Books To Be Read Before UK Trip

This week’s Top Ten Tuesday topic at The Broke and The Bookish is a freebie — I get to choose my own topic. If I were more clever, I would have figured out how to make that connect with an Armchair BEA topic, but I did something else with those (Audiobooks and podcasts for Readers’ Workouts and Author Interaction with Karen Karbo).

Instead, I’ll use this post to help me figure out what I still want to read before our trip to England, now that it’s clear that my initial list was too ambitious.

10. London by Edward Rutherfurd, because during my last two trips to Europe, I read an appropriate Rutherfurd book (even though they are heavy!) so I want to continue my tradition.

9. London: The Biography by Peter Ackroyd, because one massive book titled London might not be enough.

8. Albion: The Origins of English Imagination by Peter Ackroyd, because apparently I can’t read too much Peter Ackroyd this year.

7. The Secret Lives of Codebreakers: The Men and Women Who Cracked the Enigma Code at Bletchley Park by Sinclair McKay, because we’ll be visiting Bletchley Park as a day trip from Birmingham.

6. Our Mutual Friend by Charles Dickens, because this Reading Project for reading it in the original installments is such a fun idea and it started this month.

5. A Guide to Dickens’ London by Daniel Tyler, because with maps, drawings, and photographs, it will help me match up my vision of London from books to the one that we’ll see on the ground.

4. The Illustrated Longitude by Dava Sobel, because that’s the book that got my husband interested in this trip.

3. Notes from a Small Island by Bill Bryson, because all reports are that it is too fun to miss.

2. London Underground by Peter Ackroyd, because I got my mother-in-law reading it, too.

1. Clockwork Universe by Edward Dolnick, because I’m more than half-way finished.

Have you read any of these? Do you have suggestions of books that I should add or subtract?

I’ll also link this post up on Friday to British Isles Friday. Join us each week!