It's both a good thing and a bad thing that I not only frequent my local public library and work in a university library. Good because I have twice the chance of finding the books I want (no matter how obscure), but bad because my pile never seems to dwindle (though some may also see that as a good thing). I don't usually share my university library finds (not sure why), but I have a couple in this particular pile. My most recent finds:
I think when I got in line for Julie and Julia I must have been something like #145, but weeks and weeks later, here it is. I've heard it's good and finally get to see for myself. Am I going to want to read the book next? Maybe a biography of Julia Child as well? Maybe even be inspired to do a little French cooking (that might be taking things a bit too far)? Time will tell.
Johan Theorin's The Darkest Room was not only suggested to me as a possible read, but it also happened to make the 2010 International Dagger Shortlist. As it turns out this is also set on an island off the Swedish coast--a thriller set on an island that includes lighthouses--perfect. It fits in well with my 'beach and seaside reading' that I am doing this summer.
I've been seeing Edith Grossman's Why Translation Matters popping up all over the place recently and thought I should take a look at it as well. It's a slim little tome and I'm curious to see what she has to say about the subject (a lot I'm guessing). I've read a few things that she has translated including Don Quixote a few summers back.
I'm sure I've mentioned I've been in a spy/espionage mood of late (watching MI-5 episodes every weekend as I make my way through all the seasons in one big go), so I suppose it's this fact that made me look up John LeCarre's books in my university's library catalog. We actually had quite a few of his books, so I grabbed The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, which I think is one of his more famous novels?
I actually had Eleanor Catton's The Rehearsal requested long before it made the Orange Longlist, but it has only been published here recently. The blurb reads--"an exhilarating, darkly funny, provocative novel about the complications of human desire, a tender portrait of teenage yearning and regret."
Ted Mooney's The Same River Twice sounds like a bit of a thriller. It's about a Frenchwoman who smuggles a May Day ceremonial banner out of the Soviet Union, a supposedly easy job, but then finds herself mixed up in something bigger than she expected. I'm not entirely sure what period this is meant to be set in but perhaps contemporary times as it may touch on human trafficking and the Russian mafia as well. Could be a good thriller.
Steven Polansky's The Bradbury Report is set in the not too distant future when cloning is an accepted practice in the U.S. The idea is if something goes wrong with the original, the clone is handy to basically harvest parts from. Everything is fine until one of the "copies" escapes his sequestered area. It sounds like Polansky is exploring the same area Kazuo Ishiguro did in Never Let Me Go, but with a slightly different slant.
What's new at your library?