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My First Literary Crush

Raise your hand if you have crushed on a fictional character.

Last week I read Austenland, by Shannon Hale – a fluffy, fun bit about a woman who lets her crush on Mr. Darcy get in the way of her real-life relationships.  Most bookish girls have had crushes on their favorite fictional heroes… right?  I know I have.  Please tell me I’m not the only one.  I know I’m not the only one.  How else would Mr. Darcy and Mr. Knightley have acquired their legions of female fans, without the delicious and safe literary crush phenomenon?

Oh, yes, I’ve sighed over Mr. Darcy.  And Mr. Knightley.  Come to mama.

And for even longer, I have loved me some Gilbert Blythe and Teddy Kent.  I imagined both of them with a shock of hair falling in their brown eyes.  But don’t worry, Anne and Emily, I know they’re your men, not mine.

But even before Gilbert and Teddy, there was another literary boy who struck my fancy.  Oh, Peter Pevensie, I’d have ruled Narnia by your side any day.

Peter is a loving and responsible big brother.  Although he doesn’t believe his sister Lucy when she tells her siblings she has found a magical land in a wardrobe, he doesn’t try to make her feel ridiculous, either.  And when Lucy is proven right, Peter is the first to apologize for doubting her… in fact, that happens multiple times throughout the books.  Peter is quick to own up when he makes a mistake, but he is never tempted by the evil White Witch like his brother Edmund.  Peter grows from schoolboy to warrior to king.  Now what pre-teen girl wouldn’t love a boy who can conquer and rule an entire magical land (with a little help from his friends and one all-powerful Lion, yes), yet still be humble enough to admit it when his little sister is right and he is wrong?

Peter Pevensie is a little young for me these days.  And I don’t need literary crushes anymore – I have a cute hubby to crush on.  Still, I’m proud to own up to my first literary crush being a stand-up guy like Peter.

Who was your first literary crush?

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Oxford

After traipsing through the English countryside for the better part of two weeks, it was finally time for hubby and me to head into London.  Our typical practice on European vacations is to rent a car for the first part of the trip and then return it in a town with easy access to our final big-city destination.  This time, that plan had us returning our rental in Oxford and taking the train from there to London.  But before we get to London, we had a day to explore Oxford and – while I know we didn’t scratch the surface of what the town could have offered us – we made a start.  My only regret upon seeing Oxford was that I never made it here when my little sis (sorority, not biology, as we used to say) was getting her Ph.D. here.  I can only imagine what fun it would have been to experience Oxford through the eyes of a student.

We didn’t actually go into any of the Oxford colleges, although I wanted to.  (This pic of All Souls was snapped through the gate.)  The colleges I really wanted to see were Balliol (for Lord Peter Wimsey!) and All Souls (because I’d just read A Discovery of Witches).  We didn’t make it to Balliol, but I did get to see All Souls and… WOW, is all I can say.  What a stately, imposing, breath-taking place.  (Don’t worry Cornell, you’re still tops in my heart.)

We meandered down the busy streets of Oxford, sneaking peeks into the colleges and the tea shops, imagining what it must be like to actually study here.  (I’m a nerd, but I own it.)

The Radcliffe Camera was one of the most beautiful, coolest buildings in the entire city, in my opinion.  Now part of the Bodleian Library, its sun-drenched stone walls contain who-knows-how-much knowledge inside.  And outside…

BIKES.  BIKES EVERYWHERE.  If the spires and the bookshops and the harried-looking college kids hurrying to and fro with bulging backpacks wouldn’t have tipped you off, you’d still know you were in a university town from all the bikes.  You couldn’t walk ten feet before you’d bump into one.  I love bikes, so I was in heaven, snapping pictures to the point that hubby told me to stop taking pictures of bikes already.  But there’s just something about a stone wall, a lamppost, and a bike with a basket.  Gets my heart racing.  Hey, we all have our things.

