Scottish Novels

I appear to have been on a Scottish kick in my reading of late. First it was Sir Walter Scott’s Waverly and The Monastery. Then it was Robert Louis Stevenson’s Kidnapped and David Balfour. Somehow I did not remember much of Kidnapped. But I must have read it sixty years ago. So I thoroughly enjoyed reading it again and following it with David Balfour for the first time. Lots of action and adventure in Kidnapped and less so, more of a love story with its ups and downs in David Balfour. Then I grabbed a novel by Jeffery Farnol off the shelf. Over the Hills turned out to be another novel set in Scotland. I’ve enjoyed them all but I think the Scottish run is over. Except that I’m reading a two-volume biography of Scott which is probably telling me more than I care to know. But it’s one of the best Scott biographies so I will endure. Somehow I love this old stuff that was popular decades ago and sometimes, as in the case of Scott, almost two centuries ago. Currently I’m reading The Golden Scarecrow by Hugh Walpole, published in 1915.

Of course, I read contemporary stuff too. Some mysteries, some science fiction, some military novels set in the age of fighting sail.. I’ve just finished The Shape of Water, the first mystery by Andrea Camilleri, a Sicilian writer. The setting is certainly different and it gives some insight to the Italian ways of justice, somewhat different from our own.