A Tiny, Little Loot

I had a busy week at work with meetings, discussions with my staff and all kinds of back-office work. I love meeting our customers, but there was not much opporturnity for that this week. Next week will probably be even busier, but after that my calender looks emptier -at least for now. :)

After some quick reads (Northanger Abbey, The Dark Wife and My Name Is Bosnia) I decided to tackle a junkster that has been sitting on my bookself for a couple of years already: Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel. And boy, am I glad I finally started reading this one! I just love the writing! I'm almost 1/3 done and am hoping to be able to finish the book this weekend. Keep your fingers crossed! I have lots of other books waiting for their turn, including the three picture above. These three make up my tiny (thanks to the busy week) library loot:

Abandon by Meg Cabot

After reading & loving The Dark Wife by Sarah Diemer I found this other retelling of the myth of Persephone. This time Hades goes to highschool. Abandon is the first part of a trilogy. It will be interesting to see how this compares to The Dark Wife. I imagine the books are totally different. We'll see how I'll like Abandon.

The Unlikely Pigrimage of Harold Fry by Rachel Joyce

This one caught my eye on the new arrivals list in our library catalogue. It is said to be a "magical, moving and uplifting tale about a man's journey across Britain and into his own heart" and an "odyssey of a simple man, original, subtle and touching".  It sounds like a wonderful read.

The Seven Basic Plots by Christopher Booker

This nonfiction book is subtitled "Why we tell stories". By using all kinds of examples from ancient myths to classic novels to TV soap operas this book is said to show that "there are seven archetypal themes which recur throughout every kind of storytelling". I don't promise that I'll read all 700+ pages of the tome, but I want to do some serious browsing with this one.

But now, I have a task to accomblish, a goal to reach, a junkster of a book to finish... :)

Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Claire from The Captive Reader and Marg from The Adventures of an Intrepid Reader that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library.

Library Loot 25.9.2011

Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Claire from The Captive Reader and Marg from The Adventures of an Intrepid Reader that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library. This week Mr. Linky is at Marg's blog.

My library loot actually consists of two weeks worth of library books. And why is it that books I've reserved tend to arrive if not in pairs then in threesomes? :) 


Alameddine, Rabih: I, The Divine
I read about this book on Eva's blog and it sounded so interesting that I put a hold on it the very next day. It is a story told in first chapters, which made me very curious of how such a technique would work in a novel.


Albinia, Alice: Leela's Book
Leela is moving back to Delhi after years living in New York. Her return will unsettle many lives. The book is said to be "a tale of contemporary Delhi that crosses religious and social bounderies, reaching back into the origins of Mahabharata itself". I'm staying in India in my reading after finishing The Calcutta Chorosome by Amitav Ghosh and have just started this book. This far it feels very promising. If you have the elephant-headed god Ganesh as one of the narrators, how it could not be interesting? ;)


Blasim, Hassan: The Madman of Freedom Square
This is a collection of short stories by a writer-filmmaker originally from Iraq, who now lives in Finland.
The collection was published by a British publisher, but I heard just a few weeks ago that it will also be translated into Finnish. Blasim originally wrote the stories in Arabic. The English translation is by Jonathan Wright. From the back cover: "Blending allegory with historical realism, and subverting readres' expectations in an unflinching comedy of the macabre, these stories manage to be both phantasmagoric and shockingly real, light in touch yet steeped in personal nightmare. ... Together these stories afford us a rare glimpse of Iraq from the inside." This little collection will probably be my next read after I finish reading Leela's Book.


King, Rachael: The Sound of Butterflies
Maybe I read abouth this book in some blog? Don't remember exactly. Anyway, it's a historical novel set in 1903. Thomas Edgar, a collector of butterflies, is asked to take part in an expedition to the Amazon. When he returns, he is a changed man and has been rendered mute by what he has experienced during the expedition. The book is said to be "a story of passion and beauty, of brutalite and murder masked by surface spendour." Intriguing, isn't it?


