Library Loot

Library Loot is a weekly event hosted by Eva and Marg that encourages bloggers to share the books they've checked out from the library. If you'd like to participate too, just write up a post - feel free to steal the button - and link it using Mr. Linky any time during the week. And of course, check out what other participants are getting from their libraries!

Head on over to Marg's post here for Mr. Linky.

I actually got a bunch of books from the library in the past week. I picked up books twice... once on Friday and once today. I did return a bunch of books both times though, so I don't feel too bad for having so many borrowed at once.

 

Fables by Bill Willingham. I saw Eva's review of this a while back and it sounded so interesting. I've been having a hard time without Neil Gaiman's Sandman series (I'm up to book 6 but that ended up in storage and I can't find that volume at the library) and needed a new graphic novel series to start. I'm so looking forward to this. 

1001 Nights of Snowfall by Bill Willingham. I also grabbed the prequel series which started publication in 2006, four years after the first volume of Fables was published.

Two pictureless books about book reviewing that I found in the library system, both published in the 1970s:

Writing Book Reviews by John Drewry - I've started this one already and I like it so far.

Book Reviewing by Sylvia E. Kamerman

Zorro by Isabel Allende. I read The House of the Spirits in high school and loved it. This will be my second Allende. I got it on audio book when I stumbled across it on Friday.

Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. I started this a while ago. I own the entire series (in storage, with everything else). But I never bothered to finish it. And now it's time. This is on audio as well.

Odd and the Frost Giants by Neil Gaiman. This was another in the quest to read all of Neil Gaiman's work. I finished this on Monday night. And I loved it. Like I love everthing he writes.

Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom. Got this on audio book because I kept hearing so many good things about him. But I couldn't finish it because I really didn't like it. So I returned it today. One of the nice things about the library is being able to return books without guilt.

And then I went back to the library today after work let out a little early, and I picked up six more books.

 

Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen. A confession. I am 25 and I have never read any Austen before. I wasn't sure what order to read them, so I decided to just go in the order Wikipedia lists them. So this is the first one. I'm pretty sure I'll enjoy it - I have enjoyed most of the movie adaptations I've seen of Austen novels.

The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. A friend of mine read this and loved it. And recommended it to everyone via Facebook when the movie came out. So I decided to try it.

 A Long Long Time Ago and Essentially True by Brigid Pasulka. I know my library recommended this one and it takes place in Poland (some of my family immigrated to America from there), but I can't for the life of me remember what it's about. Hopefully it will be good. :)

Wicked by Gregory Maguire. I have wanted to read this for the last seven years. I have no idea why I haven't read it yet. Wicked is coming to my hometown soon and I'm hoping to see it too.

The Color of Magic by Terry Pratchett. For the Terry Pratchett 2010 Reading Challenge, which starts 12/1. I'm really looking forward to this.

Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi. For the Women Unbound Challenge.

Unfinished

I almost always finish books. Mostly I take my time and go back and forth between a few at a time until I finish. Some I go straight through in just one or two sittings. Others I will pick up and put down a few times before I finish, and the breaks can last a few months or even years. Very rarely, I find a book that I cannot stand and refuse to finish. I found the first one this year. Tuesdays With Morrie. It was so popular that I didn't have high expectations. I did expect that I would be able to sit through the whole audio book. I'm not even through the entire first disc of the audio book (out of three discs), and I just can't bring myself to keep listening. It's just not entertaining, I'm frustrated with Mitch, and I feel like he's treating me like a child when he explains things.

And yet, as much as I dislike it, I still hate to return it to the library unfinished. But return it I will.

On a brighter note, I enjoyed Brida by Paulo Coelho and I'm looking forward to listening to Isabel Allende's Zorro next (I loved The House of the Spirits, which I read in high school).

A to Z Challenge

I'm joining the A to Z Challenge, because I think it will be an awesome way to work my way through my TBR list, which is 800+ books these days. I even have all the letters already as long as I go by author name (even X). So that's the plan. This challenge runs from 1/1/10-12/31/10 and I'm really looking forward to it. Note: books will be chosen according to availability at my library since all my books are in storage and I don't have room to buy any for the time being.

A:
B:
C:
D:
E:
F:
G:
H:
I:
J:
K:
L:
M:
N:
O:
P:
Q:
R:
S:
T:
U:
V:
W:
X:
Y:
Z:

Minaret

Minaret by Leila Aboulela was on my TBR list for a while. I can’t even remember where I first heard of it. It was also the first line in my spreadsheet (I order them alphabetically by author). Almost every time I opened my spreadsheet I’d see it and consider borrowing it from the library. I have no idea why I waited so long, and now that I’ve read it, I wish I hadn’t waited. As I was reading, I’d end each chapter, look at the clock, count the pages in the next chapter and decide to read just one more chapter. After all, it was only a few more pages.

Minaret follows a young woman, Najwa, in her spiritual journey as a Muslim. She starts out living with her family in Khartoum in the 1980s and leaves during a political coup for England. I was surprised how much of her journey echoed my own, even though we have radically different backgrounds (I’m a Christian who’s always lived in the US and haven’t had to deal with the kinds of pain she has). For example, we both went from not really caring what we wore and not really paying attention to religion to finding our faith and starting to dress more conservatively because of our religious beliefs. It’s founded in the same idea but looks so different on the outside. I just found that to be really fascinating.

