The Trip:

* Chiltern Hills and Thames Valley (to mystery lovers, aka "Midsomer County" -- though given that this is an area chock-full of quintessential(ly) English villages, it's no surprise that it also routinely provides locations for other series, such as Inspector Morse, The Vicar of Dibley, and of course, adaptations of Agatha Christie's mysteries ... Christie herself, after all, also spent her last years in this area, in a village just outside of Wallingford, where she is also buried.)

* Chawton: Jane Austen's home

* Gloucester and Malmesbury

* The Welsh Borderland: The Welsh Marches, Herefordshire, and Shropshire

* Bosworth and Leicester

* East Anglia: Norfolk, Ely, and Stour Valley (aka [John] Constable Country)

The Souvenirs:

* Jane Austen:

- Pride and Prejudice -- an imitation leather-bound miniature copy of the book's first edition

- Lady Susan -- audio version performed, inter alia, by Harriet Walter

- Teenage Writings (including, inter alia, Cassandra, Love and Freindship, and The History of England)

* Terry Townsend: Jane Austen's Hampshire (gorgeously illustrated hardcover)

* Hugh Thomson:

- Illustrations to Sense and Sensibility, Northanger Abbey, and Persuasion

- Illustrations to Mansfield Park and Emma

* Pen Vogler: Tea with Jane Austen

... plus other Austen-related bits, such as a playing card set featuring Hugh Thomson's illustrations for Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility, Emma, and Persuasion, two Austen first edition refrigerator magnets, two "Austen 200" designer pens, a Chawton wallpaper design notepad, and a set of Austen-related postcards.

* Margery Kempe: The Book of Margery Kempe
* Julian of Norwich: Revelations of Divine Love

(have read bits of pieces of both, but never yet the whole thing(s) -- something to be remedied soonish)

* Margaret Sanders (ed.):

- Letters of England's Queens

- Letters of England's Kings

("Queens" looks decidedly more interesting, but I figured since there were both volumes there ... Unfortunately, neither contains any Plantagenet correspondence, though; they both start with the Tudors.)

* Terry Jones: Medieval Lives

* Ian Mortimer:

- The Greatest Traitor: The Life of Sir Roger Mortimer, Ruler of England 1327-1330

- 1415: Henry V's Year of Glory

* Chris Skidmore: Bosworth -- The Birth of the Tudors

* David Baldwin: Richard III

* Richard Hayman: The Tudor Reformation

* Glyn E. German: Welsh History

(The last two are decidedly more on the "outline" side, but they're useful as fast, basic references)

* Martin Gayford: Constable in Love -- the painter John Constable, that is.

* Andrea Wulf: The Invention of Nature (yeah, I know, late to the party, but anyway ... and at least I got the edition with the black cover!)

* Chris Beardshaw: 100 Plants that almost changed the World (as title and cover imply, nothing too serious, but a collection of interesting tidbits nevertheless)

* Niall Ferguson: The House of Rothschild -- The World's Banker, 1849-1999

* Michael Jecks, Knights Templar:

- The Leper's Return

- The Boy-Bishop's Glovemaker

- The Devil's Acolyte

- The Chapel of Bones

- The Butcher of St. Peter's

- The Malice of Unnatural Death

* Shirley McKay: Hue & Cry (a mystery set in Jacobean St. Andrews, Scotland)

... and finally, two present-day mystery/thrillers, just to balance off (well, not really, but anyway ...) all that history:

* Jo Nesbø: The Snowman

* Michael Connelly: The Late Show
 

... plus several more mugs for my collection (because I clearly don't own enough of those yet), two Celtic knot bookmarks, a Celtic knot T-shirt, a Celic knot pin, a Celtic knot designer pen (can you tell I really like Celtic knot designs?), assorted handmade soaps and lavender sachets, and assorted further postcards and sticky notes, plus in-depth guidebooks of pretty much every major place I visited (which guidebooks I sent ahead by mail before leaving England, so they're currently still en route to my home).

ETA:

Oh, and then there's John le Carré's The Pigeon Tunnel, which I bought at the airport right before my departure and am currently reading.  Books that you buy at the departure for a trip do qualify for a vacation book haul, don't they?

