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Location: Seattle, Washington, United States

What you have here is an old guy. In education for 30 years, started teaching elementary, ended as library and media director of community college. I've enjoyed mountain climbing, sports car rallying, was pipe major of a bagpipe band, played guitar and sang during the folk revival, walking and hiking later in life. Now fairly sedentary. Enjoy reading, esp. mysteries and fantasy, but my reading is pretty eclectic. Enjoy movies, giving Netflix a workout.

Monday, December 12, 2005

The Herries Chronicles

I’ve just finished a wonderful reading experience...at least for me. It was the four novels by Hugh Walpole which are collectively called "The Herries Chronicles." They are titled Rogue Herries, Judith Paris, The Fortress and Vanessa. The story covers four generations of the Herries family in the Lake District of England and in London. It was really one long book and one that I could live in. Of course it helps that I have been to the Lake District a dozen times and have been to many of the places that Walpole uses in the novel. My wife’s cousin one time directed us out of Keswick and up the fell to Watendlath and pointed out Hugh Walpole’s home over in the next fell. The books are rich in characterization and in description. The Herries family, both immediate and more distant, are, as one might expect a varied lot, loving and hating, rich and poor, adventuresome and stick in the muds. I must search out more of Walpole’s work. Other than this I’ve only read a short story, "The Tarn," which is a bit supernatural. It’s one of my favorite stories of this type.

1 Comments:

Blogger goodyfari said...

I first read these books when I was 15 in 1969. I loved them then and am curerently re reading them 40 years later and still enjoying them.
It was my cousin who put me onto them and she recently told me there are two other Herries books.
The Bright Pavilions takes the story back to Elizabethan times and the sixth which I am not sure if she said was unfinished.
She did say that the sixth one she only ever managed to borrow from a local library and has never seen in a shop.
I must admit that as I read it as an adult it is even more interesting for me as I live on the edge of the Lake District and know very well the places he writes about.

2:33 PM  

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