Library Loot #5

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

Frances:
Consequences by Penelope Lively
I've already finished this one.  I have only read one other novel by Penelope Lively, Spiderweb, and I didn't enjoy it that much.  I chose this one because I enjoy reading books set during WWII but I wasn't sure I wasn't sure I would like it based on my previous experience with Lively.  I loved it!  It begins with a chance meeting in 1935 that results in a love affair and marriage.  The story moves through the devastation of WWII, to the social revolution of the 1960's, and the early 2000's.  Lively chronicles the choices and consequences that comprise a family's history, offering an intimate, moving reaffirmation of the the force of connection between generations.

April in Paris by Michael Wallner
Again, I have chosen a novel set during WWII - more specifically in occupied France.  The novel recounts the impossible love affair between a German soldier and a French Resistance fighter.

The London Train by Tessa Hadley
This novel follows to people, Paul and Cora, connected by a chance meeting on the London train that will have immediate and far-reaching consequences for them both.

Night Train to Lisbon by Pascal Mercier
Another train!  From the jacket:  Raimund Gregorius teaches classical languages at a Swiss lycee, and lives a life governed by routine.  One day, a chance encounter with a Portuguese woman inspires him to question his life - and leads him to an extraordinary book that will open the possibility of changing it.  Apparently, a movie is being made based on the book starring Jeremy Irons.

The Book of Salt by Monique Truong
This novel is told by the Vietnamese cook, Bihn, employed by Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas in Paris.  Since I have been reading about Literary Paris in the 1920's, I was drawn to this book.  The jacket says:  A mesmerizing narrative voice, an insider's view of a fabled literary household, and the slow revelation of heartbreaking secrets contribute to the viceral impact of this first novel.



Rose:
The Lazarus Project by Aleksandar Hemon
The description of this novel leads me to believe that it is either a fabulous success weaving past and present together in a story of history and murder or a grim and gruesome Chicago murder mystery. I will be greatly disappointed if it is the latter.

The Book of Fathers by Miklos Vamos
I could not resist checking out this book from the library purely because the author is praised as a Hungarian version of Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Kornél Esti by Dezso Kosztolanyi 
Last year I read Kosztolanyi's Skylark and loved it. This is a new English translation of his final novel. A man and his doppelganger, an alter ego from his childhood, write a book together. I hope that, like Skylark, this book manages to be both incredibly funny as well as thought-provoking.

Library Loot #4

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

In Our Time by Ernest Hemingway
I'm continuing my journey through all of Hemingway's works.  This is his first collection of short stories.


True at First Light by Ernest Hemingway
A fictional memoir published posthumously and edited by his son, Patrick.  It was written when he returned from Kenya in 1953 and chronicles his last African safari.


The Dangerous Summer by Ernest Hemingway
In 1959, Hemingway returned to Spain both the revisit "the country he loved more than any other than his own" and to see a series of bullfights that promised spectacular performances by two famous rivals.  He was commissioned by Life magazine to write a short article about his trip but he became so absorbed that he wrote a book-length manuscript.  It was the last major literary undertaking of his life.



Time Was Soft There: a Paris Sojourn at Shakespeare & Co. by Jeremy Mercer
Jeremy Mercer, a crime reporter, fled Canada in 1999 and ended up broke in Paris.  He stumbles upon Shakespeare & Co., the current incarnation of Sylvia Beach's famous bookstore of the 1920's owned by George Whitman.  The book "winds in and around the streets of Paris, the staff fall in and out of love, straighten bookshelves, host tea parties, drink in the more down-at-the-heels cafes, sell a few books, and help George find a way to keep his endangered bookstore open."

The Key to Rebecca by Ken Follett
 A thriller set during WWII which involves a code that is embedded in Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca!

Other Voices, Other Rooms by Truman Capote
This was Capote's first novel.  From the jacket:  "...a novel of almost supernatural intensity and inventiveness, an audacious foray into the mind of a sensitive boy as he seeks out the grown-up enigmas of love and death in the ghostly landscape of the deep South."

