Monday, Monday . . .

I'm back from Thanksgiving upstate, and hope American visitors to this site had a great holiday.  I did not subject myself to the retail hell of "Black Friday," and in fact haven't yet purchased a single Christmas gift.  *twinge of anxiety*  I'll remedy that soon enough, but will end up doing most of it online.  

Over the past few days I finished Bill Bryson's At Home: A Short History of Private Life.  Not as laugh-out-funny as his travelogues, this was nonetheless an amusing collection of long essays, organized (albeit very loosely) around a tour of the former rectory in Norfolk in which he now lives.  He covers topics as disparate as Eli Whitney's invention of the cotton gin, the discovery of an Ice Age man in a glacier in the Italian Alps, the mice infesting his (Bryson's, not the ice age man's) study, Thomas Jefferson's construction of Monticello, and the intermarriage of the Darwin and Wedgewood families.    

I am now deep into An Impartial Witness, the second of Charles Todd's books featuring WW I-era nurse Bess Crawford.  A light but satisfying read.  I enjoyed Todd's previous series featuring a shell-shocked Inspector Rutledge, but these are a good change of pace.  ("Charles Todd" is actually the nom-de-plume of a mother-son writing team, and they seem to have worked out a winning formula....)  

Comments

[Martina]

My absolute favorite of Bill Bryson's work is In a Sunburned Country
http://www.amazon.com/Sunburned-Country-Bill-Bryson/dp/0767903862/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1291038662&sr=8-1
After my last trip down under, I vowed to recreate his train trip across that great land. Sadly, have not gotten round to it yet...
BTW, thanks very much for the Thanksgiving quote. I printed it and meant to read it to my family prior to tday dinner, but it was lost in the stampede to the table. My father, however, managed to single it out from a pile of recipes on my cluttered counter and quite enjoyed reading it. Much to my surprise, at the age of 73, he has decided to start reading blogs, so I sent him a link to yours...
Cheers,
Martina

[Karen]

Hi Martina: I liked that one as well -- I've never been to Australia but it's on my "someday" list. ("Someday" being when I'll have three consecutive weeks of vacation, which may be never. Grrr.) In any event, am delighted you enjoyed the Thanksgiving quote. I do hope your father "stops by." Best, Karen

[Margaret Powling]

I enjoyed the first Bess Crawford novel, but I actually prefer the novels (in the same style, i.e. detective fiction, WW1 to 1930s era) by Jacqueline Winspear, starting with Maisie Dobbs. If you like Bess then you will enjoy Maisie!

[Karen]

Hi Margaret -- I actually own a couple of the Maisie Dobbs books, but for some reason have never gotten around to reading them. (Buried too deep in the pile, I expect...) Thanks for stopping by.

[Audrey]

That echoes my feeling about the Bess Crawford series (light but satisfying)...the Inspector Rutledge ones are more imaginative, I think.

[Karen]

Hi Audrey: Exactly. Just absorbing enough for a good holiday read . . .