Oxford: A Great Book Town!

Oxford is my favorite small city. Not only is it beautiful with its gardens, parks, medieval architecture, and river, but it's filled with books! I've been doing research in the Bodleian Library for a book proposal on early firearms, and I've been prowling the bookstores as well. My favorite store for new books is Blackwell, where I took advantage of their "3 for 2" deal to get three critically acclaimed contemporary novels for the price of two.

As a writer I read a lot, but I have a bit of a blind spot for contemporary literature, so I decided to correct that by picking up The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini, Children of the Revolution by Dinaw Mengestu, and The Road Home by Rose Tremain. The Kite Runner needs no introduction, being an international bestseller. Children of the Revolution is by an Ethiopian author and is about Ethiopia and the expat community in the US. Since we're planning a trip to Ethiopia, Almudena and I are both interested in this one. It won the Guardian First Book Award. The Road Home is this year's Orange Prize winner, and is currently at number six on the fiction charts here in the UK. I'm going to start with that one, because I have never actually read a bestseller while it was on the list. Shows my predeliction for older and obscure works, doesn't it?