Aboulela writes simply and says so much. I noted a few places in the novel that stuck out to me:

She shows me how a slim kitchen drawer opens out into a folding ironing board. Underneath is a cupboard full of clothes waiting to be ironed. (68)
I love this quote. It’s on Najwa’s first day of work and it has the exact same feel as when I walk into a new client site. There is always a drawer of work that’s been piling up waiting to be done. And because we'd like to please the client and create a smooth transition experience, we always end up helping with the backlog. Not a complaint, just an amusing observation.

Lamya is home, a little breathless, her jacket splashed with rain but her eyes merry. She kisses and hugs her daughter, saddles her on her left hip and walks aroundwith her. Mai is beaming now and Laya is livlier than she was in the morning.She asks me lots of questions, inspects the dinner I cooked, lifting up saucepan lids. She seems impressed, her features alive. Is this how a young affluent woman feels, fulfilled in her wok, coming home to a young child? I owe myself an absence of envy; I owe myself a heart free of grudges. (73).
I love how Aboulela shows such powerful emotion. This woman has everything and Najwa has none of what she expected in life when she was younger. Our expectations for ourselves when we were young stick with us and even though I have no idea if I'll ever want to go to grad school realistically (I still have to finish my bachelor's degree), a small piece of me will always feel a little bit of envy for all the people around me who do. It was a dream when I was a kid to get a PhD, but I had no idea what to study and I didn't realize that while I loved the image of it that it didn't necessarily fit with what I want from life.

Now he was against this new government and had probably forgotten all about my father. What was the point of it all? Coup after coup - one set of people after another - like musical chairs. (139)
The musical chairs simile is repeated throughout the rest of the novel whenever Najwa thinks of going back to Khartoum. I absolutely love this image. I can imagine that people who have lived through that kind of tumultuous political environment having that point of view.

She will always see my hijab, my dependence on the salary she gives me, my skin colour, which is a shade darker than hers. She will see these things and these things only; she will not look beyond them. (116)
This is a lot of judgment all at the same time for different things. Her religion, her job, her ethnicity. I'm not sure there are words for how I felt reading this. It was so hopeless from her point of view.

So to sum up everything, I kind of wish that I had decided to read this for the Women Unbound Challenge. But at the same time, I'm glad for the books I did choose. I loved this book. I will definitely need to read more by Leila Aboulela. This was an awesome read.

New Challenge! Terry Pratchett!

Marg at Reading Adventures is hosting a new challenge, the Terry Pratchett 2010 Challenge, and I had to sign up for it.I've been meaning to read some Terry Pratchett and a challenge focused on reading his works is the perfect motivation to get started.

The challenge will start from 1 December 2009 and run through to 30 November 2010. Any Terry Pratchett book counts. Reading for the first time, rereads and watching the TV adaptations all count. There are several different levels of participation for you to choose from:

1-3 books - Cashier at Ankh-Morpork Mint
4-5 books - Guard of the City Watch
6-8 books - Academic at the Unseen University
9-10 books - Member of Granny Weatherwax's Coven
10-12 books - Death's Apprentice

I'm going to aim for three books for this challenge, making me a Cashier at Ankh-Morpork Mint. I already own them and they've been on my TBR list for almost a year (although they are currently in storage). They are: 
Good Omens (co-written with Neil Gaiman)
The Colour of Magic (Discworld #1)
The Light Fantastic (Discworld #2)

Library Loot

Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Eva and Marg 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 only have one book this week, and it's an audio book. I still have a bunch of the books from last week to read through, and I haven't had much time to read lately since a couple friends and I decided that we need to see each other again right this second. :) It's been a lot of fun though.

I'm slowly making my way through all of the Paulo Coelho books. This is my third (I've already read The Alchemist and The Devil and Miss Prym).

Miss Leavitt's Stars

When I saw Eva at A Striped Armchair's post* about George Johnson's Miss Leavitt's Stars, I decided to add it to my TBR list. Then the Women Unbound Challenge came up and I decided I'd start the challenge with this little biography of sorts. I'm glad I did. It was a quick read and while there was way more science than biography, it was really fascinating to see how one woman's observations made such an impact on what we know about the universe.

Henrietta Leavitt was one of the women hired to work as a "computer" for the observatory at Harvard in the 1900s. She spent countless hours determining the brightness and color of stars, which from the sound of it was fairly tedious work. She made a discovery about variable stars which allowed her director to begin measuring how far those stars were. Later, her discovery made it possible to measure the size of the universe.

Her dedication to her work even as she suffered from various illnesses was inspiring. At times, she had to take a break from working but she never seemed to stop thinking about her variable stars. It was less of a job and more of a passion for her and that's so awesome.

I suppose my only complaint is that I wish there was more about Leavitt. I did love learning about the impact her work made though. Overall, I really liked it. Enough that when I saw that this is part of a series of books about scientific discoveries that have greatly impacted society, I added all of them to my TBR list. They're all by different authors, so it'll add a bunch of new authors for me. The link to the Great Discoveries series is here.

*Eva's thoughts are here.