I have quite a pile of library books at home at the moment. Many of the books I had requested arrived plus I had some work to do that included going through our library's English fiction collection. In my case going through the collection usually means that I find some books I simply must borrow and this time was no exeption! :)
I also bought some paperbacks earlier this week. Officially I went to the bookstore to buy myself a wall calender for 2011 which I did (a very nice one with pictures by Mucha), but ended up coming home with also some books. So, this is going to be sort of a little bit of this, little bit of that post. Let's start with the library books:
An over 300 years old diary is found amongs some books donated to an Oxford charity bookshop. This diary tells the story of an Oxford student and his unusual pet, a dodo bird. This is a curious little book. It is written as if it were a nonfiction book documenting a real rare book and the text of the diary is shown as a facsimile copy with lots of notes around the text on every page.
This is a praised historical novel about Empress Theodora, the wife of Emperor Justinian and one of the most powerful, maybe even the most powerful woman, in the history of the Byzantine Empire. The book tells Theodora's story from childhood up to her coronation. I've read some of Duffy's detective stories before, but this is surely going to be something completely different.
I've been craving for some science fiction lately. The Holy Machine really left me wanting more. The Dancers at the End of Time contains in fact three novels all set in a decaying future society where anything is possible. The novels included in the omnibus are: An Alien Heat, The Hollow Lands and The End of All Songs. These satirical novels are said to be an hommage to Oscar Wilde and the 1890s, Beardsley and the fin-de-siécle decadents. Need I say more! I can hardly wait to get into this book!
This is a graphic book about the war in Bosnia in 1992-1995. I'm still interested in literature about the Balkans/the area that once was Yugoslavia, and when I read a review of this book & noticed that my library has it, I immediately put a hold on it. I also have another of his Bosnia books, The Fixer and Other Stories from the library at the moment.
I first found Vita Sackville-West through Virginia Woolf. The two were lovers and Woolf dedicated Orlando to Sackville-West. All Passion Spent on the other hand is said to be the fictional companion to Woolf's A Room of One's Own! I loved The Edwardians when I read it a long time ago, but have not read anything else by Sackville-West. All Passion Spent tells the story of Lady Slane, who as a young girl in 1860 wanted to become an artist. She become a wife and a mother instead. Seventy years later she retires to a little cottage in Hampshire and finally has the freedom to choose what she wants to do in her life.
This is Speller's first novel. It's 1920. The first World War is over. Laurence Bertram is asked by a woman he once knew to look into the events that lead her brother John to kill himself. The text in the dust jacket proclaims the book to be "both a gripping mystery and and elegy to the private tragedies of the Great War."
The Slovenian philosopher Zizek is very popular in Europe at the moment. His books have been translated into many languages and I have been thinking of reading something by him for some time now. However, philospohy per se is not my thing. But when I saw this book in our library's new acquisitions list some weeks ago, I thought to give it a go and made a reservation as all copies were out. The book finally arrived this week. I will most probably not read the whole book, even though it does look very interesting, but browse it and read the chapters that interest me most.
That concludes my library loot selection this week, selection, because I also have at least half a dozen novels in Finnish from the library this week. But let's move on the the books I purchased this week:
The first book in a new to me mystery series set in early 20th century colonial Africa. The first book is set in 1919. The heroine of the series is Jade del Cameron, a woman ahead of her time, who after being an ambulance driver in the Great War sets off to Africa to fulfill a fighter pilot's dying wish, but in doing so gets involved in murder. Arruda has already written quite a few Jade del Cameron mysteries, so if I like this one, there's a whole series to look forward to.
I read a review of this book on a blog just this week, but cannot remember now whose blog it was... Anyway, I had read about Donnelly's book somewhere even earlier and the review I read this week made me buy the book when I saw it in my favorite book store. This is a YA novel set in modern day Brooklyn and revolutionary France. The lives of two girls, two centuries apart, are twined together into "one unforgettable account of life, loss, and enduring love". Sounds intriguing.
This is the Finnish translation of the lesbian classic The Well of Loneliness. I mention it, because I was excited to find out that it has been translated. I have tried reading The Well of Loneliness once, but it is a somewhat depressing book and after reading maybe 2/3 of it I put it aside to read something more cheerful. I'm thinking of maybe reading the translated version for the GLBT Challenge in 2011 and comparing it with the original.
Les Misérables by Victor Hugo (Volume 2)
I really need to read some Hugo! But I actually thought I bought the whole Les Misérables and only just now realised that it was just the second part! You all know what this means ->back to the book store to buy the other part(s)!
The name really says it all. This is a nonfiction book that looks at the life in English country houses through the lives of the servants from the later Middle Ages to the 20th century.
I loved Verne as a child and read quite a few of his novels. I thought it would be fun to reread this one in English.
That was it this time!
Actually, one, no, two more things:
Firstly, as I mentioned above, I would like to read Les Misérables, maybe at some point in 2011. It would be nice to have some support for the task, because the book scares me a little! Would anyone be interested in a read-along? Or if not Hugo (which will take quite some time to finish, I'm afraid), then reading together Around the World in Eighty Days? I think it would be a fun project. Please, leave a comment or send me an e-mail, if you would like to read one or the other together with me.
Secondly, I mentioned some time ago that I have an interesting giveaway coming up. I'll post about it on the 6th (=Finland's Independence Day, we are enjoying a long weekend here :)).
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In November I read an average number of books i.e. 7. Three of them were in Finnish and two of those were written by Finns (and thus count towards my personal FINNishing Up Challenge), the third was a translation.
Books read: 7
Books read in English: 4
Books read in Finnish: 3
Finnish books read: 2
Fiction: 7
Nonfiction: 0
Reviews: 2
List of books I read in November with links to my reviews:
- Chrie Beckett: The Holy Machine
-Susan Hill: The Little Hand
-Tuomas Kyrö: Mielensäpahoittaja
-Melania G. Mazzucco: Mestarin tunnustukset
-Seija Vilén: Mangopuun alla
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