Big Read finale

 For the past year, I have been participating in The Big Read from the Trollope Society.  In bi-weekly Zoom meetings from London, UK, I have joined in the discussion of several worthy novels by the prolific Victorian author Anthony Trollope.  Coming into 2025, I was well familiar with Trollope's best-know novel series, the Chronicles of Barsetshire, and the Pallisers, but little beyond that.  By following along with this year's reading list, I have been exposed to a much wider selection of the author's works.  Some of the books I have enjoyed greatly...others, not so much.  But it was all time well spent.  And now I embark on the final reading assignment of the year.  It is the short story Christmas at Thompson Hall, first published in 1876.  Instead of buying a bound paper copy of the book as I usually do, I've instead downloaded the text from Project Gutenberg to read on my vintage 2nd generation Kindle.  Instead of turning pages, I'll be virtually flipping them with a button press.  But by the final meeting on December 22, I will have completed the entire reading list of this year's Big Read.

Playlist

 Since he began several weeks ago, I've been a regular listener to the podcast of actor Bill Nighy, Ill-advised.  In each weekly episode (which usually drop on Thursdays) Bill dispenses answers to listener-submitted questions on a wide variety of topics.  Everything from personal relationships to sartorial tips receive Bill's ostensibly well considered opinions.  Bill himself cuts off any excessive expectations, however, by prefacing each show with the boast that it is at best an opportunity to squander time.  And it's certainly helped me to do that; my job requires the squandering of large amounts of time, which I do via podcasts and audiobooks while I labor away at the lab bench in the furtherance of science.  Anyway, the show concludes each week with a musical playlist, a compendium of music that Bill recommends.  He is, we are to understand, a devotee of diverse musical genres.  Since I am not, I usually gloss over this segment of the show.  But then is the book segment, for Bill is an avid reader.  And he's mentioned a couple of titles recently that I have greatly enjoyed.  The first is The Bookshop, by Penelope Fitzgerald, which I just finished.  The short novel is the story of a brave young woman, Florence Green, who overextends herself and her capital resources to open a bookshop in a small, dreary coastal town in 1960s England.  In doing so, she upsets the rigid social order of the dull, drab village, and plunges headlong into the morass of bureaucratic red tape and hidebound local inhabitants.  Fitzgerald's delightful novel is a fascinating study of human nature and the incongruous hurdles that are thrown up by prejudice and ignorance.  Apparently, the novel was also made into a feature film of the same name, which Mr. Nighy appeared in.  From this, I immediately moved on to Nighy's next book recommendation, Berlin Game by Len Deighton.  I'm only a few chapters into this first book of a nine book series, but am already enthralled.  It is a cold war spy thriller set in divided Germany shortly after WWII, and it reads very much like a novel of John Le Carre or Graham Greene.  This was once my favorite type of fiction, and it's a pleasure to be reunited with the style by such a well written book.  I expect I'll enjoy this and all the ones to follow.  Bill Nighy's book tip batting average is running high- I hope I can keep up.