Musings on life, musings on love and loss. Touching and wise. Also fun stuff about Sarah Bernhardt and ballooning…

The joy of re-reading. It gets better and better. Oh how we love Mr. Collins. I like to travel with the little Collectors Library Edition, very thin paper and very light. Perfect for a plane.

Almost a what-if novel. The Yalta Conference revisited with a most surprising attendee. Churchill, Roosevelt, Stalin, all the big boys, with an attempted plot to assassinate Stalin. How he does all this beats me, but I find him effortless and a joy to read, even though Bernie Gunther is not in this one.

Booker Prize winner, rather fabulous and certainly deserved. It’s really a Victorian novel set in the New Zealand gold rush of 1866. We gradually learn just what went on from twelve witnesses to several incidents. Fascinating, and tender and informative and beautifully written, it seems impossible to believe that this is only her second novel. I read it throughout my stay in the UK.