New books!

My last couple of posts have been on the dark and depressing side, so I thought it was time for something more cheerful. And lo and behold, to assist me in having something cheerful to blog about, I got a box of books in the mail today! These are my most recent Zooba choices, which have to be mailed to a US address first, and are later sent on to me (in batches).

First, we have Night by Elie Wiesel. This is another Holocaust survivor story. I have read many, and I think they are important because of the insidious propaganda that the Holocaust never happened. The author won the Nobel Peace Prize for this book.




Next is another non-fiction book, The Book of Lost Books by Stuart Kelly. This is supposed to be a fun look at some of the "might have beens" in literature, as well a memorial to some things that were written and subsequently lost. I peeked into the beginning, and it seems the whole project got started because the author, from childhood, was a bit obsessive about having all the books in a series--be it the childish "Mr. Men" or Agatha Christie mysteries. When he realized that he could not have a complete collection of Greek plays because many of them had been lost, he turned his attention to tracking down other missing books.


And the only fiction in this lot is Digging to America by Anne Tyler. I have only read one other book by Anne Tyler, which I cannot recall at all. I read a good many reviews of this book last year, and I decided to read it because it involves international adoption, another one of those quirky subjects that I find interesting.
And with all these new books tempting me to read them, will I ever finish the current works in progress? Oh yes, by all means. I'm nearly finished with The Time of Green Ginger, and I will probably write about it one more time before putting it to rest. I thought the book was going to be interesting because of the historical aspect, but the deadly relevancy to current affairs caught me by surprise.

So, if you were me, would you dip into these new books, or would you resolutely pull out War and Peace and get the last 300 pages of that read? Finally.