Kneale, Ruth: You Don't Look Like a Librarian
A must read for any librarian. Just because of the title. When I got the book, I showed it to my boss, and she said to me: "Well, you don't look like a librarian!" :) The book is subtitled "Shattering stereotypes and creating positive new images in the Internet age".


Küng, Dinah Lee: A Visit from Voltaire
A comic novel about an American mother-of-three in Switzerland. She gets a visitor who offers to cure all that is bothering her and her family members and who claims to be the Voltaire, the 18th-century philosopher! Comic novels are not really my cup pf tea, but this sounded so intriguing that I want to give it a try.


Miller, Andrew: Pure
A few years before the French revolution a young engineer is asked to demolish the oldest cemetery in Paris. What starts as a "year of bones" for him, turnes out to become "a year of rape, suicide, sudden death. Of friendships, too. Of desire. Of love..." I have no idea whether I will love or hate this book! We'll see...


Moi, Toril: Sexual/Textual Politics. Feminist Literary Theory
I borrowed this classic, because I want to read what Moi says about Virginia Woolf.


Shafak, Elif: The Forty Rules of Love
Ella Rubinstein needs a new challenge in her life and takes a job as a reader to a literary agent. Her first job is to read a novel by Aziz Z. Zahara, a mysterious Scottish writer, whose book tells about the famous 13th-century poet Rumi. Ella is fascinated and starts a correspondence with Zahara. I've been thinking of reading this one for a long time now. Hopefully this time I'll finally get to it!

What treasures did you bring home from the library this week?

Library Loot 1.5.2011

I did pretty well with the previous library loot I posted about. Only one book went back to the library unread, so, here's hoping that this one is going to be another good loot! Four out of six of the books are in fact novels I have had my eye on for quite some time and decided on finally borrowing, two (the two first ones from left in the picture above) were surprise finds. I'm pretty excited about all these books and cannot wait to get reading them. If only there were more hours in a day...

Mercy at Midnight by Lois Hoadley Dick
This is a historical novel about Mathilda Wrede (1864-1928). She was a Finnish noblewoman, who become a prison visitor and dedicated her life to helping prisoners and improving the conditions in prisons. It is always interesting to read a novel about Finland or about someone Finnish by a non-Finnish author. Yes, we Finns are always curious about what others think about us! :)

Ravel by Jean Echenoz
This small book by the reknown French author tells the story of the ten last years (1927-1937) in the life of composer Maurice Ravel. I already read this one and it's wonderful! This was the first book by Echenoz I've read and I simply loved his style.

The Night of the Mi'raj by Zoë Ferraris
I have read so much good things about this book and also about her next one City of Veils that it's high time I borrowed this one. I actually had City of Veils at home earlier this year, but decided that I want to read The Night of the Mi'raj (Published as Finding Nouf in the US) first. Both Ferraris' books are murder mysteries set in Saudi Arabia.

Electricity by Victoria Glendinning
This is a novel set in Victorian England. Electricity is still something new. Charlotte Mortimer marries a young engineer who is commissioned to wire the country estate of a gentleman. This novel is said to bring to light "the Victorian era as a time of scientific discovery, spiritualism, and shifting relations between the sexes." Sounds interesting!

Stamping Butterflies by Jon Courtenay Grimwood
If there is somewhat of a theme when it comes to all other books in my loot (women's place, women's rights or if not that then historical fiction) Stamping Butterflies is something completely else. Grimwood is one of my favorite SF writers. I've especially enjoyed his Pashazade-Effendi-Felaheen -trilogy. I guess I'm a sucker for a well crafted alternate history story anyday and his worlds are brilliantly crafted. Stamping Butterflies starts with someone attempting to assassinate the US president. The assassin is caught, but who is he? Is the answer perhaps to be found somewhere else in time altogether? This novel is said to weave together cultures thousands of years apart and to paint a portrait of a ruler and an assassin, both locked inside each other's dreams. Very intriguing!

Half of the Human Race by Anthony Quinn
Connie Callaway is torn between whether to stay with the law-abiding suffragists or join the militant suffragettes when during a family holiday she is introduced to cricketeer Will Maitland. This is said to be a "deeply affecting story of love, sacrifice, suffrage and country cricket" set in the second decade of the 20th century. The time period and the fact that Connie is working for women's suffrage got me interested in this novel. I almost bought myself a copy, but then noticed that our library has one, so borrowed it instead. I have very high expectations for this novel, so we'll see whether it lives up to them or not.

Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Claire of The Captive Reader and Marg of The Adventures of an Intrepid Reader. If you want to join Library Loot, Mr. Linky is at Claire's blog this week, just click here to get right there.

Library Loot 8.4.2011

It's been a while since my last Library Loot post and this one shoud actually be called Half a Library Loot :) as I also got a couple of Finnish novels I had reserved. As those novels, unfortunately, are not available in English I will concentrate on the English language novels I borrowed this week. I will also feature one novel I borrowed a bit earlier.

Buying a Fishing Rod for My Grandfather by Gao Xingjian
I'm yet to read anything by this Nobel Prize for Literature winner and when I noticed this  slim book of stories on a self at work today I just had to take it home with me. I love the name of the book. :) And the cover is very beautiful, too.

The Tea Lords by Hella S. Haasse
I learned about this Dutch writer while spending a week on a study trip in the Amstardam public library in 2008 and have been thinking of reading something by her ever since. It was really the name of this novel caught my eye. This is a story set in the Dutch East Indies and takes place between 1873-1918. The book is said to transport the reader "to the East Indies, into a colonial culture that rests on the quiet submission of the host population, the orderly haughtiness of the colonists and the back-breaking work done by both; a world with its own rich, distinctive scent". I borrowed this a few weeks ago, but wanted to mention it here, because it seems really interesting. I'm trying to manage and read the book before the loan period ends next week as somebody has reserved it.

Russian Winter by Daphne Kalotay
This book just came out also in Finnish translation (and I like the Finnish cover much better than the cover of the English paperback edition I have at home), but I decided to read it English. It tells the story of Nina Revskaya, who once was a star of the Bolshoi Ballet in the Soviet Union. Now old and infirm and living in Boston Nina has hidden dark secrets for decades. When she decides to auction her jewellery collection Drew Brooks, a young associate director of the auction house, and Grigori Solodin, a Russian professor, find themselves facing a life-changing literary mystery. I'm always interested in books that have anything to do with ballet. It was the first dance form I ever fell in love with (at the tender age of 7 :)) and I took ballet lessons for almost 10 years before I moved on to ballroom dancing.

The Declaration by Gemma Malley
"My name is Anna and I shouldn't be here. I shouldn't exit. But I do. It's not my fault I'm here. I didn't ask to be born. But that doesn't make it any better that I was. They caught me early, though, which bodes well" Those sentences printed on the back cover totally bought me over. The story is set in 2140. By having her Anna's parents have broken the rule about not having any children and now Anna must pay for her parents disobedience.

Esther's Inheritance by Sándor Márai
Who was it that mentioned this slim novel on her blog recently? Ah yes, it was Eva on her library loot last week. This novella seemed something I, too, wanted to read, so I put a hold on it. It is a story about what happens when the love of Esther's life returns twenty years after leaving her.

I'm still reading The Lost Kings by Bruno Hare and am really enjoying the book. I also started readingnd Gym, a really wonderful book by Gary Mack & David Casstevens about mental training. But if I indend to read The Tea Lords before it's due date, I really should put those books aside for a few days and concentrate on Haasse...

What was your best library find this week?
To join Library Loot visit Marg's blog The Adventure's of an Intrepid Reader.

Library Loot 6.1.2011 & Giveaway Winner

Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted my Marg of The Adventures of an Intrepid Reader and Claire of The Captive Reader. Mister Linky is this week at Claire's blog.

