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?