WHAT have you finished reading recently? Friends Divided, Gordon S. Wood. This book is why I’ve been so review-quiet the last week: it’s a beefy boy.
WHAT are you currently reading? I’m listening to Kenneth Branagh read The Magician’s Nephew, which is first-series wise in The Chronicles of Narnia. That’s more of a casual in-the-car thing, though. I haven’t committed to my next “real” read.
WHAT are you reading next? As I mused last week, I think Friends Divided will start a minor binge. I’ve picked up Thomas Jefferson and the Barbary Pirates as well as Isaacson’s biography of Benjamin Franklin. I’d like to read about members of the founding generation I know comparatively little about, though, especially John’s cousin Samuel Adams, the original Son of Liberty.
Today’s prompt from Long and Short reviews asks for literary worlds we’d like to visit. First and foremost would be Narnia, of course, preferably during the reign of the kid-kings when there’s no drama happening that requires a book being written about it. Then there’s Middle-Earth — the Shire, thank you, not Mordor or any place with monstrous spiders. I would love to visit, too, the innocent world of Bertie Wooster and join him while he legs it over to the Drones club for a few lemon squashes and general evasion of responsibilities. Oh, and can’t forget the little village from The Awakening of Miss Prim, which somehow evaded social disruptions of industrialism and modernity, and where people go around drinking tea and discussing GK Chesterton. Last, Port William, but before World War 2 — where one can still hang around Jayber’s barbershop and listen to what Burley Coulter has been up to this time.
Reading Freely 
The Shire would be a cool place to visit!
Yes, one of my favorite tracks on YouTube is an instrumental based on the Shire.
Narnia would be a great place to visit! 🙂
Oh Isaacson’s biography of Benjamin Franklin is so good, well, as all his biographies I think. Great in audio as well.
Last book I finished: A Shilling for Candles, by Josephine Tey
Am reading: Mishima: A Vision of the Void, by Marguerite Yourcenar
Am listening to: Angelhunting, by Ji Hong Sayo
Next: Voici demain, by Valentin Musso
I’m very much enjoying it!
I will join in encouraging your plan to read Walter Isaacson’s magnificent biography of Benjamin Franklin. Franklin was one of the important minds of the Enlightenment.
Next year, when I go to New Zealand, one of the stops is Hobbiton. But I think Narnia would be cool, too.
I almost chose Narnia as well, but ended up sticking to small towns. Thanks for sharing, Stephen.
https://thebookconnectionccm.blogspot.com/2025/07/wednesday-weekly-blogging-challenge_02112747744.html
Lots of lists with Narnia and it was one I considered but did not add. Middle Earth scares me a little.
Why so? Mordor & Orcs and such?