Library Loot

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

This week, I got loads of picture books for 6-year-old Trisha; most of them are about African wildlife.  I always go overboard on getting books for a unit study. I also got myself some books and movies.

Books:

Field Guide by Gwendolen Gross — I got this recommendation from another book blogger, but I don’t remember who. Will anyone confess? 😀

From Library Journal — American graduate student Annabel Mendelssohn is still grieving the loss of her brother in a diving accident when she embarks on a scheduled journey to study spectacled fruit bats in the rain forest of Queensland, Australia. In e-mail messages home to her concerned older sister, she details her impressions of these curious creatures and of the various human specimens she encounters along the way. Assigned as her project director is the attractive and eccentric Professor John Goode. He proves to be an enthusiastic and supportive mentor but then mysteriously disappears before she can complete her work. When the professor’s son, Leon, also a scientist, is called home from Boston to look for his father, Annabel abandons her project to join him in the search. Predictably, over shared chasms of loss, they connect.

The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy — I keep seeing this book mentioned as a must read for people who love multi-cultural fiction.

From Publishers Weekly — With sensuous prose, a dreamlike style infused with breathtakingly beautiful images and keen insight into human nature, Roy’s debut novel charts fresh territory in the genre of magical, prismatic literature. Set in Kerala, India, during the late 1960s when Communism rattled the age-old caste system, the story begins with the funeral of young Sophie Mol, the cousin of the novel’s protagonists, Rahel and her fraternal twin brother, Estha. In a circuitous and suspenseful narrative, Roy reveals the family tensions that led to the twins’ behavior on the fateful night that Sophie drowned. Beneath the drama of a family tragedy lies a background of local politics, social taboos and the tide of history, all of which come together in a slip of fate, after which a family is irreparably shattered.

The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula LeGuin — Recommended to me by my sister-in-law, Cheryl. This will also contribute to my participation in the GLBT challenge. And I just noticed they’re having a Fantasy and Sci-Fi mini-challenge this month. Cool!

from Amazon.com — Genly Ai is an emissary from the human galaxy to Winter, a lost, stray world. His mission is to bring the planet back into the fold of an evolving galactic civilization, but to do so he must bridge the gulf between his own culture and prejudices and those that he encounters. On a planet where people are of no gender–or both–this is a broad gulf indeed. The inventiveness and delicacy with which Le Guin portrays her alien world are not only unusual and inspiring, they are fundamental to almost all decent science fiction that has been written since.

Hexwood and Dogsbody by Diana Wynne Jones. Ana at Things Mean a Lot brought this author to my attention. She recommended Fire and Hemlock as a first novel for a Diana Wynne Jones virgin, but our library didn’t have it. 😀 Dogsbody tells of the difficult mission confronting Sirius the Dog Star when he is sentenced to be reborn on Earth. About Hexwood:

from School Library Journal — Futuristic, virtual-reality technology melds with the realm of Faerie to liberate the galaxy from the corrupt Reigners who have controlled it for the past 1,000 years. Set in an English village in 1992, the novel’s web of events is catalyzed by a bored employee of Hexwood Farm, a secret outpost of the interplanetary rulers. He tampers with the Reigners’ old, computerlike machine, the Bannus, hoping it will cough up a hobbit-and-dragon role-playing game. But the Bannus’s game is for real, and it sucks the players it chooses-including transcendental souls like Arthur, Merlin, and Fitela-into its field of influence and forces them to act (without changing their natures) within its own scenarios. Unleashed in the Wood (which has power of its own, being a part of the eternal, enchanted forest), the machine is able to stage a battle to dethrone the unrightful Reigners and to choose the best possible new ones. The battlefield the Bannus and the Wood create is Arthurian, complete with castle, sorcery, knights, and dragons. The characters’ ages and physical forms often change, though not so fast that readers will lose track of what’s going on. Time, too, is fluid. Jones’s knife-sharp prose delves with psychedelic clarity into the shared subconscious of humankind. The book is humorous as well, with lines that call Douglas Adams, Monty Python, and James Bond to mind. A wide range of readers will find it marvelously mind-stretching. They may even be tempted to read it twice.

Movies:

The Motorcycle Diaries — based on the early life of Che Guevara.

Speak — based on the much-lauded book by Laurie Halse Anderson.

Cat on a Hot Tin Roof — who does Southern dysfunctional families better than Tennessee Williams? 😀

Nick  and Norah’s Infinite Playlist

Bee Season

The Tudors (first season)