Library Loot

As the first quarter of 2022 came to a close I realized I haven’t been devoting much attention to my one of my favorite reading challenges. For the better part of a decade I’ve eagerly taken part in Rose City Reader’s European Reading Challenge. Each year I’ve read and reviewed at least a dozen, sometimes two dozen books with each one about, or set it a different European country, or by a different European author. Sadly, for this year’s iteration of the challenge I’ve read just two books: Andrey Kurkov’s  Ukraine Diaries: Dispatches From Kiev and Cristina García’s Here in Berlin. Feeling the need to step up my game, I dropped by the public library and grabbed a small stack of books, each applicable towards the challenge. 

Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted Claire from The Captive Reader and Sharlene from Real Life Reading to encourage bloggers to share the books they’ve checked out from the library. If you’d like to participate, just write-up your post, steal the Library Loot icon and link your post using the Mr. Linky on Claire’s blog.  

• A Terrible Country by Keith Gessen – I’ve been hankering to read some fiction set in Russia. Time Magazine called Gessen’s novel “hilarious” and essential reading for understanding today’s Russia. 
• A Hero of France by Alan Furst –  As far as historical fiction goes Furst’s Night Soldiers series of novels are my all-time faves. 
• The Hundred-Year Walk: An Armenian Odyssey by Dawn Anahid MacKeen – I’ve been wanting to read something on the Armenian Genocide for a long time. This book might count as Turkey towards the reading challenge. 
• Encounters and Destinies: A Farewell to Europe by Stefan Zweig – As I continue to read about Central Europe’s Interwar period, I keep coming across references to Zweig. Originally, I thought I’d start with some of his short stories but I found this recently published collection of essays hard to pass up. 

This weekend the rain has returned and believe it or not, we’re expected to experience colder temperatures and even snow flurries. With a forecast like that I think I’ll just hunker down and read a few good books. Maybe even one of these.