Category Archives: Library Loot

Library Loot

Posted on by

library-lootI’ve spent quite a big chunk of my life in libraries. As a child I used to go about once a week and after I left school I worked in a large city library and then went to library school. After I qualified as a librarian I worked in the library’s Local History Library for about four years and then left to have a baby. But that of course didn’t stop me using the library and again I used to go about once a week. When I started to work full-time again (years later) I spent most lunchtimes in the County Library main library either browsing or reading. Since leaving work I’ve been borrowing books from this small branch library, although I still have trips in to the main library as well.

local-library

This week I’ve borrowed six books and bought two from the Ex Library Stock Sale. These are the books that I borrowed:

  • The Cat Who Could Read Backwards by Lilian Jackson Braun. I haven’t read anything by Braun before and it was the title that attracted me to this book. There is a series of The Cat Who … books, so if I like this one there are plenty more to read. I think this is the first one in the series, introducing Koko the brilliant Siamese cat and reporter Jim Qwilleran sniffing out clues to murders in an art gallery.
  • The Mysterious Affair at Styles by Agatha Christie, her first novel and the first of her Hercule Poirot books. I must have read this one years ago when I had a binge on Agatha Christie’s books, but I thought it was time to re-read it.

library-cornerThe library has a display of new fiction and that’s often the first place I look. This week I borrowed one book from the display- there were actually more new books on display on a bookcase next to the table:

  • The Gargoyle by Andrew Davidson. After a horrific car accident which leaves him in a burns ward, undergoing the tortures of the damned, the narrator of the story meets Marianne Engel, a wild and compelling sculptress of gargoyles who tells him they were once lovers in medieval Germany. As she tells her tales, he finds himself drawn back to life – and, finally, to love. I’ve started this one as I can only borrow it for one week as it’s a “Top Ten Best Seller”. After a few pages I nearly gave up on it because of the graphic descriptions of burning skin and flesh. The pages are suitably black-edged. It’s got a bit better now Marianne is telling her tales.

The other books I borrowed are:

  • The Sound of Butterflies by Rachel King. I’ve read about this one somewhere on someone’s blog, but can’t remember where or when. Anyway this looks so good – the cover and the title and when I looked inside it promises to be a “story of passion and beauty, of brutality and murder, masked by surface splendour.” It’s about a passionate collector of butterflies who in 1903 travels to the Amazon as part of a scientific expedition. He hopes to find the mythical butterfly that will make his name and immortalize that of his wife.
  • Who Do You Think You Are? by Anton Gill and Nick Barrett. I’ve been watching the TV programmes of the same name and am currently just a bit obsessed with looking up my family history. The earliest ancestor I’ve found so far was born around 1710 and I’d love to know more.
  • How To Do Everything With Your Genealogy by George G Morgan. We joined Ancestry last year and have been compiling our family tree online, but this book  although aimed at tracing your ancestors for Americans does contain some useful information on recording data.

The two books I bought are:

  • The Lady and the Unicorn by Tracy Chevalier – a story built around a series of tapestries, set in Brussels at the end of the 15th century.
  • A Wrinkle In Time  by Madeleine Engels. I’d never heard of this author until I came across her name on book blogs (again I can’t remember which ones). This is a fantasy story about Charles who goes searching for his lost father through a “wrinkle in time” and finds himself on an evil planet. Oh dear I’ve just checked this on LibraryThing which tells me that I “probably won’t like” this book – let’s hope that’s wrong! (I wonder how LT works it out?)

I’ll be showing more photos of the library in other Library Loot posts in the future.

Library Matters

Posted on by

 I started to write Library Loot posts a couple of weeks ago and thought I’d combine this one with the today’s Musing Mondays post as that is about the library …

monday-musing

 

How often do you visit the library? Do you have a scheduled library day/time, or do you go whenever? Do you go alone, or take people with you?

I don’t have a scheduled day to visit the library, but I do go frequently.  Actually I borrow books from two libraries – a little branch library, which I visit the most and the main County library. I either go on my own or with my husband.