I have tried to be pretty prudent in my borrowing and book buying these first few days after New Year, as I still have quite a few books from my previous loot waiting for their turn. Still, I wanted to get a good start with the challenges I'm participating this year and most of the books above will qualify for one challenge or another. There are 6 library books and 2 new purchases I'm going to introduce here. Let's start with the library books:

Jean Bottéro: Religion in Ancient Mesopotamia
When I was a university student majoring in history, my main interest was 19th century -early 20th century, only later have I become more and more interested in older history, and by older I mean really old, I mean millenniums BC, I mean Egypt and Mesopotamia. This book is an easy to follow account of one of the oldest known religions, the religion of  Ancient Mesopotamia. I'm reading this at the moment, alternating between this book and Pinkerton's Sister, and I'm totally enjoying both books, and I have already learned some fascinating stuff about the ancient Mesopotamian culture. I'm reading this book for the One, Two! Theme Challenge, and I have a hunch that Mesopotamia as a theme might get an upgrade in my list, especially as Religion in Ancient Mesopotamia wasn't even on my original list.

John Dickinson: We
My mood for some scifi continues. This is a psychological thriller as well as a science fiction novel about a man sent from Earth to a far away icy moon on the fringes of the solar system on a no-return mission. On the lonely station manned by only four persons he has to confront some truths he has never even suspected. Sounds intriguing, and the layout of the text is very reader friendly.

Carolyn Graves-Brown: Dancing for Hathor. Women in Ancient Egypt
This, too, is nonfiction for the One, Two! Theme Challenge, and judging by the contents the book covers well different spheres of women's life in Ancient Egypt.

Mary Hooper: At the Sign of the Sugared Plum
This is a slim YA historical novel telling the story of young Hannah, who is excited for her first trip to London. She is to go and help her sister, who runs a sweetmeats shop. Only this is AD 1665 and the Plague is threatening London. This might end up being one of the books I'll read for the Historical Fiction Challenge. Yet another book that is not on my original list.

Michael Moorcock: Behold the Man
Some more science fiction and a veritable classic this time. This is the story of Karl Glogauer, time traveller and an unlikely Messiah in Palestine in AD 29! Cannot wait to read this!

Adam Thirlwell: Miss Herbert. An Essay in Five Parts
I noticed this book at work and was intrigued. It says in the spine that this is "[a] book of novels, romances and their translators, containing ten languages, set on four continents and accompanied by maps, portraits, squiggles and illustrations." Who could resist that?? The book also contains Thirlwell's translation of Mademoiselle O by Valdimir Nabokov.

That was the last book of my library loot, but I also have these two new books of my own:

Daisy Goodwin: My Last Duchess
I had a coupon giving me 20% off of one purchase from Stockmann's departmant store, and I actually decided to buy something else than a book, but, well, you know how it goes. :) I ended up buying this historical novel. This is a story of a rich New York heiress, whose mother is determinate to marry her daughter into the English aristocracy. It's set in 1890s, a time period that is always a plus for me. My Last Duchess is Goodwin's first novel.

The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister. Ed. by Helena Whitbread
Anne Lister was an independent, landowning woman, who lived 1791-1840. She loved women and kept an honest diary, written partly in code, where she wrote also about her love life. Lister's diaries are an important part of women's history. It's great that Virago has made them easily available with this new paperback edition. I will read this book for the GLBT Challenge. There is also a nice British drama film made last year based on the diaries.

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Last but not least, earlier today I draw the winner of my signed copy of Purge giveaway. Thank you everyone who showed interest in this amazing novel! The winner is Judith of Leeswammes' Blog from The Netherlands. Congratulations Judith! I hope you will enjoy the book as much as I did. I have already contacted Judith and the book will be on its way hopefully already tomorrow.

Library Loot, New Books & November Wrap-Up

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:

A Dodo at Oxford: The Unreliable Account of a Student and His Pet Dodo by Philip Atkins and Michael Johnson

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.

Theodora: Actress. Empress. Whore. by Stella Duffy

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.

Michael Moorcock: The Dancers at the End of Time

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!

Joe Sacco: Safe Area Gorazde

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.

Vita Sackville-West: All Passion Spent

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.

Elizabeth Speller: The Return of Captain John Emmett

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."

Living in the End Times by Slavoj Zizek

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:

Mark of the Lion by Suzanne Arruda

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.

Revolution by Jennifer Donnelly

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.

Yksinäisyyden kaivo by Radclyffe Hall

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)!

