A little late, but the last week and a half was hectic!
I’ve finally put the summer edition of our school magazine to bed. I had to use Canva for it for the first time, having always used Adobe InDesign before, and found Canva’s AI-driven ‘I-know-better-than-you-what-you-want’ tendencies frustrating, whereas InDesign is totally under your control. I don’t want to change the text size automatically if I change the box size, ditto re cropping of photos – Canva makes you take extra steps to outwit it every time. It’s been a learning curve!
I’ve also had a haircut, got new glasses, been to a wedding staying over with my dad. And, I nearly forgot – I had a day in London for the matinee of Jesus Christ Superstar with Sam Ryder (and feat. Richard Armitage as Herod – I’d asked him about it here at a book event earlier – he said Herod was a nasty piece of work – and he played him on stage as a mad villain kitted out in gold lamé jodphurs!).
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I’m doing well with my own #20BOS26 – I’ve read 13 and reviewed 11 of them, 14th read nearly done, so I’m well on target – and plan to have a lazy August with loads of reading, so getting to 20 shouldn’t be an obstacle (best laid plans and all!). I offered a bit of creative thinking in my Midway Check-in post, and I’ve created a road trip for fun ,,,
My #20BOS26 Road Trip
Part One of my trip stays relatively close to home, around the British Isles.
- We begin in Dublin, where Louise Hegarty author of Fair Play hails from, where we’ll hop over the Irish sea – by ferry to Liverpool and on to…
- Chatsworth House in Derbyshire. This is where the bananas imported by Joseph Paxton were grown in the glasshouses – gaining their name Cavendish from the Duke of Devonshire’s family name, as described in The Future of Bananas by James Dale. From there, we’ll motor down to…
- Oxford, where Dani Heywood-Lonsdale’s protagonists in historical art thriller, The Portrait Artist are based. We shall then take a detour to the…
- Devon Coast – where we’ll go searching for lost lego with Tracey Williams, author of the lovely book Adrift: The Story of the Lego Lost at Sea.
- But the lure of the capital is strong, so it’s off back to London, stopping off at the Park Royal Business Park on the outskirts as we approach. This could be the model for Ben Pester’s Capmeadow Business Park in The Expansion Project.
- Onwards into the city, and we shall visit the National Gallery where The Portrait Artist is partly set.
- We’ll also head to the East End where we’ll go to the dogs in Hackney as in Nicola Barker’s Reversed Forecast for something completely different!
Wanderlust beckons though, so we’ll head to Heathrow for a long-haul flight from London to:
- KolKata, India. However, we’ve stayed with Nicola Barker, as that’s where her fictional biography of mystic Sri Ramakrishna, The Cauliflower, is based. After immersing ourselves in the hustle of Kolkata, we need some R’n’R – so will take flights to get us to
- California, and via San Francisco, where we’ll pick up an RV, we visit Fresno and Sacramento where cartoonist Adrian Tomine went to school, and was born respectively – he tells of his early life there in his cartoon memoir, The Loneliness of the Long-Distance Cartoonist.
- Next we drive north through Nevada to Idaho, the setting for Caro Claire Burke’s Yesteryear. After sampling the rural delights of the Rocky Mountains foothills, we’ll drop off the RV and take a flight from Boise to:
- New York. Halfway through Tomine’s memoir, he meets his future wife and moves to New York where he now lives in Brooklyn.
Our globe-trotting must come to an end, so it’s back to Europe we will go for an extended stay in Paris – for at least 3 novellas worth (Duras, de Vigan and Balle), and our trip ends for now.
Where next though?
August is Women in Translation month, hosted by Meytal at Biblibio, so my picks include books for that.
We’ll stay in Paris with Balle as her protagonist Tara is doomed to relive November 18th over and over again. However, we won’t get trapped in that loop. After another Solvej Balle, or maybe more, let’s take a trip around the Mediterranean starting with Esther Garcia Llovet in Benidorm on the trail of Ronnie Kray’s stolen cigarette lighter in Spanish Beauty, crossing over to late 1960s Morocco with Leïla Slimani in Watch Us Dance, before heading home to London for Nicola Barker’s Darkmans.
And my trip is complete? Where did your books take you this summer?
I’m sorry I’m not joining in, the road trip idea is fabulous!
This was such fun to read and always good to have recommendations – I’m off to look into The Portrait Artist as I do like an art theme in books.
A friend and I exchange ‘literary letters’ about our reading every month and actually I have written one or two in the form of travelogues. It’s fun to do, isn’t it?
Personally I’m spending a literary few weeks in Argentina as I’m a great fan of Claudia Pineiro but I am intending to head north to New York before the summer is out.
The few novels by Pineiro I’ve read are fab. I have her latest on my shelves, plus some of her older noirs to read. I will see if I can fit one into my 20 Books – as they also tie in with August being #WITMonth.
Cathedrals is a compelling but hard read – my blood pressure rose considerably reading Julian’s account!
I love the road trip idea! I didn’t make an official summer list, but my travels-in-books took me through various English cities and towns (I’m on an Elizabeth Gaskell jag), into several remote rural areas of the US, across a Norwegian fjord, and into a fictional Caribbean island. Not a very efficient itinerary, but definitely with lots of interesting things to see.
I reordered my books read to make an almost sensible itinerary – which was fun! Your reading sounds nicely varied too.
Fabulous book trip!
Thanks! It was fun.
My bibliotrip will appear in a week’s time for my monthly Bookwise post, but given that I have been entering Paris in July with gusto it’ll be no surprise that a lot of the trip will be around la belle France. 😁
I shall look forward to it.
I haven’t kept close track of where I’ve been, but I reckon Prague, war-torn Europe (in a couple of books) and France have been the most interesting!!
Wonderful book trip!
Mine is here https://bookaroundthecorner.com/2026/07/19/20-books-of-summer-2026-my-midway-pitstop-20bos26/
What a nice trip you are making. Love your notes for each place. I also love JCSS, and would love to see this perfomance since I am a fan of Richard Armitage.
As for may books of summer, although I think I only went for 10, are almost not above zero. I am really in a reading slumb for the time being. Although I did finish one book today for Paris in July. Hopefully, it will continue. You have been doing great.
Thanks!
I’m reading Yesteryear. “That’s the thing about being a mother and a wife and an influencer, all at the same time: it’s basically like breastfeeding three babies simultaneously.” If you are having doubts, just go for it.
That’s an amazing roadtrip, while I’ve been mostly circling around Australia!
What a fun post!