Library Loot: January 5th-11th and Athie Acquisitions: Vol. One

(Pssst: have you entered my giveaway? It’s open to all book bloggers anywhere in the world!)

This loot is actually quite old, from just before Christmas. But since I had a reading slump, most of it is still hanging about unread! And I haven’t really picked up any books from the library in the meantime, so with this you’re up to date again. I only ended up reading one of the Christmas books (the Poirot) and have returned the others to wait until next December. :)

Vlog (recorded pre-Christmas; I had to edit out me saying the title of Tail of the Blue Bird because you could see my whole name on the ILL label):

Covers/Linked Titles:

The Gaze by Elif Shafak (still interested in Middle Eastern lit), In the Woods by Tana French (a recommendation), An Experiment in Criticism by C.S. Lewis (Laura Miller mentions this in The Magician’s Book)

Tail of the Blue Bird by Nii Ayikwei Parkes (I heard about this thanks to Stu’s review), The History of White People by Nell Irvin Painter (a Twitter conversation with Cass), An Oresteia trans. by Anne Carson (had to have it after reading Emily’s review)

Smile as They Bow by Nu Nu Yi (I was searching for Burmese fiction and this came up in my library’s catalogue), Esau and Jacob by Joachim Machado de Assis (I’ve been interested in reading more classics and am always curious about Brazil), Crossing the Mangrove by Maryse Conde (Twitter conversation with Kinna)

Damascus Nights by Rafik Schami (Middle East kick!), Naphtalene by Alia Mamdouh (ditto!), Hercule Poirot’s Christmas by Agatha Christie (I decided it’d be interesting to read Christmas book, and I love Christie.)

A Redbird Christmas by Fannie Flag (Another Christmas option!), The Christmas Mystery by Jostein Gaarder (Ditto.) , Mr. Ives’ Christmas by Oscar Hijuelos (Ditto.)

Midnight Never Come by Marie Brennan (Twitter conversation with Xicanti.)

I bet you’re wondering what ‘Athie Acquisitions’ in my post title refers to! (And I’m sure you’re also lamenting my childish obsession with alliteration.) Well, I’ve finally named my Nook. :D I’d been struggling to come up with the right name…I didn’t want to single out a favourite author as a namesake, and none of the human names I tried out seemed quite right. My Nook, at least, didn’t seem to have a distinct gender, and looked a bit silly with a gender-specific name. Thus, I began playing with book-themed names. For awhile, I was going to go with knizhka (an affectionate diminutive of book in Russian), but it doesn’t look that nice in the Roman alphabet and I couldn’t find a way to write it in Cyrillic (the Nook itself has a space to add its name, which then displays in the upper left corner). And then, as I was reviewing my new blogging schedule, my Assembling My Atheneum series jumped out at me. Of course! My new Nook is an atheneum. That’s far too many syllables, so since I love diminutives in any language, I promptly shortened it to Athie. And then I smiled in happiness, since that name just felt right. Thus, Athie refers to my Nook, and I thought y’all might be curious as to what titles I’ve loaded on it!

I asked for Athie for one reason only: to read free classics, especially the out-of-print or more obscure ones not easily available from the library. Since I’m picky about translations, I’ll be using it primarily for English-language books. And since a lot of these are out of print, there aren’t pretty covers for me to collage for you. :( But I love y’all so much that I’ve included links to where I downloaded each of these for free, in case you want your own copy. Aside from the Jane Austen novels I downloaded during Sourcebook’s celebration of her birthday, here’s what I’ve added to Athie since Christmas:

• A Strange Disappearance by Anna Katherine Green: my love for the recently reprinted first Green mystery (The Leavenworth Case) and my realisation how many others Green had written is what made me suddenly long for an eReader. So of course I grabbed her second one!
• Scaramouche by Rafael Sabatini: Jenny told me this was full of swashbuckling fun.
• Elizabeth and Her German Garden by Eliabeth von Amin: so many book bloggers seem to love von Amin, so I thought I’d start with her first published work (which was very popular in its time).
• Charlotte’s Inheritance by M.E. Braddon: I’ve been wanting to read more Braddon since loving Lady Audley’s Secret way back in 2007! I pretty much just picked one randomly from the Project Gutenberg choices.
• Emily Fox-Seton by Frances Hodgson Burnett: another one I’ve seen a lot of praise for amongst book bloggers.
• The Incomplete Amorist by Edith Nesbit: I didn’t read much Nesbit as a child, so I thought it’d be interesting to get to know her through a book aimed at an older audience. Plus, the title is hilarious.
• I Will Repay by Baroness Orczy: The Scarlet Pimpernel was all kinds of trashy adventure fun: this is the second (in published order) book.
• A Vindication of the Rights of Women by Mary Wollstonecraft: for the Year of Feminist Classics read-a-long this month.
• O Pioneers! by Will Cather: after not getting along with Death Comes For the Archbishop in high school, I finally gave Cather another go last year. I found myself delighted with My Antonia, so now I want to read more of her!
• The Intellectual Life by Philip Gilbert Hamerton: I stumbled across this when doing ‘research’ for a bookish musings topic I have in mind.
• Parnassus on Wheels by Christopher Morley: Simon T. made this sound so interesting!
• Flush by Virginia Woolf: I’ve wanted to read this since Laura’s review; Karen’s post reminded me to download it!
• Far From the Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy: since giving Cather a second-chance proved so successful, I have decided it’s time to revisit Hardy, after loathing Tess when I read it for fun in middle school. Teresa is a big Hardy fan and recommended this to me. (Side note: I kept doing searches for Far From the MaddENing Crowd and wondering why such a famous book wasn’t available anywhere. Embarrassing much?)
• The Abbot’s Ghost by Louisa May Alcott: I want to read some more Alcott in preparation for trying out that new biography of her later this year, and this (a Christmas ghost story) sounded right up my alley.
• A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains by Isabella L. Bird: I loved Letters of a Pioneer Woman, so when I stumbled across this I couldn’t resist. Plus, I just moved from the Rockies!
• Around the World in Seventy-Two Days by Nellie Bly: I was checking out a publisher the other day and there was an intriguing-sounding biography of Bly in their backlist. So when I saw this available, I thought it’d be fun to read it first!
• Clotel, or The President’s Daughter by William Wells Brown: I’ve been wanting to read this since learning of its existence last year! It was written in 1853 by an escaped slave and is about Thomas Jefferson, his mulatto lover, and their daughters.
• Some Everyday Folk and Dawn by Miles Franklin: I read My Brilliant Career and very much enjoyed it, so I’d like to read more of her.
• The Sandman by E.T.A. Hoffman: I’m breaking my translation rule for this one! But between reading The King’s Bride a couple months ago and The Children’s Book, I really want to read more Hoffman and he’s not very easily accessible.
• The Princess of Cleves by Madame de Lafayette: another translated work! I’ve wanted to read this for ages, but I’ve never been able to get my hands on a copy.
• The Story Girl by L.M. Montgomery: I was actually looking for an eversion of The Blue Castle (which I haven’t found yet: if you have, please share!), and I couldn’t resist a new-to-me Montgomery.
• The Circular Staircase by Mary Roberts Rinehart: I read Rinehart’s The Door back in 2007, and I’ve been wanting to giver her another go (I have a deep love for Golden Age mysteries). This plot summary (which includes a haunted mansion) sounds irresistable!
• The Story of an African Farm by Olive Schreiner: another book I’ve wanted to read for quite awhile; both West With the Night and Out of Africa blew me away, so I’m curious to compare them with this southern Africa experience.
• Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson: I just read my first Stevenson, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde; it left me feeling a bit ‘meh.’ I want to give him another go (have I ever mentioned a quarter of my heritage is Scottish?), and since I’m predisposed to love swashbuckling stories, I thought this was the best option.

Including the Austen, that’s thirty books added in a fortnight. I obviously don’t expect to read all of them immediately, but it’s so lovely to know that they’re all there. :D Woohoo for obscure, older books at my fingertips! (Once Athie and I have gotten to know each other better, I’ll do a post on my impressions; we’re still in the honeymoon phase at the moment.)