love to read what others have borrowed, but have just not managed to post anything about my own library finds. As I work in a library, it is very seldom that I come home with a big loot, as most of my library finds are either books I have reserved or books that just have caught my eye while working, but probably most days I either return something or borrow something. :)

Library loot is a a weekly event co-hosted by Eva and Marg that encouragers bloggers to share the books they have checked out from the library. If you would like to participate, Mr. Linky lurks on Eva's blog this week.

Here's my loot in alphabetical order:

• Anouar Benmalek: The Lovers of Algeria
  This is a love story and a novel about Algeria's tragic past. A Swiss woman returns to Algeria  to search the names of her murdered children on a cemetery. They have been murdered in the 1960s during Algeria's fight for independence.
• Olga Grushin: The Concert Ticket
  This book is a novel about a Russian family struggling through difficult times. An exiled composer is rumoured to be returning for a concert and there might be tickets for sale. The acquisition of a ticket becomes an obsession for the family of Anna.
• Askold Melnyczuk: The House of Widows
  This is said to be "a bewitching maze of storytelling that takes its postwar American hero on journeys to and through Europe to discover the secrets of earlier generations of his family.
• Montherlant, Henry de: Chaos and Night
  This is said to be a modern take on Don Quixote. Don Celestino is an old man, who has been exiled from Spain for over two decades. When Spain starts to open up in the 1960s, his daughter wants to go to her native country and Don Celestino has no choice but to follow.
• Maggie O'Farrell: The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox
  A story of jealousy and betrayal. In 1930s something has to be done to Esme, the unconventional daughter of the Lennox family. Decades later a young woman receives a letter telling her that her great-aunt is to be released from a psychiatric hospital. She has never heard of this great-aunt before and also other members of her family seem unable to answer her questions.
• Tayeb Salih: Season of Migration to the North
  "An Arabian Nights in reverse, enclosing a pithy moral about international misconceptions and delusions."
  Several experts on the Arabic Summer Reading Challenge page mention this book as one of their five must read Arabic books.

ps. Here are some photos of our library, if you want to take a look.