books I like

Guilty pleasures
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Guilty pleasures

Until recently, it had been years since I immersed myself in a romance novel. Really, years. Maybe even decades. My taste in reading had turned more to history, biography, other non-fiction like books about gardening and bonsai. And then I discovered Philippa Gregory. I had seen the movie “The Other Boleyn Girl” and enjoyed it — I love Natalie Portman and Scarlett Johanssen. So when I saw a copy of the book on sale, 3 for the price of 2 at a chain bookstore, I took the bait. Bought that and two other Gregory novels. Can you say, hook, line and sinker? I’ve just finished another one — “The King’s Curse” — and you know what? I enjoyed the heck out of it! It made a nice break between “Wolf Hall” and “Bring Up the Bodies”, also on my bedside table.

I should have known. I went through a phase as a teenager when I ripped through books by authors like Victoria Holt. There is something so comforting about living vicariously through the travails of a fictional stranger.

Too Many To Choose Just One
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Too Many To Choose Just One

What was my favorite book as a child? I was such a bookworm that I couldn’t possibly pick just one. And I still own so many of the books that I loved as a child and teenager that now I qualify as a book hoarder. One of the greatest joys of parenting my own children was that I got to share my love of books — and my actual books — with them from the time they were infants. Sitting in a rocking chair with a baby or toddler in my arms, reading picture books to them, is a memory I deeply cherish. It only got better as they got older, when we took turns reading to them, and then they took turns reading to us. Oh, how we loved The Cat in the Hat, fairy tales, anything by Eric Carle! Maurice Sendak, Dr. Seuss, Richard Scarry, Little Golden Books, we sailed through them all. Continue reading →

The Water Babies
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The Water Babies

I need a copy of this book. A photographer/artist named Zena Holloway has retold and illustrated Charles Kingsley’s Victorian fairy tale, The Water Babies, with the most enchanting photographic images of children and other beings under water: Zena Holloway’s The Water Babies. Lovely! I grew up on Jessie Wilcox Smith’s illustrations, but these are magical.

You can see many of the book’s pages here: The Water Babies.

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Wensleydale

I’ve “challenged” myself to write about a “travel trinket” and associated memories. Here are my trinkets:

Piers Browne Books

Actually, only two belong to me: the top book, Wensleydale, and the third one down, Glorious Trees of Great Britain. They were written and illustrated by a Yorkshire-based artist named Piers Browne. My parents and I discovered him decades ago, when I was a twenty-something, tagging along with them on a trip to visit my mother’s family in England. I had been working at a very demanding job and they were worried about my stress levels, so they invited me to join them in Yorkshire, where my mother’s cousins lived. We stayed at a B&B run by the local pub, which meant that my parents stayed in one village home while I stayed in another, and we met up for breakfast at the pub. The home where I stayed had dozens of gorgeous limited edition etchings done by one Piers Browne. When my mother and I were admiring them, my hostess said that he lived nearby, that he sold his etchings out of his artist’s studio sometimes and that he didn’t mind visitors. So off we went, my middle-aged parents and I, to seek him out.

We drove through the beautiful rural Yorkshire Dales that are the subject of so many of his artworks, winding our way through remote lanes and up moors, until we reached his studio. And yes, he was there, and no, he didn’t mind visitors. We pored over his etchings and came away with a few, including one that my parents bought for me as a gift.

Fast forward twenty-five years. Continue reading →