From the Land of the Moon by Milena Agus
Set in Cagliari, Sardinia, the novel relates a story which spans three generations, focusing on women from two families who are joined through marriage. An unnamed contemporary speaker feels particularly connected to her paternal grandmother, and as the speaker pieces together this woman's life from what she herself recalls about her and from the family lore which has survived through the memories of the rest of the family.  She creates a woman who not only searches earnestly for love but is absolutely determined to experience it in all its splendor, believing that it is "the principal thing in life."

Library Loot #3

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

Discovering Hamlet DVD
This is a rather old PBS documentary on the development of Derek Jacobi's 1989 stage production of Shakespeare's Hamlet starring Kenneth Branagh. Jacobi establishes his approach to the play, and the actors learn their parts in a span of four weeks. Several of the other actors involved will be familiar to anyone who has seen Branagh's film versions of Much Ado About Nothing or Henry V. This documentary is worth watching for Jacobi's unique interpretations (having Hamlet's To Be Or Not To Be soliloquy delivered to Ophelia) and his fabulous sweaters!

Travels with My Aunt by Graham Greene
Henry, a retired bank manager, meets his aunt Augusta (his mother's sister) again for the first time since his childhood at his mother's funeral only to have her tell him that his mother is not his birth mother.  He is then swept up into his eccentric aunt's life, abandoning his quiet, boring existence colored only by his love of cultivating dahlias.  During his travels, he learns snippets of his aunt's rather shady past.  When he returns home he misses his aunt's stories and traveling.  He also finds an old photograph of Augusta in one of his father's books and begins to suspect that she is his real mother.  When she sends for his help, he gives up his settled life and joins her in her wild pursuit of life.  The novel is delightfully funny.

Howard's End by E. M. Forster
I had seen the movie but wanted to read the novel.

Sea of Lost Love by Santa Montefiore
A novel of family secrets and hidden identities.  See my post.

The Miller's Dance by Winston Graham
I am continuing my reading of the Poldark series for my Cornwall challenge and filling in the gaps in my own collection with library check-outs. 

Bella Poldark by Winston Graham
The last novel in the Poldark series.  If you haven't read the novels, they are excellent.

The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris by David McCullough
 I've seen this on several blogs lately and wanted to read it for myself.  It is the story of the adventurous American artists, writers, doctors, and others with high aspirations who left for Paris in the years between 1830 and 1900.  As David McCullough writes, "Not all pioneers went west."

Library Loot

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

To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
I read Mrs. Dalloway several years ago with a book club and I thought I would give Virginia Woolf another go.  This novel is inspired by her recollections of childhood summers spent on the Cornwall coast.  It is the story of the Ramsey family and their assorted house guests spending a vacation in the Hebrides on the island of Skye.
~ Frances

Gods Behaving Badly by Marie Phillips
The book jacket reads:  "Being immortal is not all it once was.  Yes, the twelve Greek gods of Olympus are alive and well in the twenty-first century, but they are crammed together in a London town house--and are none too happy about it.  Even more disturbing, their powers are waning."  With Artemis (goddess of hunting) as a professional dog-walker, Aphrodite (goddess of beauty) a telephone sex operator, and Apollo (god of the sun) a TV psychic I couldn't resist it. ~ Frances

The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton
The back of the book reads:  "In 1913, a little girl plays hide-and-seek on the deck of a ship while waiting for the woman who left her there to return.  But as darkness comes, the girl is alone as the ship leaves for Australia.  Upon the ship's arrival in Australia, the dockmaster and his wife take in the little castaway who is carrying nothing but a small suitcase containing clothing and a book of fairy tales."  The novel is a multi-generational story that uncovers the secret of the girl's identity. ~ Frances

