Adventures in Reading

Readers may be interested in the following books which have been added to stock at Galway City Library

Twilight of Love: Travels with Turgenev, by Robert Dessaix, Picador
A writer searches out the significant sites in the life of Ivan Turgenev and ponders love, obsession, creation and literary celebrity. This is an enchanting memoir of a search for the soul of Russian writer Turgenev. Feeling the urge to know his old friend better, Dessaix set out to visit Turgenev's various homes in Germany, France and Russia. Dessaix was perplexed by the writer's love life; his passion for married opera singer Pauline Viardot led him into a lifelong triangle with her and her husband. Simply, gracefully and wisely written, saturated with the sorrows and joys of years.

Emily Dickinson's Gardens: A Celebration of a Poet and Gardener, by Marta McDowell, McGraw Hill
Welcome to Emily Dickinson's gardening year. Following the seasons around the calendar--from the first buds of spring to winter's last days--this unique volume invites you to accompany the poet on her solitary wildflower excursions through the fields of old Amherst; and, best of all, take a stroll along the flagstone paths of her exquisite Victorian gardens. This is the "brighter garden" that Emily Dickinson created and nurtured at her home in Amherst, and it's all here for you to enjoy and re-create in your own backyard.

The Second Sex, by Simone de Beauvoir, Vintage
Last week marked the centenary of the birth of Simone de Beauvoir. An accomplished novelist, Beauvoir won the Prix Goncourt for The Mandarins in 1954. Yet on her 100th anniversary, it is to The Second Sex, her epochal essay from 1949 on the oppression of women, that we should return. Ever since it was published, The Second Sex has provoked intense responses. In the years before the women's movement, The Second Sex was a source of inspiration and insight for countless women. "It changed my life!" is a refrain one often hears. The Second Sex is a wonderfully energetic book. (Guardian).