Trollope! And the best thing is that each novel in the series is twice as thick as the previous one, so you're good to go for a long time. ? Isn't Barsetshire supposed to be Somerset? No, never mind.

Unfortunately I didn't bring my phone; since I can't get cellular service anyway, and anywhere we go involves lots of walking, I often leave the extra weight at home. But I assure you it was even more glorious than you imagine. I'm really enjoying my current Buchan, Witch Wood, which is a light, fun read, set in Scotland in the turbulent 1640s. However Buchan assumes his reader has a basic familiarity with the people and events of the Scottish and English Civil Wars, the Covenanter Rebellion, the theologies of the Episcopal Church of Scotland versus the Kirk, and the basics of Scots dialect. More accessible to Americans, and my favorite Buchan so far, is Penguin's collection The Strange Adventures of Mr Andrew Hawthorn & Other Stories. For his adventure novels, Middle Girl recommends the ones set in South Africa, but failed to provide me any titles. This morning I finished the collection of Elspeth Davie short stories, which I highly recommend (if one can find them in the US). I've had trouble finding women writers, so it's nice to add Davie and her fellow Edinburgher Muriel Spark to the list. Negin, I love the photos. Thanks for sharing them with us.

Of course we remember. ? Thank you for blessing us with your update.

Thanks for the notice, Sandy.

No books finished due to touristing with the family, homeschooling in the crevices, and trying to read too many books at once. Under way: Chaucer, Edinburgh writers Elspeth David and Muriel Spark, Hebridean poet Iain Crichton Smith, and local novelist John Buchan. Instead of reading today we went to some local Highland Games and watched burly men in kilts fling hammers, cabers, and weights around a grassy field while pipe bands shrilly competed and dozens of girls performed Highland dance for the tourists and the judges. Absolutely grand.

Yes! Barnardo's and Oxfam have been supplying me with suitcase ballast this week. Today's Oxfam haul: Elizabeth Grant of Rothiemurchus, Memoirs of a Highland Lady (2 vols.) British Poetry since 1945 (ed. Edward Lucie-Smith) Penguin Modern Poets #2 (Kingsley Amis, Dom Moraes, Peter Porter) Penguin Modern Poets #22 (John Fuller, Peter Levi, Adrian Mitchell) Enid Blyton, Kitty at St. Clare's That last one wasn't actually for me. There were a lot more Penguin Modern Poets but you can't just buy every book. Why does our Goodwill megastore at home never have anything I would ever want to read, and a tiny Oxfam shop in Dundee has more than I can in conscience buy?

So I’m told; haven’t watched it myself though.

This week I finished Heinrich von Kleist's The Marquise of O and Other Stories (my plane book), and Sir Compton Mackenzie's Monarch of the Glen. Kleist was an early 19th-century German writer who wrote very odd short stories and plays for about a decade and then killed himself. Compton Mackenzie was one of the founders of the Scottish National Party, and Monarch of the Glen, a farce set on a modern Highland chief's estate, features a little group of young men who bear a striking resemblance to his fellow founders of the SNP, one being an especially endearing caricature of the modern Scots poet Hugh MacDiarmid. There's a charming scene where a young Canadian-American, whose great-grandfather was cleared out of the Highlands and who is sure she has a psychic affinity to her ancestral cottage, is trying to speak Gaelic to the Scottish Nationalist poet, who is gamely trying to answer her in Gaelic out of nationalist principle, and they only make any progress because they both have the same Guide to Gaelic. Also have read a chunk of Chaucer -- my Kentish Middle English is better than my medieval Scots, I can tell you that -- and have read the General Prologue and Group A (the Knight's, Miller's, Reeve's, and Cook's Tales). But mostly I've hopped off the Sassenach routes of the BritTrip bus and am tooling around Caledonia for the next few weeks with Iain Crichton Smith, Elspeth Davie, Susan Edmonstone Ferrier, John Buchan, J. M. Barrie, David Lyndsay, Muriel Spark, Robert Henryson, and whoever else I can find lurking in the crevices of the Edinburgh bookshops. Psst to Robin: Aphra Behn, not Bean. I think Aphra Bean was Rowan Atkinson's sister.

