Library Loot: May 1st
Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Claire from The Captive Reader and Linda from Silly Little Mischief 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.
Happy May Day! I’m going to celebrate with a golden hour flower walk, bringing my camera to take as many flower portraits as I can find, and by beginning to write in my new notebook. Yesterday, I recorded a vlog telling you all about what I found in my latest browsing session at the library; it came to a bit over twenty minutes, so you might want to brew a pot of tea or grab your preferred handwork while listening. Or you could always save it for your next walk, if you don’t mind not seeing the covers. Because of its length, I had to export it at a lower quality so that the file size would be small enough to fit within my Vimeo upload limits, so it’s a bit fuzzy at full size on my 23″ monitor. But I checked and it plays all the way through this time at least! Without further ado:
Titles Mentioned
- Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson
- The Boy Who Drew Monsters by Keith Donahue
- The Dew Breaker by Edwidge Danticat
- Grimus by Salman Rushdie
- The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende
- In the Shadow of the Rising Dragon, edited by Zaoyu Jingcha
- The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse by Louise Erdrich
- The Lost Art of Dress by Linda Przybyszewski
- Moral Ground, edited by Kathleen Dean Moore & Michael Nelson
- Mortal Love by Elizabeth Hand
- Nightwood by Djuna Barnes
- Race of Scorpions by Dorothy Dunnett
- Range of Ghosts by Elizabeth Bear
- The Snow Queen by Michael Cunningham
- Stones of the Wall by Houying Dai
- Trader by Charles de Lint
- Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains by Neil Gaiman
- The Turnip Princess by Franz Xaver von Schonwerth
- Up Ghost River by Edmund Metatawabin
- The Weight of Heaven by Thrity Umrigar
So tell me: have you read any of these? Where should I start? And have you stumbled across any surprise gems at your library lately?
A Striped Armchair 
I’ve been driving myself crazy lately with the whole “there’s too many things I really, really want to do and just not time to do a tiny fraction of them” thing. And you went and made it worse by reminding how much I love reading non-fiction and how I just have read so little lately. Even though I have none of the books you mentioned, I was reminded of several on my shelves that I’m dying to read. And oh goshdarnit, Eva, it’s a good thing I love you or I’d be upset at this additional angst you’ve caused me! :P
I am so impressed with your list of 20. Will you actually get through them all? Where do you start. They are very diverse and sound like a lot of fun….happy reading. Love to Thistle and Moth.
A wonderful, diverse stack of loot you have chosen! I am such a fan of Gaiman, Atkinson, and Umrigar also. Just finished The Story Hour by Thrity Umrigar last week and would recommend it.
Enjoy!
Your wall in the background looks so nice now! The Gaiman looks amazing, I really enjoyed the Atkinson and Nightwood. So jealous of that lovely pile of read books! I have a lot of ebooks atm, since my library is not well stocked.
Very interesting pile of books as usual. The Weight of Heaven sounds especially interesting to me, but right now I am rereading The Sharing Knife thanks to your mention of it in a previous blogpost. I also will soon be starting Jane Eyre. Too many books, too little time!
I really need to find the Neil Gaiman one, in original and not in translation from English. Time to do some bookstore English section hunting! :)
One of my friends lives in England and he got to go to a book reading event of Neil Gaiman’s. Neil read from Truth is a cave in the black mountains. Afterwards, my friend actually met the author randomly on a street in London and embarrassed himself (I’d do that too) but Neil was so nice and actually suggested taking a photo together haha. All in all, I am jealous and need to go to London ASAP.
The Rushdie part was on point. Many authors do have the self centered trait. You have to be a bit self centered in order to be able to sit alone with just your thoughts, creating worlds that are after all, ways to get your ideas and world views out there. That does not put me off personally…asshole authors can and do write good books.
I was hoping for a Moth appearance, other than her sitting like the cool cat she is in the background, but maybe next time :).
I really love the range of books you checked out. Stones of the Wall sounds super interesting. I’ve been limiting my library books as I’ll be working lots of overtime soon with an outage at our plant. I have been reading some Russian Plays though. Right now I’m in The Lower Depths by Gorky. It’s so real.
I’m glad you’re giving Rushdie another chance. I haven’t read Joseph Anton yet but I do follow him on Twitter so I already know he’s kind of an ass. Luckily it’s a personality issue and not a politics issue though so I think he can be forgiven and his beautiful books may remain beautiful. ;)
I am a librarian so especially like this post. I have not read any of these books, how can that be! I have a new favorite author, Anthony Trollope, and his Chronicles of Barsetshire series. I am also reading Royal Blood by Rhys Bowen and Conversation with a Saint Bernard by Jim Kraus, these are great books too.
Loved the train passing by at the end of your vlog and also Moth sitting regally in the background early on. Moth is such a great name.
I just read Erdrich for the first time recently – read The Round House. My co-worker is a huge fan and coincidentally she said her favorite was The Last Report on the Miracles.
I tried Mortal Love, but didn’t get far. It wasn’t really to my taste, but I hope it lives up to the promise of its cover for you.
Woohoo! Range of Ghosts!!
The only one I’ve read is Behind the Scenes but I’d give it a big yes.
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