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!

A gorgeous sunny day today in San Leandro.  It's about 60 degrees and I'm sitting in front of the computer with the windows and sliding glass door open, wearing a tank top, and trying to figure out how I'm going to get control over some of the ARCs that I have finished that are overflowing onto the floor.  In any event, today was library day followed by a trip to Trader Joe's for the nummies we'll eat during the week - two of my favorite places in one day!

Here in my house we tend to classify things according to gaming rules.  This is because aside from working, going to school, and reading voraciously, we also game a lot.  These days we're playing Warhammer Online which is very satisfying because of its awesome PVP (player vs. player) aspects that allow me to imagine the faces of people who are currently irritating me on the avatars of other players as I fireball them to death (I play a Bright Wizard).  I highly recommend this as a low cost stress reliever. 

In any event, in most games like this the loot system labels your loot with colored text that indicates how good it is - also the better the loot the more rare it is.  There is gray (trash loot), white (okay, but probably for the vendor), green (magic), blue (kinda rare and really nice), purple (epic), and orange (mythical).  The last couple of times I went to the library it was definitely blues and purples with an orange thrown in there for good measure.  Today was mostly a greens and blues day, but hey - they're books (and I may find some buried treasure in here, who knows?)!  Here's what I got today:

The Grass Harp by Truman Capote.  Set in a small Southern town in the 1930s, this classic work tells the story of three endearing misfits--an orphaned boy and two whimsical old ladies--who one day take up residence in a tree house.

Other Voices, Other Rooms by Truman Capote.  Published when Truman Capote was only twenty-three years old, Other Voices, Other Rooms is a literary touchstone of the mid-twentieth century. In this semiautobiographical coming-of-age novel, thirteen-year-old Joel Knox, after losing his mother, is sent from New Orleans to live with the father who abandoned him at birth. But when Joel arrives at Skully’s Landing, the decaying mansion in rural Alabama, his father is nowhere to be found. Instead, Joel meets his morose stepmother, Amy, eccentric cousin Randolph, and a defiant little girl named Idabel, who soon offers Joel the love and approval he seeks.

Hell's Gate by Stephen Frey. It's fire season in Montana...From New York Times bestselling author Stephen Frey comes a riveting new thriller about a disillusioned star litigator who goes west to forge a new life in Big Sky Country -- and stumbles onto the toughest case of his career. When thirty-five-year-old lawyer Hunter Lee decides to turn his back on the New York City rat race that has made him rich but cost him his marriage, he takes his brother's advice and sets out to build a new life in the beautiful but isolated town of Fort Mason, Montana. However, escape is hardly what he finds there.

Abraham Lincoln:  Vampire Hunter by Seth Grahame-Smith.  When Abraham Lincoln was nine years old, his mother died from an ailment called the "milk sickness." Only later did he learn that his mother's deadly affliction was actually the work of a local vampire, seeking to collect a debt owed by Lincoln's father. When Abe learned the truth, he vowed revenge and kept one passion hidden throughout his life: the brutal elimination of all vampires. His valiant, bloody fight against the undead was all but lost to history, until Grahame-Smith stumbled upon The Secret Journal of Abraham Lincoln. Using the journal as his guide, Seth reconstructs Lincoln's life story and uncovers the role vampires played in the birth, growth, and near-death of our nation. You don't know Abe. Honest.

The Summer Tree (The Fionavar Tapestry, Book 1) by Guy Gavriel Kay.   First in a new trilogy from the bestselling author of Tigana. This finely textured tapestry tells of five young persons and their journey into a mystic realm.

The Wandering Fire (The Fionavar Tapestry, Book 2) by Guy Gavriel Kay.   The ice of eternal winter enshrouds Fionavar and frees the Unraveller, whose terrible vengeance takes its toll on mortals and immortals, mages and warriors, dwarves and the Children of Light. Only five people who were brought by a mage's power to Fionavar can hope to wake the allies they so desperately need.

The Darkest Road (The Fionavar Tapestry, Book 3)  by Guy Gavriel Kay.   The final volume of Kay's vast epic fantasy weaves together all the complex threads of the previous volumes, as the heroes of the first two stories--The Summer Tree and The Wandering Fire--unite to aid the armies of Light in the ultimate battle against evil.

Evidence by Jonathan Kellerman.  In the half-built skeleton of a monstrously vulgar mansion in one of L.A.’s toniest neighborhoods, a watchman stumbles on the bodies of a young couple–murdered in flagrante and left in a gruesome postmortem embrace. Though he’s cracked some of the city’s worst slayings, veteran homicide cop Milo Sturgis is still shocked at the grisly sight: a twisted crime that only Milo’s killer instincts–and psychologist Alex Delaware’s keen insights–can hope to solve.

The Mystery of Lewis Carroll by Jenny Woolf.  Lewis Carroll was brilliant, secretive and self contradictory. He reveled in double meanings and puzzles, in his fiction and his life. Jenny Woolf’s The Mystery of Lewis Carroll shines a new light on the creator of Alice In Wonderland and brings to life this fascinating, but sometimes exasperating human being whom some have tried to hide. Using rarely-seen and recently discovered sources, such as Carroll’s accounts ledger and unpublished correspondence with the “real” Alice’s family, Woolf sets Lewis Carroll firmly in the context of the English Victorian age and answers many intriguing questions about the man who wrote the Alice books.

In Pharoah's Army:  Memories of the Lost War by Tobias Wolff. In This Boy's Life Tobias Wolf created an unforgettable memoir of an American childhood. Now he gives us a precisely and sometimes pitilessly remembered account of his young manhood - a young manhood that become entangled in the tragic adventure that was Vietnam.