I saved the most important parts for last.  This ^ is the Bodleian Library.  Talk about getting my heart racing.  Ask hubby – for days all I could talk about was seeing one of the most famous libraries in the world.  And when we got here, it was just awe-inspiring.  The mysterious inner courtyard, the golden stone, the high windows… I nearly died of happiness.

This is my “EEEEEE-SO-EXCITED-TO-BE-HERE” face.

Inside we checked out a “Treasures of the Bodleian” exhibit, which contained such marvels as Shakespeare’s First Folio.  (This was taken no-flash – pretty great, huh?  And it was a dark room.  We loved on our camera the entire train ride to London.)

And finally, one more important stop – Blackwell’s!  I make a point of visiting the big-deal bookshops when I’m traveling and Blackwell’s was a must-see.  And a must-buy-a-book.  Yes, even though I normally don’t have the space to squeeze books into my backpack when I travel, I made an exception because I simply had to get something from Blackwell’s.  Hubby patiently let me browse and I ended up with two: a Jeeves book by P.G. Wodehouse (I have most of them, but Blackwell’s had a couple that I don’t already have), and South Riding, by Winifred Holtby, which I’d never seen before but which looked good.  I’ve not cracked the spine yet, but I’ll be sure to tell you about it when I do.

Well, kids, we’re off to London!  Check back next Friday for the first post detailing our London adventures.

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Recipe Rewind: Strawberry Shortcake Cookies

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I wait all year for berry season.  Fresh fruit is my absolute favorite food – just about any kind of fresh fruit – and by extension, I’ll always choose a fruit dessert over chocolate.  I’m weird like that — what can I say?  So when I saw these cookies in the May 2009 issue of Martha Stewart Living, they spoke to me loud and clear.  This morning I was up to my elbows in flour anyway, baking the world’s greatest chocolate chip cookies, and a cake, and artichoke dip (okay, there’s no flour in that) for my firm’s summer picnic.  So, I figured, what’s one more dessert?  I’ve been thinking about these cookies for three days.  Strawberries and cream… they had my name written all over them.  Why not?

Well.  They were the hit of the picnic.  The kids gravitated toward the cake, but the adults went crazy for these cookies.  They are light and refreshing, not too sweet — basically, summer in cookie form.   I love baking with fresh fruit and this recipe was so simple and easy that I’m certain it will become one of my standbys.  In fact, given the raves these got, I think I might have won a few converts to the fruit side.

Strawberry Shortcake Cookies

12 ounces strawberries, hulled and cut into 1/4 inch dice
1 teaspoon fresh lemon juice
1/2 cup plus 1 teaspoon granulated sugar
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking power
1/2 teaspoon coarse salt
6 tablespoons (1/2 stick) unsalted butter
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract (not in the original recipe, but really bumps up the flavor)
2/3 cup heavy cream
sanding sugar or vanilla sugar (for sprinkling)

  • Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.
  • Combine strawberries, lemon juice, and 2 tablespoons granulated sugar in a small bowl and set aside.
  • Whisk together flour, baking powder, salt, and remaining granulated sugar in a large bowl.
  • Cut in the butter with a pastry cutter or two knives, or rub it in with your fingers, until it forms approximately pea-sized crumbs.
  • Stir in vanilla extract and cream until mixture comes together, then stir in strawberry mixture.
  • Using an ice cream scoop, drop cookie dough onto parchment- or Silpat-lined baking sheets.  Sprinkle with sanding sugar or vanilla sugar (I like Penzey’s vanilla sugar) and bake until golden brown, approximately 25 minutes.
  • Cool cookies on a wire rack.

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Note: These cookies really need to be eaten immediately.  They will not keep longer than one day.  Shouldn’t be a problem.

Source: Adapted from Martha Stewart Living, May 2009.

This is a repost of the first recipe I posted, when I started my blog back in 2009.  It’s delish, and I thought it deserved to be dusted off and shown in the light of day again!