I love that hedgehog quilt!

It is unthinkable that the internet could be wrong. ?

A quick googling indicates it’s set just after the First World War.

Early 20th-century exercise clothing: https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gymnasium_suit_1905-1915_DSCF2211.jpg

How many of us are there on this island, anyway?

A recurring working vacation in Scotland. (Don’t want to be too specfic as dh’s field is very small.) As renters we get limited borrowing privileges at the library.

Love the coloring map, Amy. Wish I’d thought of it. The disorientation of jet-lag didn’t prevent us from getting to the four most important spots in town today: the library, Tesco, the independent used bookshop, and the beach. Sun, sand, scones, and Scottish literature. Travel weariness is making the fluffy Compton Mackenzie farce Monarch of the Glen just the right speed (thank you librarian). At the bookshop I picked up a 1972 Penguin Modern Poets, vol. 21 featuring poets Iain Crichton Smith, Norman MacCaig, and George Mackay Brown. Middle Girl, confident after Chaucer, bought a volume of poetry in Middle Scots, which I think is the same as the ME Northumbrian dialect. Wee Girl got an old Puffin by James Reeves, The Cold Flame; and dh is reading a John “39 Steps” Buchan novel, Witch Wood, for his Scottish reading, which I think I may take when he’s done.

Dh, who went ahead of us, says he's already laid in a supply.

This week I finished The Anglo-Saxons, a survey of the relevant archeology for nonspecialists by David Wilson, from the old Pelican series of nonfiction paperbacks. All set for the British Museum, and the Sutton Hoo ship burial, which gets a chapter to itself, covers Suffolk for the BritTrip. Circumstance now requires skipping forward to Kent with Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, in my travel-sized Oxford edition. I'll resume the Ichnield Way in July and see if I can catch up to the bus. Also traveling with Graham Greene's England Made Me, as we seem to have two copies so one can be abandoned in Heathrow with impunity.

Was one of the movie references to Hitchcock's Rear Window?

RotN bored me the first time I read it. Then I had to teach it, and I liked it much more. Go figure.

For West Midlands, I plan to read Henry Green's 1929 novel Living, set in Birmingham. I read Green's Loving last year and look forward to reading more of his work. For Staffordshire, just about anything by Arnold Bennett would work. Maybe The Old Wives Tale,

Kathy, I'm sorry. My heart goes out to you and your family.

Congratulations to James, and to you, Robin!

Today I finished Graham Greene's autobiography A Sort of Life. My BritTrip bus is bypassing Buckinghamshire until it can return with R. L. Stevenson, and leaves Hertfordshire scarred by the image of the bored teenage Greene playing Russian roulette on Berkhamstead Common. This week we'll see if Essex and Suffolk can be read quickly before I have to take a BritTrip break for an actual Brit Trip. For Essex, Mary Elizabeth Braddon's Lady Audley's Secret, which has been on my TBR pile for a long time. Also I've started The Anglo-Saxons by David Wilson, an introduction to Anglo-Saxon archeology for non-specialists, which of course touches on all parts of England but especially the Sutton Hoo ship burial, conveniently located down the Ichnield Way in Suffolk. In a few weeks I hope to see the Sutton Hoo artifacts myself.

Finally, some books finished. At 950+ pages the longest book I've read this year, 46. Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur, the 1485 classic from the printing press of William Caxton. So that's the BritTrip bus through Hampshire -- Berkshire already covered by 44. Shakespeare's Merry Wives of Windsor -- my book for Buckinghamshire won't arrive until mid-July so that's going to be skipped for now -- and currently reading 47. Graham Greene's autobiography A Sort of Life, the childhood part of which was lived in Hertfordshire. With luck I'll finish that tonight and roll on to Essex with 48. Lady Audley's Secret. In-between the many jousts of Sirs Launcelot, Tristram, Galahad, Percival, etc., I re-read 45. Abp. Marcel Lefebvre's Open Letter to Confused Catholics, the manifesto of the traditionalist movement; unlikely to be of general interest.

I'm sorry to hear about your father-in-law, Kathy.