20 Books of Summer – 2025

When Cathy of 746 Books announced last year that she would not be hosting 20 Books of Summer this year after ten successful years, Emma of Words and Peace and Annabel of AnnaBookBel both volunteered to take it on, so thank you to Cathy and to them and welcome to the Summer of 2025 with my choices:

The Summer Guests by Tess Gerritsen

In The Spy Coast, one of my favorite books of 2025 to date, Gerritsen introduced an appealing group of retirees, led by former spy, Maggie Bird. After years of restless traveling, trying to escape painful memories, Maggie wound up in Purity, Maine, where she had several friends from her CIA days. 

A Sunday in London - April 2025

On our Sunday in London, we got up early to attend Mass at my mother’s favorite church, St. Etheldreda. It is a small but beautiful Catholic church that dates from the 13th century. It is dedicated to Etheldreda, the Anglo-Saxon saint who founded the monastery at Ely in 673.

Keukenhof Gardens

On our final full day, the goal was tulips, which was our primary reason for the cruise. Keukenhof is one of the world’s largest flower gardens and consists of 80-acres of tulips, as well as many other flowers, including hyacinths, daffodils, lilies, roses, carnations and irises.

Amsterdam

The morning began with chocolate croissants, potatoes, bacon, and tea (wouldn't it be nice if these magically appeared at home about 7:30 every morning?), followed by an “enrichment talk” on Contemporary Netherlands from a local expert. There are so many cruise ships heading to Amsterdam that they are only allowed to dock for 48 hours, so the Amadeus was moored somewhere on the outskirts of the city (Ijmuiden?) and we took a bus to Oud-Zuid (Old-South), the Museum Quarter neighborhood, and parked in an underground garage, perhaps made for tour buses.  Everyone eagerly clambered onto four canal boats, each with its own guide. The day was chilly and initially gray so we were glad of the partial roof that could completely cover the boat if it began to rain.

Top Ten Tuesday: Books That Feature [Time] Travel

This week’s topic for Top Ten Tuesday (hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl) is “Books that feature travel”. I misread it as “time travel” and got interested, although I have not previously participated in this meme. When I realized my mistake, I had already come up with a list of ten time travel novels I read recently, so here you are:

Hoorn and Enkhuizen

On Sunday, we woke up in Enkhuizen, an old Dutch harbor town in the province of North Holland with a rich maritime history. We were scheduled to do a walking tour in historic Hoorn, named for its horn-shaped harbor, about 12 miles away, a very short bus ride. The town was founded about 1300 and became an important harbor town, trading with the Baltic and Flanders.

Delft

Our first difficult choice was on Saturday when we had been given the option of going to The Hague and the Mauritshuis Museum, historic Delft and a porcelain museum, or Gouda, the City of Cheese. All three seemed appealing and when I send in my feedback, I’m going to say I would recommend their removing Veere and figuring out a way to let the passengers do more than one of these tours.

Delft is sometimes called "Little Amsterdam"
because of its canals and historic houses

Spell the Month in Books - May

Spell the Month in Books is hosted by Reviews From the Stacks and occurs on or near the second Saturday of each month:

Veere

Friday’s destination was Veere.  After we left by bus for Bruges on Thursday morning, the Amadeus left Belgium and cruised to the Netherlands - specifically, Middelburg, where we rejoined the ship in the afternoon.  There was what is called a “Port Talk” before dinner where the cruise directors (we had four: Nani, Fiona, Carine, and Alan, who reminded me of Mr. O’Farrell in Betsy and the Great World) take turns telling us what is in store for the next day, what time we will leave, not to forget our red voice boxes (one day I accidentally unplugged them to use the hair dryer – I barely got them charged in time for our departure), etc.  Carine described Veere as a little paradise so many times I had to hide my smirk.  I am guessing it was simply the most convenient touristy place to dock between Middelburg and Delft but it was not without appeal.

15th century Town Hall

Bruges

In Dorothy Dunnett’s Niccolò series, the author of the Lymond Chronicles introduced a new hero, Nicholas vander Poele of Bruges, a dyer's apprentice who seems clueless at first but, over several books, connives his way to lead a mercantile empire. Dunnett is my mother’s favorite author so this was part of the impetus for our cruise, which included an excursion to Bruges (about the size of Maryland), in northwest Belgium.

On to Antwerp!

We got up at the ungodly hour of 5 am and walked two blocks over to the St. Pancras Eurostar International Station (the hardest part was getting our suitcases up the stairs at the hotel) and, within a surprisingly reasonable amount of time, we were comfortably seated on the train and on our way to Brussels! It took about two hours and we gained an hour in the process. There wasn’t much to see out the window and we had gone under the Channel so quickly, we barely had time to contemplate it. When we reached Brussels, we wheeled our suitcases up many escalators, admiring the design, and found our way to the local ticket office – so efficiently run – with several people helping travelers of many nationalities buy tickets from a machine. My helper even told me when the next train to Antwerp was and the platform. We found our way without difficulty and had about 20 minutes before our train appeared. It was about 45 minutes and as we couldn’t understand any of the announcements, we just hoped for the best and soon arrived (the gap was so extreme between train and platform, I was grateful to a fellow traveler who came back from his own luggage to help us get ours off the train).

Alas, we barely noticed the elegant station!

More London – April 2025

On Monday, it was time for us to remove to a new neighborhood so we took an Uber to the Princess Hotel near St. Pancras. This was not as nice as our previous venue but extremely well located, which is why I had chosen it. We took the Tube to Marylebone so I could show my mother the University of Westminster dorm that Southern Miss took over for my study abroad three years ago and we visited always-gorgeous Daunt Books, then had tea at a cafe on Paddington Street.

Six Degrees of Separation - from Rapture to My Life in France

It’s time for #6degrees, inspired by Kate at Books Are My Favourite and Best. We all start at the same place as other readers, add six books, and see where it ends up. This month’s starting point is Rapture by Emily Maguire.

London - April 2025

On the way to our riverboat cruise, my mother and I spent five April days in London and we managed to squeeze in quite a bit of sightseeing. After dropping our luggage at the Charlotte Guest House in West Hampstead (which kindly allowed us into our room at 11 am – it is amazing how much of a difference this makes when you have been on a plane since 8 pm the previous night, then on the Tube for what seems like several hours), we headed to the William Morris Gallery in Walthamstow, in northeast London.