Sometimes I go specifically to the library but often I combine my visit with shopping trips.  I prefer the branch library because even though there are less books on the shelves to choose from there is a really friendly atmosphere there – the staff know me. In any case if I want a particular book I can reserve it. They have several displays, that I always check first such as new books and first books before browsing the shelves or looking for specific books/authors. It’s a lot easier to park here as well. I usually borrow far too many books. At the moment I’m up to the limit on my ticket – 15 books, but I can always use my husband’s as he doesn’t borrow as many. We often borrow a DVD and have recently been taking out an audiobook as well.

library-lootI haven’t been to the library this week, maybe going tomorrow, so my Library Loot post is about some of the books I’ve got out already. Of the 15 books I have out there are four books that I haven’t started to read. They are (the summaries are from the library catalogue, except for the Wodehouse book):

  • The Crowded Bed by Mary Cavanagh – Joe Fortune, a Jewish GP, has been married to Anna, his Aryan beauty, for 20 years, in a relationship that is sustained with great passion and happiness. But in the shadows of their lives, dark secrets are hidden.
  • An Imaginative Experience by Mary Wesley – Mary Wesley draws out on a plot of unforgettable impact: of loss, of release, of a necessarily comic acceptance of fate, of love the ‘imaginative experience’. Rich in character and wit, and powerfully moving, this is a novel of the heart’s pain and deliverance.
  • Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen by P G Wodehouse – extract from the back cover – When the doctor advises Bertie to live the quiet life he and Jeeves head for the pure air and peace of Maiden Eggesford. However they hadn’t reckoned on Aunt Dahlia, aound whom an imbroglio develops involving the Cat which Kept Popping Up When Least Expected.
  • The Mirror Cracked from Side To Side by Agatha Christie – One minute, Heather had been gabbling on at her movie idol, Marina Gregg – the next, Heather suffered a massive seizure. But for whom was the poison really intended? This is one in a new-look series of Miss Marple books for the 21st century.

Writing about them now makes me want to read them all at once, but since I’m in the middle of other books they’ll have to wait.

Library Loot

Posted on by

library-lootI went to the library yesterday to pick up a reservation, The Private Lives of the Impressionists by Sue Roe. I’d written about the short course on the Impressionists I’m doing and Litlove recommended this book. It has a lovely front cover showing part of Eugene Manet on the Isle of Wight by Berthe Morisot. I’d love to see the original which is in the Musée Marmottan in Paris.

The course I’m doing is focussing on the sites the painters used and not much about their lives and as I know very little (nothing really) about them this book promises to enlighten me. It covers Manet, Monet (I get those two mixed up in my head), Pisarro, Cezanne, Renoir, Degas, Sisley, Berthe Morisot and Mary Cassatt, going into their homes, their studios, describing their love affairs and arguments, as well as their canvases and theories. It has some illustrations.

 library-loot-impressroe

Whilst I was in the library I looked for other books on the Impressionists focussing on their actual works. There was plenty of choice and I came home with two large heavy books:

library-loot-impress

  • The Impressionists by Robert Katz and Celestine Dars. This is full of colour illustrations in two sections, one on the history of Impressionism and one on the life and works of  the artists in Sue Roe’s book plus Frédéric Bazille.
  • The Impressionists by Themselves, edited by Michael Howard. This is a massively heavy book containing a selection of their paintings, drawings and sketches with extracts from their writing. It’s arranged chronologically covering the years 1856 – 1924

I don’t think the three week loan period will be long enough for me to absorb these books but at least I’ll find out if I want to buy any of them for future reference.

Library Loot

Posted on by

library-lootLibrary Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Eva and Alessandra  that encourages bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library.

I must confess that I always have far more books out from the library than I could ever read in the loan period and I take back a number of them unread or keep renewing them as long as I can. But I do enjoy browsing and taking books home that I think I may want to read. It’s a great way of trying out books I may never read otherwise.

Yesterday I was going to go to my course on the Impressionists in the morning and food shopping in the afternoon. That was the plan, but the snow changed all that. The course was cancelled as the tutor couldn’t get there. But the snow wasn’t too bad so we went shopping in the morning and as we were passing the library I popped in. I quickly scanned the shelves and came out with four books, which all seemed to just jump off the shelves into my hands.

library-loot-1

  • Blackbird House by Alice Hoffman – a book of short stories. This appeals to me because the stories are about the families who have lived in Blackbird House on the wild coast of Massachusetts for over two hundred years. It promises to be a magical tale. I haven’t read anything by Alice Hoffman yet although I have got Practical Magic.
  • The View From Castle Rock by Alice Munro – biographical fiction, “a brilliantly imagined version of the past.” Munro’s family emigrated  from Edinburgh to Canada in the 18th century.
  • Ferney by James Long. Cornflower wrote about this book and I added it to my wishlist, so I was really pleased to see it in the library. It’s set in a broken-down old cottage in Somerset , a couple’s dream and financial nightmare.
  • A Severed Head by Iris Murdoch. I may have read this many years ago, but I’ve been thinking about reading Murdoch’s books recently and this was the only one in the library that I thought I hadn’t read. Elizabeth Jane Howard’s quote on the book describes the book as a “comedy with that touch of ferocity about it which makes for excitement.”

The question now is will I read them before 26 February when they’re due back. That all depends upon what I feel like reading and I have plenty to choose from – another 8 books from the library or any of the other books sitting around waiting to be read.