Up and Down Stairs: The History of the Country Servant by Jeremy Musson

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.

Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne

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

-Margarita Engle: The Firefly Letters

-Susan Hill: The Little Hand

-Tuomas Kyrö: Mielensäpahoittaja

-Melania G. Mazzucco: Mestarin tunnustukset

-Delphine de Vigan: No and Me

-Seija Vilén: Mangopuun alla

Library Loot 25.9.2010 & R.I.P Short Story: The Cask Of Amontillado

Library loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Claire and Marg that encouragers bloggers to share the books they have checked out from the library. If you would like to participate, Mr. Linky is this week over at Marg's blog The Adventures of an Intrepid Reader.

My loot this week is quite small. I have so many books from previous loots waiting for their turn that my card is almost full. The upper limit of loans on a card in our library is 40. I guess, I have something like 36 items on my card at the moment: novels in English and in Finnish, plus some nonfiction, including a few books I've borrowed for professional reasons. I'm very interested in multicultural/intercultural/diversity issues and am trying to broaden my knowledge on diversity management at the moment. But, lets go back to my loot. :)

• Dinesen, Isak (Karen Blixen): Anecdotes of Destiny
  The back cover promises five superb tales of gothic wit and mysticism. Sounds perfect for R.I.P. Short Story Challenge. I just love the movie Out of Africa starring Meryl Streep and Robert Redford that was based on Blixen's memoir of the same name. "I had a farm in Africa..." for me that is one of the most memorable first lines in books and ever since I saw the movie and also a wonderful old interview programme with Blixen I have wanted to read her works. Somehow, however, I never have before this! Now I am determined to correct that by reading at least one story from this book for R.I.P.
• Engle, Margarita: The Firefly Letters
  When I first saw this book at work I immedietely knew it would be a must read for me! Engle tells the story of Swedish women's rights pioneer Fredrika Bremer's mid 19th-century journey to Cuba. And she tells it as one long poem!
• Goodall, Jane & Thane Maynard & Gail Hudson: Hope for Animals and Their World
  I admire Dr. Jane Goodall for her pioneering work among the chimpanzees in Gombe and for her work for peace. This book is a collection of survival stories about animal species that have been endangered but are now recovering. And isn't the cover photograph just lovely! Dr. Jane and the little chimp both looking at the sea. :)
• Miller, Kei: The Last Warner Woman
  This is a novel about the life of Jamaican born Adamine, who is born in one of the last leper colonies on the island, later learns she has the gift of "warning", moves to England, and as an old woman tries to tell her own story and compete with a novelist writing a book about her and twisting her words. I don't think I have ever read anything by a Jamaican author. This book seems like a good first in that aspect.

On the R.I.P. front I'm not been able to keep my selfimposed schedule of posting on R.I.P. short stories every Monday and Friday. I had every intention to post yesterday, but fell asleep on the couch before I even got started! Well, this is going to be a combined Library Loot & R.I.P. post now.

I found the Read Print site just resently. There are, for example, many short stories by Edgar Allen Poe on the site, and for this post I chose to read the one called The Cask of Amontillado. Actually after starting with the story I pretty soon realised I had read it once before. It was well worth a reread.

In this short story Montresor feels he has been gravely insulted by Fortunato and wants to punish Fortunato accordingly, "not only punish, but punish with impunity". Fortunato, however, has no idea there is anything but amiable feelings between them. When Monresor approaches Fortunato, compiments his knowledge in vines, and tells he has aquired some Amontillado, but has his doubts about the vine, Fortunato is more than happy to assist in determinig the quality of the purchase. What follows is a journey down to the vaults below the Montresor palazzo -and to a complete and horrible punishment of Fortunato by Montresor.

Edgar Allen Poe, of course, was a master of his art. This story in all its gothic creepiness is a perfect example of that.

