In mailbox (13): Library edition

 In My Mailbox idea from Kristi @ The Story Siren. All links go to The Book Depository (except for one).

I constantly nag about being jealous of other people having such great libraries with so many new books in them, and complaining about my own local library so I thought I should pay it a visit to see if I was right or not. My local library is rather small, more of a branch of a larger library about 20 or so kilometers (or 12,4 miles) away, so well, my expectations were somewhat low: So here's IMM: Library edition.

From the library: 

Själakistan by Ann Rosman

First up is a Swedish novel by an author called Ann Rosman. The name of her novel roughly translates to "Coffin of souls" and is a crime story. I've read her debut, again freely translated, "The daughter of the lighthouse keeper", which I found exciting enough. In Sweden, summer time is crime story time. The good people of Sweden are crazy about their crime writers, especially their female ones although some men have become rather successful writing crime stories as well, such as Stieg Larsson. So why crime and summer? It's basically because the Swedes read in their holiday when they have time, and they usually have holiday in the summer. Thus summer equals crime.

De utvalda: tankeläsaren (original title: Graceling) by Kristin Cashore

Another book that I came across in the library was this Swedish translation of Kristin Cashore's Graceling. I've been looking at it before, the English version that is, so when I found it I decided to grab it.

Om jag stannar (original title: If I Stay) by Gayle Forman

När jag lät dig gå (original title: Where She Went) by Gale Forman

They had "Where she went", only the Swedish translation of it, on display in the youth section (uHce) of the library and I recognized the name of the author. When I also found "If I stay" on the actual shelf I decided to grab them both. After all, I have read good things about these novels in the blogosphere.

So, what's the verdict? Well, it wasn't a great selection, but not too shabby either. Just sad that I've now got a considerable proportion of my library's all newly published YA books at home right now.

There is one thing that I don't like about library books - the binding. What usually makes me want to read a book is either a darn great review or a wicked cover. And a cover does not only consist of the front cover but also the spine. I get that the library bindings are there to help protect the books, but it destroys so much of their appeal. When I was little and spent a lot of time in the library I almost always chose books with their original spines still intact, because they looked more interesting to me. Just compare the purple spine to the others; isn't it a lot more appealing?