Voices in Summer by Rosamunde Pilcher My rating: 2 of 5 stars The Gist After I finished Another View by Pilcher I was ready to dive into another one of her books. It is a bit difficult to find a good, reliable listing of her publications, the year of publication and a synopsis that isn’t misleading. It took me a bit of time, but I finally settled on Voices in Summer based on the little book blurb I found. The Details Sadly, I found the synopsis for this story very misleading, which impacted my opinion of the story while I was reading it. I kept waiting for the thing to…
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Another View
Another View by Rosamunde Pilcher My rating: 4 of 5 stars The Gist Back in the mid-90’s the German public television broadcasting channel ZDF began producing movies based on Pilcher’s stories, novels and short stories. Even before these began to air I was aware of Pilcher’s works, since my mom loved them. So, in a sense I sort of grew up with Pilcher, yet I never read a book of hers until now. I remember a few years ago I attempted The Shell Seekers, I believe, but I had a lot on my plate back then and the sheer size of the book had me intimidated. To ease myself into…
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Travelogue of a Research Trip – Jane Austen’s England
2nd April 2019, 4:03am I found pizza in my bed! It was the morning after our return from London and, because of my internal clock still ticking on UK time, I woke up at 4am in desperate need to pee. I pulled the blanket aside and could see in the faint light of the pre-dawn morning that there was something in my bed. It had the size of my thumb nail and my first thought was that it was some sort of mutant bug. I picked it up; it was cold and squishy. In the bathroom light I could clearly identify it as a small piece of pizza covered in…
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Entry 07 – London, cont’d
Another cigar shop and finally pizza. We didn’t find the cigar shop we went looking for, but found a different one. The sale’s person was a man in his 30’s and was very good at his job. He was friendly, able to build a rapport with his customer and knew the Toronto Maple Leafs, but sadly not the Raptors. He played handball in Germany 15 years ago and had a wonderful British accent with a hint of eastern European in it. He wasn’t bad looking either. My brother will finally get his pipe and some rather lovely smelling tabaco. By the time we got out of the cigar shop we…
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Entry 06 – London, cont’d
Two bitchy men and a hag Sometimes I wonder what possesses a person to bitch at a complete stranger. I had the misfortune of being at the receiving end on three occasions. The first two, both delivered by men, happened on the first and second days in London. The first when we returned to the hotel to properly check in after lunch. I was entering the revolving doors behind what looked like a business man, when all of a sudden the automatic doors stopped. I gave them a small push, maybe they weren’t as automatic as they claim to be, when that monkey in a suit turned half around, eyebrows…
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Entry 05 – London, baby! Part 2
Excitement galore and flat feet. Every woman knows it can be utter shit when Aunt Irma (monthly period) visits. It is also shit when she does so while on vacation. It is even more shit when she comes two days early, with massive cramps and a lovely migraine. Yup. That was my travel day to London in a nutshell. On top of that it was the hottest day in April since 2007, and I truly can’t stand the heat, my brain felt like it was slowly turning to liquid inside my skull. We arrived at Waterloo station and were then supposed to take the tube to Fenchurch station. We skipped…
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Entry 04 – Stonehenge/Amesbury
Old news and new beginnings. The sun did not leave us all day and made our short stay in Amesbury an unforgettable one. Part of me has some difficulty writing about this day, because right when I was about to enjoy the magnificence that is Stonehenge I received some news that wasn’t what I had expected. It’s strange thinking about it now and trying to sort through all of my emotions; a pendulum of thoughts and feelings that run through me and of course the constant fear that the news will taint the memory of this experience. But I’m jumping ahead again. We arrived about half an hour later than…
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Entry 03 – Bath!!
I should state here that I am allergic to sugar in order to give some context about the following entry. So, here it is: I’m allergic to sugar, all kinds of delicious, glorious, sweet, velvety, nerve reducing, calming and comforting sugar, including fruit sugar. That out of the way, let’s begin, shall we? We had to transfer trains at Bristol Temple Meads for our 10-minute train ride to Bath Spa. The Bristol Temple Meads train station is relatively big, bigger than I assumed it to be based on the size of the town shown on the map. Teaches me once again never to assume. Since the Bath Spa stop is…