Library Loot 19.9.2010

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

I'm sorry to have skipped my planned schedule for R.I.P posts. On Thursday I started reading Room by Emma Donoghue and it kept me in its grip so totally that I forgot all about ghost stories. Then on Friday I bought a new ADSL modem. The deal included also a new digibox, so that I will not only to get my TV channels through the modem, but will be able to manage anything I want to record for later from any computer anywhere. I'm using the new modem already, but have some problems with getting my DVD-recorder to work with the new digibox, so am waiting for some help with that. However, all that was actually only a prequal for this: yesterday I finally, after pondering about it for months, went and bought myself a mini laptop! My old computer, which I'm actually using now writing this, is not a laptop and I've been dreaming of a small laptop that would be easy to take with me when I travel. And I'm super happy with the one I chose. It's small, it has everything I need in a travelling laptop, -and it's berry pink! :) It's a Sony Vaio and I think it was love at first sight! :) :)

Well, excuse me my enthusiasm! :) I'll turn back to books now. I have, in fact, found all too many interesting books lately and reserved many of them from the library. Hovever, as so often happens, somehow the books seem to arrive in groups. On Monday I came home from work with a few holds that had arrived. Then two more arrived on Thursday and three more on Friday! These are the books in English (I also got two new Finnish novels I had put on hold, but will not talk more about those this time.) I got from the library this week:

• Emma Donoghue: Room
  Fiction. The Booker Prize Short List. A-M-A-Z-I-N-G book. I'm reading Room just now.
• Brian Dumaine: The Plot to Save the Planet. How Visionary Entrepreneurs and Corporate Titans Are Creating Real Solutions to Global Warming
  Nonfiction. Found this on Helsinki City Library's online list of new nonfiction books in English & it sounded interesting.
• Andrew Fagan: The Atlas of Human Rights. Mapping Violations of Freedom Around the Globe.
  Nonfiction. I'm very much interested in human rights, especially issues like freedom of speech, women's rights, GLBT rights, and anything done to end discrimination and sensorship in general. This slim book seems to give quite a good general view of the state of the human rights around the globe.
• Howard Jacobson: The Finkler Question.
  Fiction. One of the Man Booker Prize Short listed novels this year & first of the Booker candidates I got my hands on. I have, however, waited for weeks and weeks to read Room, so this must wait a bit for it's turn.
• Panos Karnezis: The Convent. <- This link takes you to a review of The Convent by Ursula Le Guin.
  Fiction. For a liberal minded Lutheran I have always been unusually interested in anything to do with Catholic religious orders. I've more or less read everything I've ever got my hands on on the subject be it then fiction or non. This novel is set in a small Spanish convent where one day the Mother Superior finds a suitcase punctured with airholes at the entrance to the retreat. I'm very intrigued by this book.
• Aiko Kitahara: The Budding Tree. Six Stories of Love in Edo.
  Fiction. These are stories about single, working women in the Japanese Edo period. The Edo period in Japanese history runs from 1603 to 1868, but according to the back cover of the book, these stories are set in the early-to-mid-19th-century Japan. 
• C. J. Moore: The Untranslatables. The Most Intriguing Words from Around the World.
  Nonfiction. And the title says it all! :) It includes some gems from my own mother tongue, too , but more about those later.
• The Penguin Book of Ghost Stories from Elizabeth Gaskell to Ambrose Bierce.
  Fiction. This is for the R.I.P. Challenge.
• Fiona Shaw: Tell It to The Bees.
  Fiction. This is for the GLBT Challenge, a love story between a mother of a small boy and the local doctor, who happens to be a woman. The setting is 1950s. Looks very promising!

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'll go back to playing with my new berry pink toy! ;)

Library Loot 9.7.2010

Library loot is 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 is over at Marg's blog The Adventures of an Intrepid Reader this week.

I'm on vacation at the moment and just before my summer vacation started I got into my head that now I would have time to read masses of books I've been thinking of reading :) and I was lucky enough to get quite a few of those books from the library. So, strictly speaking this should have been last week's library loot, but let's not be so strict. :) And thanks to my holiday head :) I also forgot a few of the books from the photo. Well, never mind...

