Library Book Haul

I went to the library the other day and checked out a lot of graphic novels and a few books.  I thought I would share what I got with you because WOO BOOK HAULS! and it will give you an idea of some of the things I may be reviewing soon.  I apologize that some of these editions are not the same ones I have, but for some reason they don't all show up on Goodreads.  So anyway, here we go!

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

This is actually a reread for me.  I read it years ago and really liked it, but I'm in the situation where I don't remember a whole lot about what happens.  I saw it on the shelf and decided to pick it up and give it another go.

Goodreads Summary (link): Sylvia Plath's shocking, realistic, and intensely emotional novel about a woman falling into the grip of insanity.

Esther Greenwood is brilliant, beautiful, enormously talented, and successful, but slowly going under—maybe for the last time. In her acclaimed and enduring masterwork, Sylvia Plath brilliantly draws the reader into Esther's breakdown with such intensity that her insanity becomes palpably real, even rational—as accessible an experience as going to the movies. A deep penetration into the darkest and most harrowing corners of the human psyche, The Bell Jar is an extraordinary accomplishment and a haunting American classic.

The Hangman's Daughter: The Hangman's Daughter Book I by Oliver Potzsch

The Dark Monk: The Hangman's Daughter Book II by Oliver Potzsch

I was walking through the grocery store book section one day and I came across the third book in this series called The Beggar King and fell in love with the cover immediately.  I didn't realize at first that it was the third in a series, so when I picked it up and brought it home I was very disappointed that I would have to wait to read it.  I finally looked for the first two at the library and hope the series is as good as I think it will be.  Tell me if you have read this one and what you thought.

Goodreads Summary (link #1) (link #2):  #1 - Germany, 1660: When a dying boy is pulled from the river with a mark crudely tattooed on his shoulder, hangman Jakob Kuisl is called upon to investigate whether witchcraft is at play. So begins The Hangman's Daughter--the chillingly detailed, fast-paced historical thriller from German television screenwriter, Oliver Pötzsch--a descendent of the Kuisls, a famous Bavarian executioner clan.

#2 -  1660: Winter has settled thick over a sleepy village in the Bavarian Alps, ensuring every farmer and servant is indoors the night a parish priest discovers he's been poisoned. As numbness creeps up his body, he summons the last of his strength to scratch a cryptic sign in the frost.

Following a trail of riddles, hangman Jakob Kuisl; his headstrong daughter Magdalena; and the town physician’s son team up with the priest’s aristocratic sister to investigate. What they uncover will lead them back to the Crusades, unlocking a troubled history of internal church politics and sending them on a chase for a treasure of the Knights Templar.

But they’re not the only ones after the legendary fortune. A team of dangerous and mysterious monks is always close behind, tracking their every move, speaking Latin in the shadows, giving off a strange, intoxicating scent. And to throw the hangman off their trail, they have ensured he is tasked with capturing a band of thieves roving the countryside attacking solitary travelers and spreading panic.

Delivering on the promise of the international bestseller The Hangman’s Daughter, once again based on prodigious historical research into Pötzsch’s  family tree, The Dark Monk takes us on a whirlwind tour through the occult hiding places of Bavaria’s ancient monasteries, bringing to life an unforgettable compassionate hangman and his tenacious daughter, painting a robust tableau of a seventeenth-century Bavaria still negotiating the lasting impacts of war, and quickening our pulses with a gripping, mesmerizing mystery.

Maus Vol. I by Art Spiegelman

Maus Vol. II by Art Spiegelman

I have to admit that I am not much of a graphic novel reader, but there are a select few that I have seen that seem really interesting so I am willing to pick them up.  Maus Vol. I and II are two such graphic novels.  I have always been interested in World War II and everything about these books interests me.  I love that the Jews are depicted as mice and the Nazis are depicted as cats while other races are depicted as other animals.  I think it gives a nice depth and explanation to the story that wouldn't be there otherwise.  What is harder to understand than the concept of the cat and mouse dynamic?  Another thing that interests me is the fact that it is the true story from the arist and author's father.  The fact that all of this crazy stuff actually happened catches my attention outright.  Not in that I find it amazing or anything.  The horror is what gets me, for some reason.

Goodreads Summary (link #1) (link #2): #1 - A story of a Jewish survivor of Hitler's Europe and his son, a cartoonist who tries to come to terms with his father's story and history itself.

#2 - Acclaimed as a quiet triumph and a brutally moving work of art, the first volume of Art Spieglman's Maus introduced readers to Vladek Spiegleman, a Jewish survivor of Hitler's Europe, and his son, a cartoonist trying to come to terms with his father, his father's terrifying story, and History itself. Its form, the cartoon (the Nazis are cats, the Jews mice), succeeds perfectly in shocking us out of any lingering sense of familiararity with the events described, approaching, as it does, the unspeakable through the diminutive.

This second volume, subtitled And Here My Troubles Began, moves us from the barracks of Auschwitz to the bungalows of the Catskills. Genuinely tragic and comic by turns, it attains a complexity of theme and a precision of thought new to comics and rare in any medium. Maus ties together two powerful stories: Vladek's harrowing tale of survival against all odds, delineating the paradox of daily life in the death camps, and the author's account of his tortured relationship with his aging father. At every level this is the ultimate survivor's tale - and that too of the children who somehow survive even the survivors.

Locke & Key Vol. I by Joe Hill

Locke & Key Vol. II by Joe Hill

Locke & Key Vol. III by Joe Hill

Locke & Key Vol. IV by Joe Hill

Locke & Key Vol. V by Joe Hill

 I have to admit that I don't know much about these books.  I know that the covers drew me in mostly.  I have heard about it through others talking about them, but I didn't pay them much attention until I saw them at the library and picked them up.  Now I am really excited to delve into them.

Goodreads Summary (link #1) (link #2) (link #3) (link #4) (link #5): #1 - Locke & Key tells of Keyhouse, an unlikely New England mansion, with fantastic doors that transform all who dare to walk through them. Home to a hate-filled and relentless creature that will not rest until it forces open the most terrible door of them all... 

#2 - Following a shocking death that dredges up memories of their father's murder, Kinsey and Tyler Locke are thrown into choppy emotional waters, and turn to their new friend, Zack Wells, for support, little suspecting Zack's dark secret. Meanwhile, six-year-old Bode Locke tries to puzzle out the secret of the head key, and Uncle Duncan is jarred into the past by a disturbingly familiar face. Open your mind - the head games are just getting started.

#3 - The dead plot against the living, the darkness closes in on Keyhouse, and a woman is shattered beyond repair, in the third storyline of the Eisner-nominated series, Locke & Key! Dodge continues his relentless quest to find the key to the black door, and raises an army of shadows to wipe out anyone who might get in his way. Surrounded and outnumbered, the Locke children find themselves fighting a desperate battle, all alone, in a world where the night itself has become their enemy.

#4 - Joe Hill and Gabriel Rodriguez's Locke & Key unwinds into its fourth volume in Keys to the Kingdom. With more keys making themselves known, and the depths of the Locke family's mystery ever-expanding, Dodge's desperation to end his shadowy quest drives the inhabitants of Keyhouse ever closer to a revealing conclusion. 

#5 - Colonel Adam Crais's minutemen are literally trapped between a rock and a hard place; in the first days of the Revolutionary War, they find themselves hiding beneath 120 feet of New England stone, with a full regiment of redcoats waiting for them in the daylight... and a door into hell in the cavern below. The black door is open, and it's up to a 16-year-old smith named Ben Locke to find a way to close it. The biggest mysteries of the Locke & Key series are resolved as Clockworks opens, not with a bang, but with the thunderous crash of English cannons.