Random Books from My Personal Library: A-C

What a lovely Saturday! I spent the whole morning and part of the afternoon reading the last 300 pages of The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco. What a brilliant book!

Now I've already started with The Lost Kings by Bruno Hare. It promises to be "a stirring tale of adventure and derring-do set on the far frontiers of [the British] empire". We'll see how I'll like the book.

But let's move to today's post. I have been thinking for a while that it would be nice to start a series of posts and have now come up with two ideas actually. I will start today with random books from my personal library. In this series I will feature books from my bookshelves, but only such books I have not already posted about. Most will probably be books I have read pre book blogging, but there might also be some I have read since I started this blog and have not reviewed or talked about yet. And to make it all even more fun (at least for myself:)) I will choose books in alphabetical order. In this first post in the series I'll introduce three novels titles of which start with A, B or C.
Let's get rolling then:

A:
Affinity by Sarah Waters

Set in 1870s London Affinity begins with Margaret Prior starting her charitable work as a prison visitor. In Millbank prison she meets inmate Selina Dawes, a disgraced spiritualist, and little by little becomes infatuated with her. But is Selina a genuine spiritualist and an innocent victim or a fraud and quilty of the crimes she is accused of? Does she love Margaret or is she just using her for her own purposes? Does magic and ghosts really exist?

This was Waters second novel after the fabulous first one Tipping the Velvet and while I enjoyed reading Affinity I thought it seemed a typical second novel, not quite as good or interesting as the first one. Later I saw the BBC adaptation of Affinity and loved it. I have been thinking that maybe I should reread the book. I have the feeling I'm going to like it more the second time around.

Waters is one of my favorite authors. I have read and own all her five novels. Waters visited the Helsinki Book Fair a few years ago and I was lucky enough to get my copy of Fingersmith signed by her!

B:
Boating for Beginners by Jeanette Winterson

Another favorite author, another second novel! Winterson's first novel was the kind of autobiographical novel Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, and Boating for Beginners was published only three months after Oranges. Winterson calls it comic book with pictures (there are some funny Assyrian-style drawings in the book) and says it was never intended as a second novel. Boating for Beginners was very much an atypical read for me, but it was also funny and innovative and clever.

Boating for Beginners is a surreal retelling of the Book of Genesis. And the name of the novel? In the book Boating for Beginners is a successful pleasure boat company run by a little, fat man called -you guessed it- Noah! :)

Hmm, if I reread this, would it qualify as another Mesopotamia novel for the One, Two, Theme Challenge? :)

C:
Crocodile on the Sandbank by Elizabeth Peters

The "indomitable product of the Victorian age", Amelia Peabody, starts her Egyptian adventures with this novel. What follows is book after book of mummies and villains and archeological excavations. There is already 19 books in the series that spans from 1884 to the 1920s.

I've enjoyed every one of Peters' novels I have ever read. When it come to the Amelia books I especially enjoy the humour, and the setting, mostly Egypt, is a huge plus. Also, I love how Amelia and Emerson's son Ramses grows from a really annoying, extremely precocious brat to a dashing hero of the later novels.

Well, that was it this time. I'll continue with the next installment (D-F) next week. Now I'll retreat back to reading The Lost Kings.