I’ve watched several of Lucy Worsley’s programs and always found them interesting. She also did a recent series on Agatha Christie which was fascinating because she covered so many details of her life.
Best wishes for the planning of your England/Scotland trip with the focus on Jane Austen. I have visited the Austen house at Chawton and loved it. I hope that you are planning to include it in your schedule.
Here’s a little teaser. This is the actual table on which Austen wrote her books.
Didn’t it give you a thrill to see where the redoubtable Jane wrote her wonderful books? Such a small desk for a huge talent!!
Our first trip, nearly 20 years ago, was my “Austen” holiday. My sometimes-saint-like husband, who became a reader in self-defense after meeting me[before audible books, I read to him on dates & road-trips} had to pull me out of the Chawton garden, when I seemed permanently stuck. Also when perched on a fence across from the building where she died while today’s Winchester schoolboys played cricket on the green.
Her rich brother Edward’s property, Chawton House, was being created into a centre for women authors at the time. Now it’s a research library for EARLY WOMEN WRITERS from 1600-1830 but there are tours!! I gotta see inside!! My poor husband can wait at the local pub, eat fish & chips which he loves.
He wants to go on an Ellis Peters tour(Brother Cadfael) in Wales but his relatives are Scots-an LDS relative gifted him a professionally-created genealogy that goes back to late 16th century! Plus we both got hooked on the series Shetland, not so much the plots as the scenery, so we’re gonna need some trade-offs..
So much fun to plan trips!!
So you did not get to go inside the Chawton House and were only in the garden? What a shame. 
. . I hope that you get there this time. On my first visit to Chawton I did not get to go inside either. The house/museum had closed for the day but my British friend/host stopped there and allowed me to walk around. We stood outside the window where Jane’s small table is located just inside and he explained the history and significance. On my next visit I told him that I wanted to actually go inside Chawton and that’s what we did.
Your planned trip sounds really great! I hope it all comes together for you. Here is another little peek inside.
I just finished Ransom by Australian novelist David Malouf; first book by this author that I have read but won’t be my last.
It is a short, simple book with themes taken from Book 24 of the Iliad, in which King Priam travels to the encampment of the besiegers to beg Achilles to return the body of Prince Hector.
The novel tells of the journey Priam makes from the high citadel of the city of Troy with the herald Idaeus driving a mule cart. It is much more than just the journey from Point A to Point B geographically. It is a journey through rage and sorrow to acceptance and peace.
Stunningly lyrical, imbued with grace and luminosity, this novel is a psychological tour-de-force through the emotions of both the aged Priam and the young Achilles, who already knows that he will die before reaching old age.
Highly recommended.
Currently, re-reading General John R. Galvin’s seminal work “Three Men of Boston,” which was one of the three hardback volumes that a particularly-gracious bookseller gifted me with back in the days when the ‘Secret Santa’ ASF (“Amazon Seller Forums”) threads were being administered w/o trouble by our well-missed friend PaintCreekBooks.
I continue to owe an unpayable debt to said giftor, our equally well-missed friend BookTropical.
A truly wonderful human being. Both gracious and generous. I enjoyed “chats” with her and we swapped books we thought the other would appreciate.
Back in the day, as a young mother; didn’t have a whole lot of time on my hands to relax/read, I used to read-and reread- historical romance. Was easy/quick reading. Mostly an author by the name of Patricia Veryan. She started writing about the same time as Marion Chesney(AKA M.C. Beaton, for her mystery writing).
Scouting, found a set of these series, both in HB and Mass market. Since I’m needing some comfort reading lately, tried to re-read my favorite title in MM. Can’t even get through it-it’s been 30-35 years since I last read it!. What a disappointment!
Males will say-well it’s a romance-but the titles are well researched; the characters well drawn/fairly believable. It’s restrained romance-lot of heavy breathing but not a bodice ripper.
Anyone ever have this problem when rereading a well-liked title?. .
