To South America

         Apart from moving ahead with War and Peace on my I-Pad and getting Austerlitz out of the way, with a chapter or two at breakfast each day, I have not done much reading lately. In a few days we are setting off for Patagonia on a hiking trip, which will be followed by a ten day cruise. In preparation, we have been getting our travel reading organised.

         On the Kindle we have 'The Blazing World' by Siri Hustvedt, which was, I think, on the long list for the 2014 Man Booker prize and was very well reviewed. On the I-Pad from Apple I-books, we have 'All The Light We Cannot See' by Anthony Doerr, which has climbed to the top of the NY Times Best Seller list. And I recently bought from AbeBooks for $3.95 (and no postage) an older novel by Siri Hustvedt, published in 2003, "What I Loved." The publishers of the paperback seems to have quoted from every review they could find, including Vogue, Elle, The Guardian, The Sunday Times, Le Figaro, and many others. Of course, they have only pulled out the sentences that contain words like, impressive, consummately intelligent,, truly memorable, defiantly complex and frequently dazzling...etc etc.  So I am looking forward to starting it on the first plane trip from here to Atlanta, where we change planes for the onward journey to Argentina.

           We have been sweating a bit about the start of the trip because, for several days, the weather forecasts were showing snow for the day we will leave; but now that threat seems to have disappeared and all we are told now is "cloudy or partly sunny."

So..the blog will go into hibernation for a few weeks.