Weekend reading

I have a great family, one of whom is a cousin living far away - one of those people you particularly wish didn't, because she's always introducing me to wonderful things that I wouldn't otherwise know about.

Well, just now she's in town, and she brought me books!


The House by the Thames views nearly 450 years of London history from the lens of a particular house and the people who lived in it over that time - a fascinating concept and one I can't wait to dive into.

War in Val D'Orcia is the diary of Iris Origo, an English woman who married an Italian landowner and was raising their family there when WWII pitted his country against hers. Apparently she helped to save many lives and again... can't wait.

I wouldn't want to be able to read three books at once because none of them would last long enough, but... The Morville Hours is also tugging at me. It traces the year in a garden at a house in the English countryside through the format of a medieval Book of Hours, and its author was a rare-book librarian before she became a full-time gardener and writer. I know the journey through this book will be sufficiently intriguing to feed positive dreaming and peaceful enough to lead me to sleep.

So much better than the ghost story collections I've been scaring myself with the last few sleepless night, don't you think?