Top Ten Tuesday: Books for Armchair Travelers

Welcome to this week's edition of Top Ten Tuesday which is hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. This week's theme is Books for Armchair Travelers.  I am often reminded of a favorite quote that was on the wall in my first grade classroom:

There is no Frigate like a Book to take us Lands away. . .

February 2025 Reading

Although February is a short month, there were some outstanding reads, especially The King’s Messenger, Slow Bomb at Dimperley, and The Spy Coast - links to those reviews are below.

Historical Fiction

Slow Bomb at Dimperley by Lissa Evans (2024). A soldier returning to his ancestral home after WWII finds new responsibilities and little in the way of practical help from his family as he copes with death duties and ennui in this amusing story. My review.

My May 2023 Reads

The biggest treat this month was the new Jane Casey book about Maeve Kerrigan, The Close, straight from London as my sisters and I could not wait for its US publication. I also really enjoyed The Bullet That Missed by Richard Osman, the third Thursday Murder Club book, and Lying Beside You by Michael Robotham. June will be a slower reading month due to three short trips and Middlemarch. Hmm, I guess it is no coincidence that all four books have British settings; I am nothing if not consistent.

WWW Wednesday – April 26, 2023

WWW Wednesday is hosted by Taking on a World of Words.

Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?
What did you recently finish reading?
What do you think you’ll read next?

Currently Reading

I just started Fallen by Linda Castillo, the 13th book in her Kate Burkholder series.

WWW Wednesday: October 28, 2020

WWW Wednesday is run by Taking on a World of Words.

The Three Ws are:

What are you currently reading?

What did you recently finish reading?

What do you think you’ll read next?

Six Degrees of Separation: From The Road to 84 Charing Cross Road

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 one ends up.   This month’s starting point is The Road by Cormac McCarthy: “his most harrowing yet deeply personal work. Some unnamed catastrophe has scourged the world to a burnt-out cinder, inhabited by the last remnants of mankind and a very few surviving dogs and fungi” (author website).   I have read at least one book by McCarthy but this sounded way too much like real life!

My first book involves more cheerful roads: The Road to Oz by L. Frank Baum (1909).  In this fifth Oz book, Dorothy and Toto (back in Kansas) meet the Shaggy Man, who asks them to point out the road to Butterfield.  When the road splits into seven different paths, they take the seventh and have various adventures before arriving in Oz.  Of course, nowadays Aunt Em would be very concerned about Dorothy talking to a stranger who looks like a tramp, let alone heading off into the sunset with him!  My great-grandfather read the first fourteen Oz books to his children and I believe our copy of this book was the first edition.