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Bookmark Rodeo

About a week and a half ago, Eagle-Eyed Editor, a blogger I’ve recently come to admire, posted about souvenir book hunting.  Now, I usually don’t bring books home from vacation, because I’m often traveling on the strength of one backpack.  (A big one, to be sure, but you can’t do two weeks in England on one backpack and expect to be toting many purchases home with you.)  Sure, there are exceptions – I brought a load of cookbooks back from California in 2009, for instance, and found ways to cram several teas into my backpack after last year’s trip to England.  Oh, and mugs too.  But my low-key travel preferences generally work for my souvenir-buying habits because what I really can’t resist on a trip is a new bookmark (or ten).  Since I was a kid, I’ve collected bookmarks.  I love ’em, and it recently occurred to me that they make perfect travel souvenirs for bibliophiles like myself.  They’re tiny and flat, they fit easily in a purse or backpack, and they make me smile and remember the place I acquired them every time I use them (which is daily).  So today, I thought I’d show you some of my favorites.

Since we’re talking about trips, these are three of the bookmarks I acquired in England.  (I bought two more, but one is in use and one is AWOL.  That’s a thing about bookmarks – they do tend to go missing and reappear with alarming frequency.)  The one on the left is my favorite, because the place I bought it – the British Library – is easily one of my favorite places in London, if not the world.  In the middle is a bookmark I spotted at the Bodleian Library in Oxford and had to have, and on the right is my souvenir from Shakespeare’s Globe in London (more on that visit to come in a future post).  All three are leather, and beautiful, and I love using them.

While we’re on the subject of trips, here are three bookmarks I’ve picked up on various trips to New York City, all at the Strand, my most favoritest bookstore in the world.  (Yes, my love for the Strand demands juvenile vocabulary.)  I go every time I visit the 212, without fail, and I always leave with a bulging tote bag full of books, and a bookmark or two.  The cardboard specimen on the left was an impulse buy near the register.  The two metal bookmarks on the right were carefully considered purchases.  (Yes, I put great thought into my bookmark acquisitions.)  One is a miniature “subway sign” of the stop I use to go to the Strand – 14th Street and Union Square.  The other is a cutout of the storefront that makes my heart skip a beat every time I approach it.  (P.S. Mom, when we meet up for our girls’ day in NYC this summer, we’re going to the Strand.  Sorry, but it can’t be helped.)

A bookmark addict like me can’t just restrict herself to buying while on vacation, though.  I feed my addiction to leather bookmarks while playing tourist in my own town, too.  I got this one this winter, one day when hubby took me out for a date to the National Gallery of Art, my favorite D.C. museum.  Let me tell you, this isn’t the only bookmark I have from the National Gallery.  That place is bookmark heaven.  I can barely control myself.

Finally, here are a couple of my other favorite bookmarks.  I have no idea where the “Reading Girl” bookmark came from, or when I got it, or how I came by it.  I used to be really into “The Girls” (I have a “Tennis Girl” magnet on my fridge left over from my varsity days) and I probably got this bookmark then.  I’ve had it forever, and I love it, because I am definitely a “Reading Girl.”  The other bookmark is a recent acquisition.  My mom and I were shopping at a paper goods store in my town where they had a display of “Keep Calm” goodies.  I showed my mom and explained the British World War II slogan to her, then mentioned I’d been mulling over buying this bookmark for a few weeks.  My mom gave me a look that plainly said, “Kid, loosen the purse strings,” and told me she was going to buy it for me.  Unfortunately, it was $3.00, and she only had $1.00 on her.  Like mother, like daughter.  I actually had $2.00 – I was flush that day – so we split the cost and I got my long-desired “Keep Calm” bookmark.  I use it exclusively for British mysteries and biographies of Queen Elizabeth.

That’s just a fraction of my frighteningly large collection of bookmarks.  I’d show you more, but I don’t want to freak you out.  What about you – are you obsessed with bookmarks?  What’s your go-to travel souvenir?

