Library Loot: January 20-26, 2010

Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by myself 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!

Want to share your loot?

No vlog today, because my library closed itself unexpectedly yesterday, so I couldn’t pick up my holds, so I couldn’t record a video. I’ll be getting my holds this afternoon though, and since there’s no vlog, I’ll be doing the rambly-text version of listing my books!

Also, I decided to give my blog a bit of a makeover! I can’t mess with the code at all, since the free version of WordPress doesn’t allow that, but I did pick a theme with a customisable header and colours (although I can’t change the text colour). I don’t think I’ve changed my blog format for two years, so I’m excited to see a new, more Eva-ish look (coloured tights! Pride and Prejudice!). I’ve also decided to decorate my sidebar with my favourite authors and links to some marvelous short stories available for free online (the latter idea I totally ‘borrowed’ from Nymeth, although mine are more ‘short stories I’ve read and loved that I could find online’ than ‘some of my favourites ever’). Feel free to offer feedback; I’m still playing with it a bit, so I’m definitely open to suggestions!

Right…on to my loot.

I am *so* excited that The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa is finally available. I put a hold request in for it towards the end of last month, for the upcoming Japanese Literature Book Club discussion (on the 25th), but then I got really nervous that it wouldn’t arrive in time. So I’ve been stalking my account at the library, and it arrived yesterday! Of course, then my library closed, thus thwarting me. But it’s open again today, so I’ll be starting this one very soon! And I’ve learned my lesson about planning ahead…I’ve already put in a request for A Wild Sheep Chase which is a semi-official read we’ll be discussing on March 10th.

Three of my other holds were classics by strong women! I picked up Between the Acts by Virginia Woolf, because I decided I wanted to read it before reading the nonfiction book The Things That Matter, which is looking at seven classics and the life lessons they contain. Between the Acts is the only one of the seven I haven’t read, so I figured I might at well go for it! Also, I’m skipping the upcoming Woolf in Winter selection, To the Lighthouse (since I read it last year), so this way I’ll still be reading a Woolf every fortnight! I have absolutely no idea what the book’s about, which is rare for me and a classic, and I think that will make my experience even better. Meanwhile, I snagged the eighteenth century travelogue The Journal of Madam Knight by Sarah Kemble Knight for the Reading the Decades Challenge. I’m really excited about my 1700s focus, and my first book (The Sorrows of Young Werther) took me by surprise with how readable it was! This one is very slim, which is neat, but I think for my next selection, I’ll be plumping for a nice big novel. Teresa of Avila: the Book of My Life is another classic nonfiction! I already had it on my list for the Really Old Classics Challenge, but I’m specifically reading it now because Jason and I ended up abandoning Ahab’s Wife but still wanted to read a book together. I was worried this would be all dense and mystical, but I’m 75 pages in, and so far it’s been nothing but a delight! I’m reading a modern translation by Mirabai Starr, which has a rather casual register. Apparently,the original Spanish was in a similar register, so the translation is faithful. St. Teresa herself is simply charming, and she was quite the reader!

That last of my holds to arrive was Matilda by Roald Dahl. This is for the Flashback Challenge, since I loved it as a child! I was actually hoping to get it in Russian, since I could have sworn I saw that version in my library’s catalogue, but sadly no. I can read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory or Witches in Russian if I want…but I’ve been really craving Matilda. I haven’t read any of Dahl’s books since I was about 10, so I’m really curious as to what I’ll think of him now. After this reread, I’d love to explore some of his stuff written for older audiences, so if you have a favourite Dahl book, suggest away!

So, any sane person would think, “Great, six books this week from the library.” But no. Here’s what I thought when I went last Thursday and saw only two holds were in (the St. Teresa and the Madam Knight): “Wow. This is so sad. I can’t possibly leave the library with just two books. Why haven’t more holds arrived?! Obviously, I’m not requesting enough books. Let’s go browse the new books.” And so I found myself staring at all of the new nonfiction arrivals at the library. And there were several that seemed like perfect Women Unbound choices! So I brought home six ‘extras’. hehe

I was attracted to Babysitter: an American History by Miriam Forman-Brunell, because I was a babysitter in my youth, and then after college I was a nanny for a year. So the whole topic intrigues me! In Her Own Sweet Time by Rachel Lehmann-Haupt is about modern American women’s motherhood choices…it’s part memoir, part cultural/scientific stuff (I’ve already read it). I have this strange attraction to books about the issue of becoming a single mother by choice, even though I’m not a mother and not even positive that I want children. I think it’s because I’m suspicious of marriage, lol. At first, I picked up Pink Brain, Blue Brain by Lise Eliot, because I was sure it was going to anger me. (Books talking about the bioligical, ‘programmed,’ ‘inherent’ differences between the genders usually do.) But then I discovered that Eliot is a neuroscientist who wrote this book to *dispel* all of those ideas. The book looks at how even small differences in the way society treats young brains affects how they grow, which in turn contributes to gender differences. I’ve got high hopes for this one. It’s funny…the Women Unbound Challenge has made me much more open to memoirs than I used to be. I don’t think I would have even read the back of Gringa: a Contradictory Girlhood by Melissa Hart last year! Anyway, it’s a memoir about Hart’s childhood torn between her mother, who ends her marriage for a woman and begins life in a Hispanic neighbourhood, and her father, who is your standard white middle class guy, and who is eventually awarded primary custody because the judge considers lesbian relationships “unnatural.” Yeah. I read the first few pages, and Hart’s style is really good!

The other two books I chose are more international. Dragon Fighter: One Woman’s Epic Struggle for Peace with China by Rebiya Kadeer caught my eye because I’ve been participating in the China Challenge, and it’s a book about one of China’s ethnic minorities (the Uyghars). I’ve read a bit about them and their difficulties in the past, but not a whole book. And when it’s about a strong woman leader, I couldn’t resist. :) A few years ago, I read quite a few Iraq-centered books, both political and cultural centered ones. But then last year, I didn’t read any! So I had to pull Sisters in War by Christina Asquith off the shelf. Asquith is an American/British journalist, and she spent 18 months in Baghdad. This book looks at two Iraqi sisters and their lives after the war as well as about two outsiders, an American and Palestinian, who found a women’s center. So it’s sure to be chock full of women’s rights issues. :) I tend to really enjoy nonfiction books written by journalists, and I’m excited that Asquith also has a previously published book about teaching.

And that’s all of my loot for the week! Have you read any of these? Where should I begin?