Continuing the series of posts introducing some random books from my bookselves:
Daughter of Amun by Moyra Caldecott
This is a historical novel about the female farao Hatsepsut who ruled Egypt c. 1479-1458 BC. I bought this book many years ago, then completely forgot all about it! I love Egyptology and really anything to do with Ancient Egypt and hope to finally read this book this year. Daughter of Amun is one part of Caldecott's Egyptian sequence, which also includes a novel about Tutankhamun and his wife called Tutankhamun and the Daughter of Re and another book about Akhenaten called Akhenaten: The Son of the Sun. Daughter of Amun is the first book in this series. This novel was originally published in 1989 and then republished in 2000 with the name Hatsepsut: The Daughter of Amun. My copy is a 1989 paperback.
The Edwardians by Vita Sackville-West
Virginia Woolf dedicated Orlando to Vita Sackville-West and after reading Orlando for the first time in my early twenties I wanted to read something by the writer the book was dedicated to. I found a copy of The Edwardians in the Helsinki University Campus Library and simply loved the writing as I had loved Woolf's writing in Orlando. The Edwardians has a very clever beginning with Sackville-West pondering what would be the best point to "interrupt into the life" of her hero. It is one of my alltime favorite beginnings in a novel. :) The Edwardians is a story about Sebastian and Viola, brother and sister with an aristocratic background. The time: July 1905. I loved this story so much that I later bought myself a copy.
The Fire Rose by Mercedes Lackey
I very seldon read fantasy novels. Somehow the maybe most typical fantasy world of dwarfs, elfs, and human warriors has never appealed to me much. (I even found Lord of the Rings boring, sorry LOTR fans! ) But every now and then I find a fantasy novel or a novel with fantasy elements that I like. The Fire Rose is one such novel. In 1905 Rosalind Hawkins, a medieval scholar from a fine Chigaco family, is forced to cut her education short and take a position as a governess in San Francisco, when it turns out that before his death her father has speculated away the family fortune. Rosalind's employer Jason Cameron turns out to be very mysterious. He doesn't allow Rosalind to see himself and communicates with her through a speaking tube. Cameron is in fact an alchemist, who has attempted the old French werewolf transformation, only something went wrong. This was a very nice read, a bit different take to the beauty and the beast story.
Yesterday I visited the National Library. I hadn't been there for a while and had managed to put my card into such a good place that I could not find it at all! I had to pay 5 euros for a new one. That's 2 euros more than in the public library. Anyway, I love the National Library and have many fond memories of many, many hours spent there during the years I studied for my university degree, so I was happy to pay to get a new card. I ended up coming home with ten books, mostly women's studies / history of women, plus a few books about literature. Add those to all the novels I have borrowed from the public library and I think I'm in deep trouble... ;)
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