Getting back to normal (or at least trying to…)

Because it hasn’t been very normal on the Ramblings lately, I’m afraid. While my scheduled posts were popping up during the week, I’ve been running around like a mad thing dealing with a few emergencies re the Aged Parents, involving emergency ops, finding a safe place for one AP, and kennelling their dog. It’s a good thing I wasn’t at work, really, but it wasn’t the Easter break I’d been anticipating… Fortunately things have settled a bit, and I can get a little reading in before the hols are over.

I *had* planned a little post over the Easter weekend which was to be titled “I love it when a book calls my name!” – because that’s what it felt like recently when I had quite a nice book haul. I had a few little arrivals from various sources and they went something like this:

“Roadside Picnic” by the brother Strugatsky came through the post – I’ve loved both the books of theirs that I’ve read so I figured it was about time I read their most famous work (and I did love Tarkovsky’s film “Stalker” that was based on this book).

Two lovely old books by Mark Aldanov, also through the post – inspired by the interesting post here, on the Russian Dinosaur blog – I love discovering new (old) Russian authors. And aren’t the covers lovely??

I wish I could remember where I heard about Mavis Gallant and this book of hers – but I can’t. However, it sounded lovely and I ordered a cheap copy online – the first version that arrived had the right dustjacket with completely the wrong book inside it… Fortunately, a replacement was forthcoming….

The rest of the books to follow were charity shop finds, and very nice ones too!

First up, a couple of Simenon titles in a nice old Book Club edition: “Maigret and the Millionaires” and “Maigret and the Gangsters” – which were perfect reading for recent stressful times.

This one I’m not too sure about, however. It sounded good from the blurb, so I risked 75p, but when I looked it up online, I read quite a few negatives about the quality of the writing and the lack of original content. I’m not sure if I should spend any time on it – has anyone read it, and have they any opinions??

Down in the Samaritans Book Cave, I spotted this:

I have Ratushinskaya’s memoir, but I didn’t know she’d done a novel too – and it should hopefully be right up my street! I scanned the rest of the shelves and didn’t spot anything, so was just about to go and pay a paltry 50p for the above, when I swear a book was calling to me…

Even though I’d checked out the fiction section, my eyes must have slid over this one without seeing it, because I’ve been looking for it for ages! And it must have known and called out to me, because something made me go back and check to see if it was there and it was! So a lovely few new books  have arrived, and I feel no guilt because there are four large boxes of books in the garage on their way out and more to follow. Now I just need to get my brain back into gear to do a little more reading…. 🙂