Library Loot is a weekly event co-hosted by Claire from The Captive Reader and Sharlene from Real Life Reading 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.

 

It’s 24in48 this weekend! I picked up lots of comics and graphic novels during my one kids-free hour in the library this week! I got to wander the comics shelves, which are upstairs in the adult nonfiction and which I don’t always bring the kids to as it tends to be a much quieter place than downstairs. And found lots of great comics.

Let us know what you got from your library this week!

Here’s my loot!

Naming Monsters – Hannah Eaton

I hadn’t heard of this book before I found it on the shelves but it sounds fascinating.

The year is 1993, as we join Fran on a wild ride around London while she navigates the grief of losing her mother. Tales of strange creatures that might have been introduced at each stage of her journey. Her adventure, often with best friend Alex in tow, is a pyschogeography of the city and its suburbs, punctuated by encounters with Fran’s semi-estranged dad, her out-of-touch East End nana, a selfish boyfriend, and the odd black dog or two.

As Fran says herself: monsters are all around us.

 

Likely Stories – Neil Gaiman, Mark Buckingham, Chris Blythe (Illustrator)
From New York Times best-selling author Neil Gaiman and Eisner-award winning creator Mark Buckingham comes a graphic novel anthology of four essential fantasy stories.

These dark and imaginative tales feature an odd and subtly linked world of bizarre venereal diseases, a creepy old woman who feasts on raw meat, a man obsessed with a skin model from a magazine, and a story within a story about ghosts.

Roughneck – Jeff Lemire

I really like Lemire’s work!

From the New York Times bestselling author and award-winning creator of Essex County, Secret Path, Descender, and The Underwater Welder comes an all-original graphic novel about a brother and sister who must come together after years apart to face the disturbing history that has cursed their family.

Derek Ouelette’s glory days are behind him. His hockey career ended a decade earlier in a violent incident on ice, and since then he’s been living off his reputation in the remote northern community where he grew up, drinking too much and fighting anyone who crosses him. But he never counts on his long-lost sister, Beth, showing up one day out of the blue, back in town and on the run from an abusive boyfriend. Looking to hide out for a while, the two siblings hunker down in a secluded hunting camp deep in the local woods. It is there that they attempt to find a way to reconnect with each other and the painful secrets of their past…even as Beth’s ex draws closer, threatening to pull both Derek and Beth back into a world of self-destruction that they are fighting tooth and nail to leave behind.

 

Master Keaton Vol 5 – Naoki Urasawa, Takashi Nagasaki

I’ve enjoyed the previous 4 books in this series! Lots of fun!

Taichi Hiraga-Keaton, the son of a Japanese zoologist and an English noblewoman, is an insurance investigator known for his successful and unorthodox methods of investigation. Educated in archaeology and a former member of the SAS, Master Keaton uses his knowledge and combat training to uncover buried secrets, thwart would-be villains, and pursue the truth

T!m G!nger – Julian Hanshaw

A random pick!

The prize-winning British cartoonist Julian Hanshaw makes his American debut with the rich and meditative story of Tim Ginger. Once a government test pilot, now a widow, Tim enjoys a quiet retirement in New Mexico… until a conspiracy theorist starts asking uncomfortable questions, and the haunting reappearance of an old friend provokes some hard choices about when to let go and when to hold on.

Crossplay – Niki Smith

Another new-to-me author

Close friends and new acquaintances at an anime convention confront their crushes, challenge their hang-ups, and question their once-comfortable identities in this erotic graphic novel about discovering who you’re meant to truly be and who you’re meant to love. The debut graphic novel of creator Niki Smith, cartoonist and Smut Peddler contributor.

Three Trees Make a Forest – Enrico Casarosa, Ronnie Del Carmen, Tadahiro Uesugi

The three artists featured in Three Trees Make a Forest are professional illustrators with a penchant for travel and ambitious side projects in books and Comics. Ronnie Del Carmen is a story artist, character designer and illustrator at Pixar Animation Studios in California. Del Carmen has also worked in comics with DC and Dark Horse. Tadahiro Uesugi is a world renowned illustrator, based in Japan who creates intuitive drawings of landscapes, characters and urban scenery, all with an amazing sense of color and texture. Enrico Casarosa is also a story artist at Pixar and is the founder of Sketch Crawl, a worldwide marathon sketching event. Most of the work found in Three Trees Make a Forest was originally created for an exhibition of the same name at Nucleus Gallery in Alhambra, CA.

No Fond Return of Love – Barbara Pym

Been ages since I’ve read Pym!

Dulcie Mainwaring, the heroine of the book, is one of those excellent women who is always helping others and never looking out for herself- especially in the realms of love. The novel has a delicate tangle of schemes and unfulfilled dreams, hidden secrets and a castle or two. Told wonderfully in the deadpan honesty that has become a Pym hallmark, this book is a delight.

Fifth Chinese Daughter – Jade Snow Wong

I picked this up for the Back to the Classics challenge

Originally published in 1945 and now reissued with a new introduction by the author, Jade Snow Wong’s story is one of struggle and achievements. These memoirs of the author’s first twenty-four years are thoughtful, informative, and highly entertaining. They not only portray a young woman and her unique family in San Francisco’s Chinatown, but they are rich in the details that light up a world within the world of America. The third-person singular style is rooted in Chinese literary form, reflecting cultural disregard for the individual, yet Jad Snow Wong’s story also is typically American.

We first meet Jade Snow Wong the child, narrowly confined by the family and factory life, bound to respect and obey her elders while shouldering responsibility for younger brothers and sisters – a solemn child well versed in the proper order of things, who knew that punishment was sure for any infraction of etiquette. Then the schoolgirl caught in confusion between the rigid teaching of her ancestors and the strange ways of her foreign classmates. After that the college student feeling her was toward personal identity in the face of parental indifference or outright opposition. And finally the artist whose early triumphs were doubled by the knowledge that she had at long last won recognition from her family.

The Sealed Letter – Emma Donoghue

I picked this up for several challenges I’m working on! It fits the Lambda Literary Award winner category for the Reading Women Challenge, the “Irish author” category for the Litsy challenge,

Miss Emily “Fido” Faithfull is a “woman of business” and a spinster pioneer in the British women’s movement, independent of mind but naively trusting of heart. Distracted from her cause by the sudden return of her once-dear friend, the unhappily wed Helen Codrington, Fido is swept up in the intimate details of Helen’s failing marriage and obsessive affair with a young army officer. What begins as a loyal effort to help a friend explodes into a courtroom drama that rivals the Clinton affair –complete with stained clothing, accusations of adultery, counterclaims of rape, and a mysterious letter that could destroy more than one life.

Based on a scandalous divorce case that gripped England in 1864, The Sealed Letter is a riveting, provocative drama of friends, lovers, and divorce, Victorian style.

And PHEW that is it for my loot! That was quite a haul for me this week!

Kids’ loot this week:

What did you get from your library this week?