The House at Riverton by Kate Morton
Grace, a ninety-eight year old woman in a nursing home is visited by a young filmmaker who is making a movie about the events of the summer of 1924 in which Grace played a part.  The novel is Grace's reminiscence of that fatal summer.  At a party held a Riverton House where Grace was a servant, a young poet shot himself.  The only witnesses were two sisters, Hannah and Emmeline, and Grace, who is the only one still alive.  It is a novel of secrets, suspense, and passion. ~ Frances

East of Eden by John Steinbeck
I have never read a Steinbeck novel. I have, however, seen the film version of East of Eden with Julie Harris and James Dean. Judging by how much I enjoyed the film, I thought that I might as well give the novel and Steinbeck a try. ~ Rose

Library Loot!

Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Marg and Claire 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 is our first Library Loot post! We decided to start this week as we have a rather ambitious selection.

 

Howard's End is on the Landing: A Year of Reading from Home by Susan Hill

I have heard a lot about this book. The blurb on the back reads: "Early one autumn afternoon in pursuit of an elusive book on her shelves, Susan Hill encountered dozens of others that she had never read, or forgotten she owned, or wanted to read for a second time. The discovery inspired her to embark on a year-long voyage through her books, in order to get to know her own collection again." For the past year, I have been trying to make a dent in my collection of unread books. Besides, I'm a sucker for books about books. ~ Frances

Sylvia Beach and the Lost Generation by Noel Riley Fitch

If you've viewed our Challenge page, you'll know that we're doing the One, Two, Theme! Challenge. For one of my themes, I've chosen Literary Paris in the 1920s and 1930s. Sylvia Beach owned a bookshop in Paris, Shakespeare & Co., where she sold and often lent books to many American expatriates including Ernest Hemingway, T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Gertrude Stein. During these decades, Paris was the cultural capital of the world. I hope this book provides flavorful background to my reading of these authors for the challenge. ~ Frances

Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell

I've never read Gaskell! It's time I remedied this situation. ~ Frances

The Peach Keeper by Sarah Addison Allen

I read Garden Spells and enjoyed it. I thought I would give this book a try. ~ Frances

The School of Essential Ingredients by Erica Bauermeister

I saw this online and was captivated. It's a story about eight people who gather once a month for a cooking class in a restaurant: "The students have come to learn the art behind Lillian's soulful dishes, but it soon becomes clear that each seeks a recipe for something beyond the kitchen. One by one they are transformed by the aromas, flavors, and textures of what they create..." ~ Frances

Hotel Paradise by Martha Grimes

We have both read this before many years ago. It is Grimes's best mystery, by far. After re-reading Hotel Paradise, we may read the sequel, Cold Flat Junction. ~ Frances & Rose

The Bodley Head Fitzgerald Vol. V

Again, this is for my One, Two, Theme! Challenge. It is a collection of short stories by Fitzgerald publishes by The Bodley Head. It includes "Bernice Bobs Her Hair," "Winter Dreams," "The Ice Palace," "The Rich Boy," and "The Last of the Belles." ~ Frances

The Go-Between by L. P. Hartley

This has a great first line! How can you pass that up? I've been wanting to read this book since I saw the film with Alan Bates and Julie Christie. I found a copy just this week! ~ Frances

The Bodley Head Saki

Yet another collection published by The Bodley Head. I am currently revisiting Saki's short stories, which I haven't read since high school. Most of what I have read has included Saki's recurring character Clovis. "Tobermory" and "Esme" are particular favorites. This collection also features stories with Reginald. ~ Rose

Early Dramas of Friedrich von Schiller Vol. V

This collection includes Intrigue and Love (also known as Luise Miller), some Wallenstein, and The Piccolomini. I had not heard of Schiller until very recently when he was described to me as "Germany's answer to Shakespeare." I'll find out for myself just how true that statement is. As of now, I am reading Luise Miller, which is similar to Romeo and Juliet. I envy any of you who find yourselves at the Donmar Warehouse this summer to see Felicity Jones and Alex Kingston in a new translation of Luise Miller. 

~ Rose