Marg is coordinating Library Loot this week.
I’m still trying to be being strict, and just three books came home this week:
The Housekeeper and the Professor by Yoko Ogawa
“He is a brilliant maths professor with a peculiar problem – ever since a traumatic head injury some seventeen years ago, he has lived with only eighty minutes of short-term memory. She is a sensitive but astute young housekeeper with a ten-year-old son, who is entrusted to take care of him. Each morning, as the Professor and the Housekeeper are reintroduced to one another, a strange, beautiful relationship blossoms between them. The Professor may not remember what he had for breakfast, but his mind is still alive with elegant equations from the past.He devises clever maths riddles – based on her shoe size or her birthday – and the numbers, in all of their articulate order, reveal a sheltering and poetic world to both the Housekeeper and her little boy. With each new equation, the three lost souls forge an affection more mysterious than imaginary numbers, and a bond that runs deeper than memory.”
Last time I checked the library catalogue there wasn’t a copy in the county. But then a shiny new copy appeared before me. I didn’t hesitate!
“A rich collection of specially commissioned work, featuring some of Britain’s leading poets and scholars, Chatter of Choughs intertwines poetry, prose and illustrations with ornithological accounts of the chough’s recent fortunes in Cornwall and further afield.”
I like to have a book to hand that I can dip in and out of, and this one looks particularly lovely.
The Haunting of Hilll House by Shirley Jackson
“Four seekers have arrived at the rambling old pile known as Hill House: Dr. Montague, an occult scholar looking for solid evidence of psychic phenomena; Theodora, his lovely and lighthearted assistant; Luke, the adventurous future inheritor of the estate; and Eleanor, a friendless, fragile young woman with a dark past. As they begin to cope with chilling, even horrifying occurrences beyond their control or understanding, they cannot possibly know what lies ahead.
Another book on the new book shelf that I just had to pick up!
Have you read any of these? What did you think? Which book should I go for next? And which are you curious to know more about?
And what did you find in the library this week?
Fleur in her World 
Oh the last one sounds like a great book for this time of year!
It certainly does! I think Penguin timed their reissue perfectly and I was lucky to pick this up on the day it first appeared in the library.
Oh I adored the Yoko Ogawa and the Shirley Jackson books! Hill House was delightfully creepy and unexpectedly funny. The Housekeeper was a little odd but intriguingly so (if that makes sense). Happy reading!
I really want to read The Housekeeper and the Professor. Can’t wait for your review!
Excellent choices! I really want to read The Housekeeper and The Professor, and have Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle on the top of my tbr pile. Will be looking forward to your thoughts on these…
I was just introduced to the Housekeeper and the Professor and it truly intrigued me. I look forward to reading your review.
Housekeeper and the Professor is on my Japanese Lit III Challenge list! I enjoyed The Haunting of HIll House, although I love We Have ALways Lived in the Castle the most!
I had to return The Housekeeper and The Professor unread to the library earlier this year so I am intrigued to hear more about that (I do intend to re-borrow it at some point).
I am planning on reading The Haunting of Hill House on Hallowe’en.
Housekeeper and the Professor looked interesting, I’ll put it in my TBR. You are very disciplined. The last time I did my library loot, I came back with 6 books! (How greedy of me!)
I checked yesterday and there were no copies of The Housekeeper and The Professor in my library – I hope one turns up soon!
The Haunting of Hill House should be an excellent read with Halloween coming up. I brought home The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie, Among the Mad,The Bronte Myth and a Williams-Sonoma Christmas cookbook to get inspired. I’m seriously in denial about how much spare time I have.
The Housekeeper and the Professor is at the top of my pile for the read-a-thon on Saturday!
Enjoy your loot!