Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Marg and myself 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!
I must admit that some of these were books I picked up just before I got sick and they have been sitting around, patiently being renewed, eager to make their Library Loot debut once I had recovered. But I am well now and have regained my ability to concentrate so here’s hoping they’ll soon be read. Many thanks to Marg for having covered the last three Library Loots while I was ill!
Bad Blood: A Memoir by Lorna Sage
There was an interview earlier this month in The Guardian with Lorna Sage’s daughter that made this memoir, published ten years ago, sound irresistible.
Were You Born on the Wrong Continent? How the European Model Can Help You Get a Life by Thomas Geoghegan
I never get tired of hearing about the benefits of socialism, though I resent the generalization in the book’s title – from everything I’ve read this book is about contrasting America with the Continent. No need to drag Canada (or Mexico for that matter) into it, particularly since Canada is already ‘alarmingly’ socialist according to many Americans (see health care debates from earlier this year).
Aristocrats: Power, Grace, and Decadence: Britain’s Great Ruling Classes from 1066 to the Present by Lawrence James
I have heard some not so great things about this once since it was published last year but I can’t not try it for myself. How to resist something so freakishly ambitious that it spans almost a thousand years!
Curiosity: A Love Story by Joan Thomas
Another novel about amateur paleontologist Mary Anning (the other being Tracy Chevalier’s Remarkable Creatures). It was also on the longlist for this year’s Giller Prize.
A Time of Gifts by Patrick Leigh Fermor
Everything I’ve read by and of Fermor has made me eager to read this memoir. At the age of eighteen, Fermor set off on foot from London, headed to Constantinople. Because these are the kinds of adventures that seem like good ideas when you’re eighteen, presumably. This book covers his journey as far as Hungary.
Everything Is Going to Be Great: An Underfunded and Overexposed European Grand Tour by Rachel Shukert
A European adventure of a rather different type:
When actor and writer Shukert realizes her passport was never stamped on her entry into Europe, as an ensemble-cast member in a New York–based play on tour, she decides to take advantage and string her vacation along indefinitely. After the show’s stints in Vienna and Zurich, Shukert stays (squats might be more appropriate) with two friends in Amsterdam. Indeed underfunded and overexposed, Shukert’s life as an expat in the so-called Venice of the North provides lots of hilarious fodder for the memoir it will become. Shukert possesses a certain talent to find the funny in almost any situation, and her shockingly personal and irreverent writing makes for many laughs, but not at the cost of losing our sympathy in the face of her deepest disappointments (Booklist).
I went a little crazy when I got my online membership for Yarra Plenty Library. I ended up borrowing three books and was only able to get through one.
Curiosity sounds like my kind of book.
So glad you’re feeling better! I’m way behind on my Library Loot posts again (sigh) ….
The Geoghegan book sounds fascinating and I really have to read Patrick Leigh Fermor. I am hoping my library will purchase several copies of Curiosity so people can discover the writing of Joan Thomas. Glad you are feeling better!
I loved Remarkable Creatures. I’ll have to check out Curiosity too.
I’m glad you’re feeling better, Claire. 🙂
You have some fascinating books out from the library. Curiosity looks and sounds interesting. It sounds so silly to say, but I have to admit I’m very curious about it.
Enjoy your loot!
I read both the Sage and the Fermor books this year and enjoyed both. As a matter of fact the Fermor is one of my favorite books of the year and agree his writing makes you want to read more of his work. Enjoy your books and sorry to hear you’ve been unwell!
All look great. Enjoy your loot!
That’s a great lot of loot! I’m quite curious about Aristocrats – although I’ve not heard of it before this, the British ruling classes have always fascinated me, perhaps even more so after reading that great Amanda Foreman biography of Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire.
It was only published in North America this summer, so hasn’t been on the shelves too long. I’m really fascinated by any country’s ruling classes – they’re usually the ones who were involved with the interesting bits of history!
i just spent more time on your blog than on making my Library Loot post and believe that is saying something. And thanks to you I’ve just added five books to my library hold requests. i currently have 40 checked out! I added Bad Blood, Player One and two other Coupland, and See You in Court by Geoghegan as they don’t have Were You Born on the Wrong Continent? I also read all the articles you linked to on Friday Potpourri. I particularly like the one about Novels not needing to be ‘nice’. I too have found all the lamenting over unlikeable characters irritating. And even tho I disagreed with the premise that unlikeable characters were a strike against a story, I’d been letting the prevalence of the sentiment affect my own stories to the detriment of their integrity. Now just in time for NaNo I’m fortified with this article. I might even make the title my mantra for the month!
so glad you are well again. i hate it when health issues limit my reading and especially when its limited to zero.
So glad you found so much to keep you busy here!
Good luck with NaNoWriMo!
Were You Born on the Wrong Continent? How the European Model Can Help You Get a Life by Thomas Geoghegan looks very promising. I might have to check that out sometime in the near future.