Library Loot: June 29, 2011

Ooh, it’s been a little while since I’ve done a Library Loot post. I recently placed a bunch of holds and they’ve started coming in, so I’ll share what I picked up today.

Library Loot is a weekly meme hosted by Claire of The Captive Reader and Marg of Reading Adventures.  Readers share what library books they have picked up recently.  Marg is hosting this week.

Here is my loot:

One Day by David Nicholls

– I was just flipping through the title pages to see the copyright for this book (it’s 2009) and noticed Nicholls is also the author of Starter for Ten. I haven’t read Starter for Ten but I saw the adaptation. Interesting story, okay movie, but James McAvoy was brilliant in it. Anyway, One Day has an irresistible premise – the arc of a relationship is shown by capturing one day a year in two people’s lives, over the course of twenty years. The day is July 15th, so I feel that I ought to somehow align my reading so that I’m reading it on that day.

The Surgeon by Tess Gerritsen

Summer is usually the best season for me to read thrillers. This is a medical suspense novel and the author has a background in the medical field, so I expect well-informed and probably grisly-detailed crime scenes.

The Complete Claudine by Colette

This was recommended by Eva of A Striped Armchair. I don’t read too many translated novels, so this will be a cool foray. This compendium contains Claudine at School, Claudine in Paris, Claudine Married and Claudine and Annie. I suppose if I don’t like Claudine at School, I might not continue with the rest, but I think that I will enjoy them, because I like books with vividly drawn characters at the center.

This Life Is In Your Hands: One Dream, Sixty Acres, and a Family Undone by Melissa Coleman

This recommendation came via Kim of Sophisticated Dorkiness. It’s a memoir of Coleman’s childhood: her parents idealistically set out to homestead in rural Maine, but the difficulties of living off the land strain the family, and tragedy strikes when Melissa’s little sister Heidi drowns at age three. I’m picturing the parents as being somewhat like Jeannette Walls’ parents in her memoir, The Glass Castle. I loved The Glass Castle and the resilience of Jeannette and her siblings. So for that surface similarity and because I grew up in Maine, I picked up this book.

A Circle of Quiet (The Crosswicks Journal – Book 1) by Madeleine L’Engle

I haven’t read L’Engle’s novels since I was in junior high (and strangely the novel that sticks in my head the most is her lesser-known Arm of the Starfish.) I encountered her again in college when an essay and several choice quotes from her non-fiction works ended up in an anthology called The Christian Imagination, edited by Leland Ryken. Her writing seems wise and gracious and I’ve heard good things about the Crosswick Journal books.