• Beryl Bainbridge: The Birthday Boys. This novel about Captain Scott's fatale expedition to Antarctica in 1912 will be my Antarctica book for the Reading the World Challenge. I had chosen this book for the challenge a long time ago and now that I finally borrowed it it unfortunately became very actual for the sad reason that Dame Beryl Bainbridge passed away just a few days ago.
• Jorge Luis Borges: The Book of Imaginary Beings
  I'm thinking of reading this modern bestiary that includes such creatures as antelopes with six legs, the Cheshire cat, Cerberus, and sirens, not to mention the Hippogriff, fairies and elves, and the elephant that foretold the birth of the Buddha for the Reading the World Challenge as my South America book. I also have never before read anything by Borges and feel that I really should.
• Julia Gregson: East of the Sun. Danielle over at A Work in Progress talked about this novel and I thought it sounded interesting. I was actually going to read Gregson's other novel first, but then my library had this one in & I decided to borrow this one first instead.
• Baroness Orczy: The Scarlet Pimpernel. I like adventures set in Revolutionary France. I've seen the Scarlet Pimpernel TV-series twice and the 1934 movie starring Leslie Howard and Merle Oberon once. I think it is high time I read the book, too! :)
• Bernardine Evaristo: Blonde Roots. In this story the transatlantic slave trade is reversed. The Africans are the masters and Europeans are their slaves. This seems to be a really interesting piece of alternative history! And I just realised that I might be able to use this book in The What's in a Name Challenge! I still haven't read my food book and in another context roots could also be something edible, so I think this novel qualifies.
• Jamie Ford: Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet. A much reviewed book in the blogosphere. It sounds interesting. A story about fathers and sons and the fate of the Japanese in the US during the WWII.
• Ali Shaw: The Girl with Glass Feet. Ida MacLaird is slowly turning into glass. I have read some praising rewievs of this magical tale. Let's see if I'll like it.
• Betsy Tobin: Ice Land. Well, I just returned from Iceland a fortnight ago & wanted to read some fiction about the land. This is a historical novel about a forbidden love with some fantasy elements as Tobin uses the world of Norse mythology to great effect in the book. I'm reading Ice Land at the moment and enjoying it very much.
• Thrity Umrigar: The Space Between Us. Set in modern-day India this novel tells the story of an upper-middle-class housewife and her illiterate servant. It is said to be "a powerful and perceptive literary masterwork" that tells us "how the lives of the rich and poor are intrinsically connected yet vastly removed from each other, and how the strong bonds of womanhood are eternally opposed by the divisions of class and culture."

We are enjoying a heat wave at the moment and long may it continue! :) Ice Land by Tobin is the perfect read today also because of its name! Some ice would be nice just now! :)

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.

Chapter 27: Library Loot

Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Eva and Marg 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!

It seems to be a rule rather than an exception that reserved books arrive in groups! :) Thus I've had an especially good library week! Here is my loot:

• Remarkable Creatures by Tracy Chevalier
• Freedom: Short Stories Celebrating the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, published in association with Amnesty International

• An Elegy for Easterly by Petina Gappah
• Challenge by Vita Sackville-West

• The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood
• One Day by David Nicholls

• The Gourmet by Muriel Barbery
• Four Short Stories by Elizabeth Gaskell

Gaskell's stories and maybe also Chevalier I will read for The Women Unbound Challenge. Sackville-West's novel is a possible addition to my GLBT reading list. The Gourmet is The Elegance of the Hedgehog writer Muriel Barbery's first novel. Petina Gappah will be the first Zimbabwean writer whose work I've ever read.

I hope you had a good library loot, too!

Chapter 19: Library Loot

Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Eva and Marg 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!

This week Mr. Linky is up at Eva's site.

I haven't done a library loot post for a while, not because I had not borrowed any books (Hello!? I work in a library. It is a work related disease ;) to borrow lots of books.), but because most weeks I have been rather busy with other things towards the end of the week. Actually, I have not had enough time to read as much as I've wanted to, but I'm planning on doing some catching up on that respect tomorrow. I have been reading The Incredible Human Journey which is really interesting. And I finally decided on which novel to read next: The Grass Is Singing by Doris Lessing. I've been wanting to read Lessing for ages now, but somehow have never got around to it. One of my reading groups chose The Grass Is Singing as their next read, so now it's kind of "compulsory reading" for me. I've read the four first chapters now and really enjoy her writing.

















