Library Loot (21 October 2009)

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.


I managed to stick (somewhat) to my list today (yay!), except for the impulse borrows of the J.G. Ballard collection and the Jack of Fables collection (once again, I'm still waiting on my next installment of Fables to be returned to the library by some errant borrower).
(Note: The links are to Amazon. I am an Amazon Associate)

A Pale View of Hills - Kazuo Ishiguro 
Need to read more Ishiguro!

The story of Etsuko, a Japanese woman now living alone in England, dwelling on the recent suicide of her daughter. In a story where past and present confuse, she relives scenes of Japan's devastation in the wake of World War II.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - Philip K. Dick (SciFi Challenge)
Blade Runner's on the Netflix queue

San Francisco lies under a cloud of radioactive dust. People live in half-deserted apartment buildings, and keep electric animals as pets because so many real animals have died. Most people emigrate to Mars - unless they have a job to do on Earth. Like Rick Deckard - android killer for the police and owner of an electric sheep. This week he has to find, identify, and kill six androids which have escaped from Mars. They're machines, but they look and sound and think like humans - clever, dangerous humans. They will be hard to kill. The film Blade Runner was based on this famous novel.

The Complete Stories of J. G. Ballard - J. G. Ballard
Woohoo! I've been wanting to read this one!

Never before published in its entirety in America, with many stories new to American readers, The Complete Stories of J. G. Ballard is a monumental achievement by one of our greatest literary geniuses. Featuring such classics as “Prima Belladonna,” “The Drowned Giant,” and “The Assassination of John Fitzgerald Kennedy Considered as a Downhill Motor Race,” the book evokes Poe and Kafka, Borges and Bradbury in its astonishing ability to render psychosis and modern paranoia in phantasmagorical detail on the printed page.

Jack of Fables 1: The (Nearly) Great Escape - Matthew Sturges and Bill Willingham

Stepping out of Bill Willingham's acclaimed Vertigo series Fables, the charming and insufferable Jack of Tales is the center of attention once again, this time in his very own ongoing title. In this first collection, Jack is thrown into a prison-like "retirement" community for wayward Fables, where he discovers a sinister plot to eliminate all traces of magic from the Mundane World.

Written by Willingham and Matthew Sturges, The (Nearly) Great Escape features art by Tony Akins and Andrew Pepoy as well as painted covers by James Jean and a special sketchbook section by Akins.

Jack of Fables Vol. 2: Jack of Hearts - Matthew Sturges and Bill Willingham

In this volume collecting issues #6-11, Jack reveals the secret of his former relationship with the illustrious Snow Queen — when he took her powers and became known as Jack Frost. And in present times, he lands in Las Vegas and meets his lovely new bride, a directionless heiress. Could it possibly be "happily ever after" at last?

In Other Rooms, Other Wonders - Daniyal Mueenuddin
Recently shortlisted for the National Book Awards

Passing from the mannered drawing rooms of Pakistan’s cities to the harsh mud villages beyond, Daniyal Mueenuddin’s linked stories describe the interwoven lives of an aging feudal landowner, his servants and managers, and his extended family, industrialists who have lost touch with the land. In the spirit of Joyce’s Dubliners and Turgenev’s A Sportsman’s Sketches, these stories comprehensively illuminate a world, describing members of parliament and farm workers, Islamabad society girls and desperate servant women. A hard-driven politician at the height of his powers falls critically ill and seeks to perpetuate his legacy; a girl from a declining Lahori family becomes a wealthy relative’s mistress, thinking there will be no cost; an electrician confronts a violent assailant in order to protect his most valuable possession; a maidservant who advances herself through sexual favors unexpectedly falls in love.

Together the stories in In Other Rooms, Other Wonders make up a vivid portrait of feudal Pakistan, describing the advantages and constraints of social station, the dissolution of old ways, and the shock of change. Refined, sensuous, by turn humorous, elegiac, and tragic, Mueenuddin evokes the complexities of the Pakistani feudal order as it is undermined and transformed.

Have you read any of these books? What did you think of them? 

See more Library Loot here.