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In Honor of Easter and National Poetry Month

April is National Poetry Month, and yesterday was Easter Sunday; those two facts are reason enough for me to share a poem with you today.  Here’s another piece I love, by my all-time favorite poet.

i am a little church(no great cathedral)
far from the splendor and squalor of hurrying cities
-i do not worry if briefer days grow briefest,
i am not sorry when sun and rain make april

my life is the life of the reaper and the sower;
my prayers are prayers of earth’s own clumsily striving
(finding and losing and laughing and crying)children
whose any sadness or joy is my grief or my gladness

around me surges a miracle of unceasing
birth and glory and death and resurrection:
over my sleeping self float flaming symbols
of hope,and i wake to a perfect patience of mountains

i am a little church(far from the frantic
world with its rapture and anguish)at peace with nature
-i do not worry if longer nights grow longest;
i am not sorry when silence becomes singing

winter by spring,i lift my diminutive spire to
merciful Him Whose only now is forever:
standing erect in the deathless truth of His presence
(welcoming humbly His light and proudly His darkness)

~by e.e. cummings (source)

To my friends who celebrated yesterday, I hope your Easter was as full of light, laughter and joy as mine was.

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Bourton-on-the-Water

Okay, now, pretty much all Cotswold villages are beautiful.  But Bourton-on-the-Water might be the most beautiful of all.  (I said might be, so don’t jump down my throat if you disagree!)  Bourton-on-the-Water is referred to as “the Venice of the Cotswolds” because of the crystal-clear canals running all through town and the picturesque bridges that guide hoardes of tourists over the water’s edge.

Hubby and I had a couple of extra daylight hours to spare after our trip to Stratford-upon-Avon, and I had been hoping that we’d find the time to get here.  It’s a tiny little postcard-stamp-sized town, so you don’t need an entire day for Bourton to reveal its considerable charm.  In fact, the charm pretty much hits you over the head the moment you step out of your car.

Hubby and I didn’t exactly “tourist it up” here.  We just wandered the canals, poked our heads into a few shops (where I drooled over Emma Bridgewater mugs that wouldn’t fit in my backpack and that I was pretty sure I could track down in the States anyway – so it was a browsing kind of day) and took the sunset as our cue to meander back to Stow-on-the-Wold.  (Oh, and I can’t even with the town names in the Cotswolds.  So much charm.  I die!  Where were the Cotswold regional planners when the D.C. suburbs were sprouting?)

It was a Jaclyn kind of afternoon.  Hubby and I generally make very good travel partners, because we can’t get enough of each other and we have the same ideas about how to behave on vacation (read: quiet and polite).  But while we both enjoy the cultural activities that come with traveling in Europe, we have rather different approaches.  Hubby is a planner; he likes to have an itinerary that is more detailed than General Patton’s, and to stick to it down to the minute.  I’m a bit more free-wheeling.  I like to have days where all I do is wander around, look at restaurant menus, sip tea, snap pictures of local cats and generally go where the wind blows me.  Over seven years of traveling as a married couple, we’ve found ways to please us both – hubby gets to plan and organize to his heart’s content, but we leave a few free afternoons or days in the itinerary for Jaclyn-style drifting.  Bourton-on-the-Water was the result of just such a provision – a few free hours after Stratford, so I jabbed my finger at a page in our guidebook and said “This looks fun; let’s go.”

We even saw a telephone box and a posting box side-by-side!  I obviously had to get a picture.  My Grandpapa loved British telephone boxes – even had one in his backyard – and, well, I like letters and mail.  Bourton-on-the-Water was happy to oblige both Grandpapa and me.  Just more proof that this town is the best.

Next Friday the road trip part of our journey ends – sniff!  We’re dropping the car off in Oxford, so come have a look around with me!

