The end of a very busy week ...

    I've travelled many miles this week by air and road, seen friends and family, and attended two very special events. My flights saw me reading a novel I can't talk about yet, and despite all the rushing around I did manage to finish Joan Bodger's lovely book when I was away, but other than that it has not been what you'd call a reading week at all (in fact, let's just change 'week' to 'month', as I've had other priorities).

    I did visit two places with literary connections, however, one being Salisbury Cathedral, used by William Golding (who taught at the neighbouring Bishop Wordsworth's School) as the inspiration for his novel The Spire, which I very much want to read; the other, Jane Austen's grave in Winchester Cathedral. I could barely get near the stone, such were the crowds around it ("were they waiting for something to happen?", asked Mr. C. who was elsewhere at the time), but I've paid homage of a sort in this the bicentennial year of Pride and Prejudice. (Click here for a much better photograph and more information about this and the other Austen memorials in the Cathedral.)

    Home again, and casting about for a book to start (in a state of some exhaustion) I picked up Tracy Chevalier's Girl With a Pearl Earring, and straightaway I knew that Griet's calm, soft voice, observant eye, and her unhurried narrative style were just what I needed.

    Have you read anything good this week?

Comments

[Audrey]

Have you read Jane's Fame, by Claire Harman? There are some great stories in it about how unknown she was in the decades after her death -- including one about a visitor to Winchester Cathedral asking what she was known for and the cathedral guide saying that he had no idea!

[Cornflower]

I have read the book, but I'd forgotten that story. Thanks for reminding me, Audrey!

[Anji]

I have just finished, this morning The Tree Bride by Bharati Mukherjee. It was about India and it was just delightful. I am not sure what I am going to pick up next from my tbr pile. Finally the sun is shining after weeks of rain and more rain, high rivers and floods, at least one must be thankful for the fact it's not snowing!! Have a great weekend.

[Cornflower]

You, too, Anji, and I'm glad the sun is shining for you.

[Martina]

Rain and more rain here. Constantly amazed and diverted by A M Homes May We Be Forgiven. Only drawn to it since it won the Women's Fiction Prize, not sure of the correct name since it's not the Orange prize anymore. Keenly observant spouse has noted that after an uncertain start with this I am quite caught up in it.

[Cornflower]

Coincidentally, a friend was talking about that book earlier this week and her response to it was much the same as yours, Martina. It sounds like one you wouldn't forget in a hurry.

[Geraldine]

Just finished Maya's Notebook by Isabel Allende. Her latest and it was a great read. She is the most amazing story teller.

[Cornflower]

She is indeed.

[Chris]

Still reading The Last Runaway and enjoying it immensely.

[Cornflower]

Great! I loved it too, Chris.

[Rebecca]

With vacation upon me, I've engaged in a riot of reading, especially enjoying The Poacher's Son, by Paul Doiron, a fast-paced, exciting mystery about a game warden in the back woods of Maine, and also The Supremes at Earl's All-You-Can-Eat by Edward Kelsey Moore, a very different but equally enjoyable novel about an African-American community in Indiana. The cold, rainy weather has offered no obstacle to lazy days of reading!