Hay-on-Wye, continued

[catherineldf]

And we're into the napping (Jana) and writing (me) part of the afternoon.
Amongst its other charms, Hay also possesses an ice cream parlor whose ice cream is made from sheep's milk (according to our B&B landlady). We went down and partook this afternoon and it was quite tasty, though I couldn't swear to the sheep's milk part. As with the buses in these parts, apparently you just have to know its there. SIgns and directions and such are not always available. At any rate, I choose to believe it's noncow because then I won't have a migraine tomorrow. Wish me luck on that.

We also went bookshopping in the Castle, which was extraordinarily cold (and staffed by a woman who we had inadvertently bewildered in the laundromat earlier in the day. See note above re: signs and directions). There I found the following bit of fabulousness: The Golden Book of Famous Women by Eleanor Fortescue Brickdale,  the 1919 edition, with all of the color plates and illustrations intact. (The binding's shot but Jana thinks she can do something better). Fortescue Brickdale was one of the later Pre-Raphaelites and I am a huge fan of her work.  A sample (others to be found here):

After that, it was off to a few other book, antique and whatnot sort of stores. Jana's picked up a couple of future binding projects. I've picked up a few books without purty pictures in them (Hani Kunzru's first novel; Jane Austen and Some of Her Contemporaries in a nice leather rebind; an obscure Georgette Heyer, and some other odds and ends.

I have also failed in my second attempt at reading Trollope. This time around it was Barchester Towers, last time it was The Small House at Allingham. What between his yanking the reader out of the story with coy asides and his  unrelenting pounding on the notion that women are naive and/or manipulative dim bulbs, completely susceptible to any wandering religious slimeball, I'm finding him pretty close to unreadable. This is disappointing as I had high hopes from watching the PBS version of The Way We Live Now. For you fans of his work, is it just the Barsetshire books that are like this?

Tomorrow, more roaming and such.

Comments

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

He can be entertaining . . . for fun, you might try Framley Parsonage--and then read what Jo Walton did with it in Tooth and Claw.

[catherineldf.livejournal.com]

Honestly, I didn't like "Tooth and Claw" when I read it so I don't think adding Trollope to the mix would help. :-(((
It seems to be the sort of thing you like if it's the sort of thing you like, and I am just not the audience for either.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Yeah, could be. I've a few authors like that--just can't find my way in, though others are very fond.