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Mushroom and Mascarpone Flatbread

Whenever my best friend visits – which isn’t often enough if you ask me – we spend weeks before the visit brainstorming and debating what we should cook together.  We both love to be in the kitchen and there is really nothing that we’d rather do when we’re together than cook.  Oh, it’s not just cooking – we talk, laugh, bump into each other, make a gigantic mess and have the time of our lives while we’re cooking.  And one of my favorite things about cooking with R is that we can do all of that stuff while we cook.  You see, R actually knows how to cook.  (In fact, she taught me.)  So she doesn’t need to be supervised while she creates a delicious dish in my kitchen.  She doesn’t need assignments and detailed instructions.  Aside from questions like “Where do you keep the silicone spatulas?” R is blessedly self-directed in my kitchen (and I’m the same way in hers).  It makes it easy to cook side-by-side.  For instance, I’d love to claim credit for making this gorgeous flatbread, but I didn’t make it – R did.  She made it at my kitchen island while I stood next to her, mixing up a pear and blackberry crisp with pecan topping.  (My dessert went un-photographed, and hence un-blogged, but don’t worry – there will be other crisps this summer.)  This flatbread was a last-minute menu item; we had been planning to make a gratin until R had one for dinner the previous night.  So, instead, we went to Whole Foods and wandered around until the spirit moved us to make something resembling pizza.  It just goes to prove that sometimes the last-minute items are the best.  It was crispy and chewy, creamy from the mascarpone, and savory from the mushrooms and onions.  Perfection, a la R.

Mushroom and Mascarpone Flatbread

semolina flour
1 ball store-bought pizza dough (or homemade, if you’re an overachiever)
extra-virgin olive oil
1 container gourmet mix or shiitake mushrooms
1 onion (or leek!), thinly sliced
pinch kosher salt
pinch minced fresh thyme
1 container mascarpone cheese

  • Place a pizza stone in oven.  Preheat oven to 500 degrees Fahrenheit (or other temperature as called for by your pizza dough).  Allow pizza stone to preheat for 20 minutes after the oven reaches 500 degrees.
  • When stone is preheated, scatter a small handful of semolina flour over a pizza peel.  Stretch pizza dough into a rough circle approximately the size of the pizza peel.  Brush dough circle with olive oil.  Using peel, transfer dough to oven and allow to cook approximately 20-30 minutes, until golden brown.  (The precise time will depend on your oven and on how cold your dough was and how thinly you stretched it out – so just watch it.  It may take less time; it may take more.)  When dough is golden, remove from oven and allow to cool slightly.
  • While pizza dough is cooking, heat a splash of olive oil in a nonstick pan.  Add mushrooms, season with kosher salt and saute until beginning to brown.  Add onions and continue cooking until soft.  When mushrooms and onions are completely cooked, remove from heat and stir in fresh thyme.
  • When pizza dough has cooled slightly, spread mascarpone cheese over dough in a thin layer.  Pour mushroom and onion mixture in a thin layer over cheese.  Slice, garnish with additional thyme sprigs, and serve.

Source: Covered In Flour (and R!)

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In Which I Ponder Why I Read

Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read.  One does not love breathing.

~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird

I’m not like Scout Finch.  It didn’t take a stern teacher forbidding me from reading to convince me that I loved to read.  I think that, on some level, I’ve always known I loved to read.  I love turning pages and getting lost in a story.  I love cheering for characters and even crying for them.  (Yes, fictional people, and no, I don’t think that’s weird.)  I’m not even going to get into why I love to read… I’m sure it goes much too far back into my childhood for me to even begin to mine the depths of where my love for books and words and stories comes from.

But lately I’ve been thinking about a related subject: why I read.  That is, why I take time out of my day, every day – and yes, I do read for pleasure every single day of my life – to absorb myself into a book.  There are so many reasons, and some of them contradict.  But they’re all true, maybe not all at the same times, but at some time or another.