But, let's go to the loot now! In addition to Lessing, my pile contains:

• The Diving Pool by Yoko Ogawa. I read The Housekeeper and The Professor earlier this year and really enjoyed it. So, I'm hoping this collection of three novellas will also be a good read.
• Ann Veronica by H. G. Wells. This is a story about a young woman, who wants to be "a Person" in turn-of-the-century London. On her quest to be her own woman she encounters Fabians, suffragettes, free love. I'm more familiar with Wells' science fiction books, but it will be intersting to read one of his other novels.
• The Ghost Stories of Edith Wharton. Inspired by the RIP IV-challenge, I borrowed this collection eventhough I'm not participating in the challenge. To be honest, ghost stories and horror are not really my thing, but I like Edith Wharton, and I have read at least one or two of her ghost stories before, so I thought to read at least a few more. Maybe I could be a kind of supporting member of the challenge. ;)
• Women on Their Own. Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Being Single. Edited by Rudolph M. Bell & Virginia Yans. This is a collection of essays, mostly about single women in the 19th-century.
• Marsipaania. Slovenialaista nykyrunoutta. Translated & edited by Kari Klemelä & Jouni Inkala.This is a brand new collection of contemporary Slovenian poetry translated into Finnish. I already read this and loved some of the poems very much.
• Säkeitä Pietarista by Johanna Hulkko. This is a new Finnish writer. The title of the book could be translated as Verses from St. Petersburg and the story seems very interesting, and I really, really should read more Finnish authors!
• The Novel in the Victorian Age by Robin Gilmour. I want to read what he says about Elizabeth Gaskell, the Brontë sisters, and Wilkie Collins.
• Lodgers by Nenad Velickovic. Found another novel about the Balkan wars. This one was actually originally published during the siege of Sarajevo.
• Summer Will Show by Sylvia Townsend Warner. I read about this novel in, hmm, The New York Review of Books it was, if I remember correctly, and it sounded interesting. It is a story set in Paris in 1848, where Sophia, joining her enstranged husband after the death of her children, falls in love with her husband's mistress. Summer Will Show was first published in 1936.

That concludes my library loot this week. Happy reading, everyone!

Chapter 5: Library Loot 10.7.2009

Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Eva and Marg that encourages bloggers to share the books they've checked out from the library that week. This is the first time I participate. :)

If you have read my profile or the Prologue on my blog, you already know that I work in a library. I also borrow a lot of books. Just now I have 40 items on my card which is actually the maximum number possible. Have to go and return some of those loans tomorrow...

Usually I borrow most of my books from the library where I work, but while I'm on vacation, like now, I mostly use one of our large branch libraries. I had put some books on hold for the War Through the Generations challenge earlier and got three of those yesterday. They are:

• Crabwalk by Günter Grass: A novel examining a subject long seen as a taboo: the sufferings of Germans during the WWII. Grass does this by exploring a devastating maritime disaster, the sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff, and the repercussions upon three generations of a German family.
• Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay: A story of sisterly love. Young Sarah and her parents are taken when in 1942 the French police arrest Jewish families. Sarah locks her little brother in a bedroom cupboard to save him. In 2002 Julia Jarmond, a journalist, is investigating the round-ups of 1942 & Sarah's story intertwines with hers.
• Chronicle in Stone by Ismail Kadare: A novel about Albania during WWII narrated through the eyes of a highly imaginative child.

In addition to these three novels I also got another book I had on hold:

• The Gardens of The Vatican by Linda Kooluris Dobbs & Kildare Dobbs: A beautiful book of photography portraying the Vatican gardens.

I also found two other books to borrow:

• Hautuukoti by Alison Bechdel: This is the Finnish translation of her autobiographical graphic novel Fun Home. I've read some great reviews about this book, so thought to take a look.
• My Mistress's Sparrow is dead ed. by Jeffrey Eugenides: A collection of short stories that I've been thinking of reading for some time now.

That was my loot this time. Did you visit your local library this week?