At the moment I’m reading a biography of Jane Austen called Jane Austen at Home by Lucy Worsley. I’ve been reading it for a while but miss days or don’t read much sometimes. Despite this I’m really enjoying it. Worsley is curator of Royal Palaces in the U.K. and has written some history books and has presented numerous history documentaries. This book about Jane Austen focuses on her homes and how she views home and more generally covers her life in it’s different stages such as childhood and early adulthood at Steventon, and lodgings in Southampton and Bath and elsewhere. I’m currently at part 3 of 4 where they’ve settled into life at Chawton, a cottage in Hampshire and Jane is being published for the first time. Wonderful!
I’m also reading Tom Lake by Ann Patchett for a book club I recently joined. Tom Lake is about a woman who tells her grown up daughters about a love affair she had with an actor she dated in her youth who became a major movie star afterwards. She and her husband run an orchard where they brought up their girls but she reminisces about her time when she was an actor which we see it real time – Going back and forth from the present day to the past. I liked it in the beginning but I’m sensing lots of drama and a flawed heroine. That doesn’t have to be a bad thing. I’ll see what it brings.
Next I’d like to read The School at Thrush Green by Miss Read, something nice and gentle.
Readable 