~I read to escape.  Sometimes life gets overwhelming.  This past fall and winter were a very hard time for me, for reasons I won’t get into here.  And I can honestly say I don’t know how I would have gotten through it without books.  I sought out books that would transport me far, far away from the ugly stuff that was getting me down.  I read The Magicians and The Magician King, The Night Circus, and Wildwood – all fantastical, magical journeys.  I read Jane Austen and P.G. Wodehouse, two of my favorite English writers, each of whom can make me laugh and transport me to a gentler time and place.  I read The Sweet Life in Paris, walked the boulevards and tasted the croissants and hot chocolate with David Lebovitz.  These books all served a purpose – they took me away from the here and now.  I’ve always been someone who can sink into a book and completely tune out everything that is happening around me.  Sometimes I really need that escapism.

~I read to connect.  Kind of the opposite of escaping, right?  But I also read because I love to connect with others over a good book.  I can happily chat about books for hours with R or my mom, and since I discovered book blogs I’ve found a whole new level of connection that comes with being a reader.  I like to hear what others are reading, whether they liked a particular book, whether I might like it.  And I like to share my own opinions about what I’m reading.  There are times, sure, when I just want to check out of reality and books are wonderful for that.  But I always come back – eventually – and I want to talk about my adventures on the page.  So I read for that connection to others.

~I read for the words.  Sometimes I’ll be making my merry way through a book and just get blindsided by a completely gorgeous phrase or passage.  Like, for instance, the comparison of The Painted Veil‘s Mother Superior to a land of “tawny heights and windswept spaces” that just knocked me sideways.  I’ll read book after book in search of phrases like that.  Once you have one hit of prose that’s like poetry, you’ll always be looking for more.

~I read for the characters.  Specifically, for the ones who become my friends.  Like Anne Shirley and Emily Byrd Starr, Mary Lennox, Harry Potter, Lizzy Bennet, Bertie Wooster, Vicky Austin, Cassandra Mortmain, Flora Poste… I read to meet these friends and then I re-read to visit them again.  If I ever stopped reading, I would miss them.  (Again, yes, fictional people, and again, no, I don’t think that’s weird.)

~I read because I can’t not.  I guess in that way, I am like Scout Finch.  I’ve had times in my life when I’ve been too busy to read for fun – during finals season in college and law school come to mind, and Bar summer too.  And I invariably get itchy to pick up a book again as soon as possible.  If I don’t read every day, I get cranky.  If I go too long without reading, I go bananas.  Books are as necessary to me as food and water.  I have to turn pages if I want to survive.

Why do you read?

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Reading Round-Up: March 2012

Reading is my oldest and favorite hobby.  I literally can’t remember a time in my life when I didn’t love to curl up with a good book.  Here are my reads for March, 2012…

Loving, by Henry Green – I plucked this book off a list of “things to read if you are addicted to Downton Abbey,” but I’m sorry to say I was disappointed.  A story of the interactions between servants and the family living in an Irish castle during World War II seemed like a perfect choice for me, and it was very well written, but I just felt like I was forcing it the entire time.  I can’t put my finger on exactly what rubbed me the wrong way.  Sometimes I thought maybe there was too much dialogue, which seems strange, because I like books with lots of dialogue.  I suppose I’ll be vague and just say that while I admired the writing, I didn’t like the atmosphere that I felt in the book.  I just couldn’t get into this one and it was a slog all the way to the finish, sadly.

A Wrinkle in Time, by Madeleine L’Engle – A re-read of one of my favorite books was just what the doctor ordered after the previous disappointment.  I first read A Wrinkle in Time when I was nine, and I’ve read it countless times since and loved it more every time.  I picked up a copy of the recently released 50th anniversary edition from Kramerbooks, and loved it as much as I ever have.  The tale of Meg and Charles Wallace Murray and their friend Calvin O’Keefe’s miraculous journey through space and time to rescue Meg and Charles’ father from the forces of evil on a distant planet was enthralling when I was younger, but has so many more layers of meaning now that I’m an adult.  Love it forever.