I’m finding something similar with my reading tastes in general. When I closed my bricks and mortar store in 1999, I sold off what I could but packed up all the stuff I thought I’d like to read. Told hubby how much money we would save with me never having to buy another book! But of course favorite authors continue to write, new authors come along that catch the interest, old authors also mature in writing style and I rediscover them…Most of those boxes of books are still packed up. When I do dig into one, I end up donating almost half, as they no longer seem to appeal.
FYI: Today is Drop Everything and Read Day. 
I have this issue often.
The older I get and the more I read or watch, the less patience I have with tired tropes, lazy plot decisions, weak dialogue, internal inconsistencies…
But the good books/movies/shows just impress me that much more.
Not quite the same problem, but I encountered similar when reading an old Sci-Fi favorite, Heinlein’s “Door Into Summer”.
As a kid, it read as a book of time travel, with a few contradictions that in the end turned out to not be contradictions; fun story.
As an adult reading it, it was about a guy with a young niece (IIRC, about 8-10) who went into deep sleep so that when he awoke she was old enough for him to marry, YEECCHH!
Other stuff that simply doesn’t interest me as much. It happens.
Reading “How to Get Rich” by Maxim founder Felix Dennis - thoroughly refreshing in its plain spoken language and the highlight is he makes fun of self help manuals and pseudo psychology. In that sense he gets it. Just started it and so far I’m loving it.
“The inferior man’s reasons for hating knowledge are not hard to discern. He hates it because it is complex–because it puts an unbearable burden on his meager capacity for taking in ideas. Thus his search is always for short cuts. All superstitions are such short cuts. Their aim is to make the unintelligible simple, and even obvious.” - H.L. Mencken
I was in a writers’ online critique group for a while, a very short while because most of the writers were pretty bad. For one critique, all I could think of was, “Not a cliche left unturned.” However, my succinct evaluation didn’t meet the word minimum, so I had to pad it a bit. I hate genre-anything that reads like cut-and-paste.
I’m a sci-fi fan but after 1 book and 2 short stories, I vowed to never read Heinlein again. The smarmy sexism overshadowed everything else he might’ve said. I guess I missed that ode to pedophilia, “Door Into Summer”.
Same. I quit after Friday.
Yeah, that was pretty awful. Of course, the cover kinda gave it away without even having to read it.
I think that there are actually a few Heinlein books that do not have the overt sexism, nor the rabid military/violence of some of his other books, but I’m almost scared to re-read them and find myself wrong.
And while Number of the Beast was pretty bad (first page has the “hero” looking down the blouse of the woman he just met), that’s not even the worst part of it!
Thankfully I discovered Larry Niven in college, and Silverberg slightly later (although much of his work is VERY dark, so really have to be in the mood).
Still my all-time favorite author in the genre.
He had me at Known Space’s brooking dawn.
Have you read the “Fleet of Worlds” series that Niven co-wrote with Edward Lerner? Excellent series; first book of the series is largely the same stories as told in Neutron Star, and rest of series retells some other stories, but from the viewpoint of Nessus and/or other Puppeteers. Gives a totally new perspective to some of the stories; amazing that he can find a hook that was left open 50 years later.
I had figured out the best sequence to read these mixed with re-reading classics; but the only thing I remember is to re-read Neutron Star before reading the first book; IIRC, re-reading Ringworld is likely a good idea before reading the 3rd book.
BTW, I once had a cat that I got by walking out of my apartment and hearing her mewing. She had been thrown in the lake and couldn’t climb out; had I not gone outside at that time, never would have found her. Vet said she had also been shot with a BB gun and possibly run-over; but she survived it all. She was so lucky, I named her Teela.
The only work of his I’ve read is the Ringworld books, and they were pretty bad too (in the Heinlein way, not the bad writing way).
May I ask if you think so because of the Kzinti-Human relationship implied, or something else?
