Library Loot

Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Marg @ The Adventures of an Intrepid Reader and Claire @ The Captive Reader that encourages bloggers to share the books they have checked out from the library.

I limited myself to two books this week as I have a couple of classics half-read that I really need to finish. One of which is Middlemarch so I decided I'm far enough along to enjoy the DVD without it spoiling the story.

Sea Escape by Lynne Griffin - ' an emotional, beautifully imagined story inspired by the author's family letters about the ties that bind mothers and daughters.' Not a title I've heard of before but it sounds as if it might be rather good.

Snow White Must Die by Nele Neuhaus - ' In a small town in Germany a boy is accused of murdering his beautiful girlfriend. But this no fairy story..' A murder mystery.

What's in your loot this week?

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Classics Club Spin winner is..

#6

Westwood by Stella Gibbons

The spin has been kind to me as I was hoping for one of  'the English ladies'. I bought Westwood in 2011 after reading, and loving, Cold Comfort Farm, finally put it on my reading pile for April but still never got to it.........now is the time!

I hope the spin has been as kind to all my fellow spinners!

Spinning again with The Classics Club

Time for another game of chance from the The Classics Club - to make a list of twenty unread titles from our list and on the 20th May one number will be chosen. The challenge is to read the book that corresponds to the number by July 1.

My Spin List

Four I want to read the most because other bloggers keep telling me how good they are.

1. Possession by A S Byatt

2. Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell

3. Germinal by Emile Zola

4. South Riding by Winifred Holtby

Six English lady authors 

5. To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

6. Westwood by Stella Gibbons

7. Emma by Jane Austen

8. Agnes Grey by Anne Bronte

9. Good Behaviour by Molly Keane

10. All Passion Spent by Vita Sackville-West

Five male authors 

11. A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway

12. Washington Square by Henry James

13. No Name by Wilkie Collins

14. Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy

15. Dr Thorne by Anthony Trollope

Five by authors I haven't read before

16. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
17. Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev
18. The Odd Women by George Gissing
19. Helen by Maria Edgeworth
20. A House for Mr Biswas by V S Naipal

Let the wheel spin!

Library Loot

Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Marg @ The Adventures of an Intrepid Reader and Claire @ The Captive Reader that encourages bloggers to share the books they have checked out from the library.

I really believe it would be totally impossible for me to visit the library without bringing anything home! This week I needed to return some books and I needed to use the library's wifi connection - I did not need any more books but.....

Hide Me Among the Graves by Tim Powers......love the title, love the cover and the blurb - London,1862. A city of over three million souls, of stinking fog and dark, winding streets. Through these streets walks the poet Christina Rossetti, haunted and tormented by the ghost of her uncle, John Polidori.

It all sounds very Dickensian and exactly my sort of book until the last bit - a hidden city, where nursery rhymes lead an adventurer through haunted tunnels and inverted spires. I'm not familiar with the author but it seems he has won prizes for fantasy fiction and is acclaimed as a founder of steampunk, neither of which I'm particularly keen on, so I have a feeling I will either love or loathe this book.

Part of the Spell by Rachel Heath......In a small English town, everyone is struggling to be the person they think they should be.But sometimes the pressure can be overwhelming.

I liked the first page - something about the writing style appealed to me immediately so I'm hoping it will be a good choice.

The Blind Man's Garden by Nadeem Aslam.......set in Pakistan and Afghanistan in the months following 9/11 - a story of war and of one family's losses. I remember liking The Wasted Vigil by the same author and it will something different to what I've been reading recently.

What's in your loot this week?

Watching (or not) Parade's End

"......'Pipe exactly right. It must be: pipe of Englishman of good birth: ditto tobacco. Attractive young woman's back. English midday summer. Best climate in the world! No day on which man may not go abroad!' Tietjens paused and aimed with his hazel stick an immense blow at a tall spike of yellow mullein with its undecided, furry glaucous leaves and its undecided, buttony, unripe lemon-coloured flowers. The structure collapsed, like a woman killed among crinolines! 

' Now I'm a bloody murderer!' Tietjens said, 'Not gory! Green-stained with vital fluid of innocent plant......And by God! Not a woman in the country who won't let you rape her after an hour's acquaintance!'He slew two more mulleins and a sow-thistle! A shadow, but not from the sun, a gloom, lay across the sixty acres of purple grass bloom and marguerites, white: like petticoats of lace over the grass! ".............p94, Some Do Not.

A small excerpt from one of my favourite parts of Some Do Not. These impassioned outpourings are so out of character for a man who normally keeps his emotions under such tight control.

So did I miss it on screen? I don't whether it was included or not but there I was loving every minute of the first episode when a violent thunderstorm took away my TV signal halfway through the Duchemin's Breakfast. I was devastated! If there had been the opportunity I would have slewn a few mulleins myself!

What I Read - May 1-7

May began with two books from April that I needed to finish as the library due date was approaching..

The Deadly Sisterhood by Leonie Frieda is the story of eight women in the time of the Italian Renaissance. Daughters, wives and mothers of popes and princes and all connected by blood ties in a society where passion, greed and treachery could unite in friendship or , as easily, set sister against sister.
All of these women were strong and capable of ruling their lands in the absence of their husbands, wielding a sword and leading troops into battle.
Amazing women and fascinating, but very slow, reading. Even with ten pages of family trees to consult it wasn't hard to become lost and confused in the bewildering maze of interrelated families. I found it easier with the women whose lives I'd read about in novels - Lucrezia Borgia, the d'Este sisters and Caterina Sforza.
Excellent reading and well worth the time spent on it!

The Sea by John Banville.......  It's the story of Max Morden who, after the death of his wife, goes back to the seaside town where he spent his childhood holidays. Beautifully written but, as one would expect from a tale of grief and loss, rather melancholy reading and one has to be in the right mood to cope with that atmosphere. I kept putting it down and avoiding going back to it.

With those two safely on the library return pile I could back to Parade's End by Ford Madox Ford -  another book that needs to be read slowly and which I'm loving.

Touch & Go by Lisa Gardner......my weekend escapist read. 
Justin and Libby Denbe are living the dream. A Beautiful home, gorgeous teenage daughter, great marriage. Until the day the family is abducted!

Lisa Gardner is an author I know I can rely on for a suspenseful, psychological thriller and even though I did guess the 'bad guys' I still enjoyed it. It continues the series featuring private investigator, Tessa Leoni, so I would recommend reading the previous book, Love You More, to understand Tessa's back story.

I've also done some 'dippin' and divin'' , sampling Saki's (very) Short Stories which are hilarious and give yet another perspective on the Parade's End era, and the Nancy Mitford Letters which are equally hilarious. To be truly appreciated I think 'little and often' is the best approach - a few minutes is guaranteed to lift my spirits and put a smile on my face.