Elizabeth I, by Margaret George – I had never read any Margaret George before, because for some reason I thought she would be fluffy, and I just don’t like fluffy historical fiction that much.  But after reading great reviews of this one, I checked it out, and it BLEW. MY. MIND.  So well researched and written, meticulously detailed, yet still compulsively readable.  I will now be reading everything Margaret George has ever written.  Fully reviewed here.

Pardonable Lies, by Jacqueline Winspear (Maisie Dobbs #3) – The more I read of the Maisie Dobbs series, the more I like it.  In this installment, our intrepid heroine is hired to confirm the death of an aviator lost during World War I.  As Maisie digs deeper into her quarry’s history, she discovers that he had a connection to the still-missing, presumed-dead brother of her college friend Priscilla, and that all may not be as it seems with either of their deaths.  Maisie relentlessly and doggedly pursues the truth about both men’s fates, even as it seems that someone would rather she die than find out what really happened.  This series is just such fun!  I can’t stop cheering Maisie on as she tracks down answers for her clients and continues to confront her own wartime demons.

Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, by Susan Cain – I really enjoyed this thoughtful, well-researched look into the introvert psyche.  As an introvert myself, I appreciated both the encouragement and the advice that Cain generously doled out, about how to harness your own special skills in the workplace and the social arena.  And I also loved her chapter on how to love an introvert, since my hubby is one as well and just being an introvert myself doesn’t make him less mysterious to me at times.  Fully reviewed here.

The Snow Child, by Eowyn Ivey – This debut was gorgeously written.  Jack and Mabel, a childless couple, move to Alaska to start a new life together.  One night they build a little girl out of snow.  The next day, the little snow girl is gone, but a real little girl is running around the woods near their cabin.  As Jack and Mabel begin to get to know Faina, the “snow child” they believe they created, they love her as a daughter.  But at the same time, they are haunted by the sad ending of a Russian fairy tale that bears striking similarities to Faina’s story, and they start to fear losing her.  Fully reviewed here.

March was a bit of a slow month for me.  One novella, one re-read, and a mystery made up half of my book total for the month.  I had some out of town visitors over three weekends, and I’ve been fighting off exhaustion for the entire month, which has cut into my reading time dramatically.  Lately my eyelids have been drooping by 8:00 p.m., and my weekends – when I’m not entertaining – invariably involve naps.  Still, I did manage to chew through Elizabeth I, which was almost 700 pages – I’m pretty proud of that.  Here’s hoping for some more energy in April.

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Stratford-upon-Avon

See that diamond-paned window on the right side of the frame?  Someone very special was born in that room.

This is the house that the legendary Bard, Will Shakespeare, was born in.  It’s been a dream of mine since high school to see this place.  Hubby and I hit Stratford-upon-Avon for a day trip to see some of the Shakespeare sights.  Ironically, although hubby was an English major, I was the one jumping out of my skin and squeaking with excitement.  (Well, maybe that’s not ironic.  Hubby doesn’t do those things even when he is super excited.)

We toured Shakespeare’s house and saw “the birth room” where the Bard was born, then checked out another room that had been given over to a little Shakespeare trivia.  None of the Shakespeare sights in town are particularly “done,” but it was magical just being in the same place where Shakespeare once walked.

We also visited Anne Hathaway’s cottage, where the teenaged Shakespeare courted his eight-years-older wife.  The cottage is not really the same as it was at the time, since subsequent generations of the family changed it a lot and added on.  There was an old wooden bench that our guide somewhat skeptically told us the family claims Shakespeare and Anne would have sat on.  I don’t know if they really did, but I’m choosing to believe it and say that it was extremely cool.  But it was in the gardens that I really felt I could get into the mindset of imagining Will and Anne… walking here, trying to get away from her big family…

Visiting Stratford was a dream come true!  I’d recommend the trip to any English literature geeks out there.  And next Friday, come with me to one of the cutest towns in the Cotswolds…