Merken

Merken

Merken

Merken

Merken

Merken

I think this is a poor choice when travelling on a noisy and disruptive public transport system. But then that is mostly the time I have during a day to read so I didn't particularly have a choice and many non-fiction books have managed to hold my concentration a lot better in noisy atmospheres.

I would really enjoy ten or twenty pages and then read another 5 and just totally zone out and have to go back to try and re read what I had missed. I found myself daydreaming at times. Then I'd snap out of it and realize I'd not taken in anything from a chapter. Believe me I was tempted multiple times to give up, but I persevered and I did increase my knowledge of the First World War.

The whole premise of the book is essentially the argument that the general public think WW1 was a waste of time because they've seen things like Blackadder/read war poetry. When really it argues that the war saw the BEF become a tuned fighting force that won a series of battles towards the end of the war sending the German forces reeling. It counters the idea that Haig was totally inept as a commander and looks to dispel the opinion that commanders sacrificed the lives of young working people carelessly for little strategic gain.

I agreed with a lot of Sheffield's assessments and I think people in the UK should make more of an effort to learn about events that were huge for the country and base their opinions on strong, objective historical texts rather than on emotive films and television series.

I'd pick this up if you are really keen on WW1.

One hundred pages in and sadly I've not learnt much new. Lots that I already know about WW1. Thought this was going to bring forward some new compelling argument and so far it has just been a narrative of what happened in the war. 

Keeps saying that Britain started to concede its power to the US because of WW1. This to my knowledge is still a point of debate among historians, some argue Britain and its empire grew stronger out of the First World War and then the balance of power moved after the Second World War. But then this book is 14 years old. 

Still 180 pages to go, fingers crossed. Been a great couple of weeks and I'm in the mood to read lots, can't wait to get stuck into the brothers karamazov when I get that over the Christmas period.

Have a great day/evening/week.

Nadszedł październik a wraz z nim wysyp nowości książkowych. W tym miesiącu na półkach sklepowych pojawi się długo wyczekiwana (i szumnie zapowiadana) powieść Olgi Tokarczuk, pierwszy, niewydany dotąd tomik Wisławy Szymborskiej, monumentalna praca ubiegłorocznej laureatki Bookera oraz Kroniki Boba Dylana. A to zaledwie niewielka część wszystkich intrygujących nowości.

Zapraszam do zapoznania się z moim niezwykle subiektywnym wyborem.

This appears to me to be an attempt by Ferguson to provide a sort of sequel to Guns, Germs and Steel. I say that because both books begin the same way - the attempt to answer a question about Europe's predominance over the last few hundred years and because Ferguson makes multiple reference's to Diamond. I am guessing Ferguson was not entirely satisfied with Diamond's explanation and sought to get more detailed about the rise of Europe.

If you could get past the horribly self-congratulatory preface - if your edition is unfortunate to have it - I think he does a somewhat reasonable job of attempting this alternative explanation. (But about that preface: it may be the most self-congratulatory preface I have ever read. It is horrible. Please stick with the book if it sickens you. Or skip it altogether.)

The first few chapters are quite compelling and generally well done. Where Ferguson has problems is when he gets to "Medicine", "Consumption" and "Work Ethic." It seems that Ferguson is struggling to explain exactly how these things affected the world - and led to European dominance - in part because he wants to tell other stories: in the case of "Medicine" it is the incredibly interesting story of how the Germans practiced ethnic cleansing in Africa well before the Nazis took over; in the case of "Work Ethic" its a far less effective lecture as to how our lack of faith is somehow destroying us morally (definitely the lowlight of the book). These may be interesting issues - I am going to hopefully read more into the German colonization of Africa - but they are really not relevant in any way I can see. And all three of these chapters are afflicted by this problem - they are entirely too tangential.

Fortunately the conclusion is rather fascinating and, if you can handle Ferguson's very, very pro-Western stance, quite illuminating, to the extent that they mostly make up for the rather clumsy and confused second half of the book. Ferguson's suggestion that we should reject the cyclical view of history in favour of one based on the scientific understanding of complexity is particularly well taken and reason alone to read the book.

On the whole I'd say it's worth reading, though it has enough problems that anyone who finds Ferguson's public persona annoying will probably not be able to enjoy it. Fortunately I try to avoid everything but his books, so I didn't have that problem. It's a flawed but interesting account of recent world history.