Trip Triple Treat

Here are the delightful second-hand books I purchased yesterday, just over six weeks before we set out for Bruges and a tiny village in France. They also relate to a trip I'd like to make in the next few years.

I know that many people now prefer taking their reading material on Kindles, iPads, and similar devices, but I love the tactile pleasure of turning pages and being able to read at any point in a flight with no hassle. I still have my first Penguin paperbacks -- D.H. Lawrence's Sons and Lovers and Women in Love, which I bought in April 1968 on my first trip to Great Britain, and always look for that familiar orange color in used bookshops.

Here's what I have to look forward to:
-- THE STRAIGHT AND NARROW PATH by Honor Tracy
(first published by Methuen in 1956, published by Penguin Books in 1960)
When an anthropologist, on holiday in an Irish village, contributes an article on local customs to an English newspaper he is unprepared for the results.

-- MIND YOU, I'VE SAID NOTHING! Forays in the Irish Republic, also by Honor Tracy
(first published by Methuen in 1953, published by Penguin Books in 1961)
The book takes you to Dublin, Cork, and Bandon, to Kerry and the Blasket Islands. Time and time again she [the author] conveys the magnificent dottiness of the Irish approach to life.

-- HARVEST HOME by David Toulmin
(first published in 1978 by Paul Harris Publishing, Edinburgh; Pan edition 1980)
…[he] brings to vivid life in these stories the world of the Buchan farming folk of half a century ago. There's a glossary of "Scots words" at the back; these two seemed apt for (1) me and (2) our weather!
Dozzled — in dotage; absent-minded
Drizzen — dull, colourless, cheerless