Welcome to British Isles Friday! British Isles Friday is a weekly event for sharing all things British and Irish - reviews, photos, opinions, trip reports, guides, links, resources, personal stories, interviews, and research posts. Join us each Friday to link your British and Irish themed content and to see what others have to share. The link list is at the bottom of this post. Pour a cup of tea or lift a pint and join our link party!
Last week, I reviewed Suffragette and reminisced about my grandmothers. Sim brought us the cool architecture of the stations of the London Underground. Tina reviewed book #16 in Peter Robinson's DCI Banks series, Piece of My Heart. Heather devoted a top ten list to her favorite historical fiction, including several books set in the British Isles. Becky reviewed two books: Agatha (a "graphic novel" biography of Agatha Christie) and The Borrowers. Karen is working her way through the Man Booker Prize's long list and reviewed The Many by Wyl Menmuir.
I'm not really ready to write about any of the things that I could write about, so I thought I'd give a run-down of all the British things I thought about writing that I encountered recently.
Scott & Bailey. I caught up on this series. Season 4 is on Hulu. Season 5 ran this spring on ITV, so we Americans may get to see that one soon.
Pardonable Lies (Maisie Dobbs) and Into the Woods by Tana French. Two books that I've read recently and want to review. But I'm on the virtual hold list for the e-books of the next in each series. So, I'm waiting to review several series books at one time. It's taking a very long time to get my turn. I think I'll put further series books on hold so that I might get them more quickly .
The Last Goodnight by Howard Blum. While waiting for those books, I started reading this one. I've been reading a lot of lightweight fiction recently and I actually didn't expect to get into this book, a biography of a World War II spy, an American woman married to a British diplomat. August and September are the peak months of my allergy season and I need very diverting literature to cope. It turns out that this biography is a page-turner!
Foyle's War. I've seen almost all of this series, but I realized recently that I've yet to watch the last season. My husband took an interest, so I'm watching it over again from the beginning with him.
Home Front. I've mentioned that I love listening to the longest running radio drama in history, The Archers. There's another radio drama on BBC Radio 4 that I enjoy - Home Front, set in Great Britain during World War I. Each day's episode happened 100 years ago today. It's been a fascinating way to learn about the Great War. I almost cried last week when a family received two telegrams in one day, losing both of their sons in the same battle. This will only get more interesting for an American audience in the next year - the 100th anniversary of the US entry into WWI is in April, 2017. Home Front has "seasons" of several weeks with long breaks in between. All previous episodes are available on the web site.
What has caught your attention this week from the British Isles?
About Joy Weese Moll
a librarian writing about books
