{"id":3867,"date":"2020-02-15T17:02:23","date_gmt":"2020-02-15T22:02:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.virginiaparker.net\/travel\/?p=3867"},"modified":"2022-02-09T22:04:31","modified_gmt":"2022-02-10T03:04:31","slug":"our-mutual-friends","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.virginiaparker.net\/travel\/?p=3867","title":{"rendered":"Our Mutual Friends"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-medium\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" src=\"https:\/\/www.virginiaparker.net\/travel\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/Austen-300x225.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-3874\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.virginiaparker.net\/travel\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/Austen-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.virginiaparker.net\/travel\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/Austen-1024x769.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.virginiaparker.net\/travel\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/Austen-768x577.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.virginiaparker.net\/travel\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/Austen.jpg 1200w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>One of the pleasures of traveling is reading books that enrich my experience of a place and audiobooks that accompany me as I walk the streets. I like a mix of biography, history, and fiction. Thus in Russia it was&nbsp;<em>Speak, Memory<\/em>&nbsp;(Nabokov),&nbsp;<em>The Brothers Karamazov,<\/em> (Dostoyevsky), <em>Dead Souls<\/em> (Gogol) and biographies of Peter the Great, Catherine the Great and the doomed Romanovs. <br> <br>In London I am spoiled for choice, but I know Jane Austen is fine idea, especially <em>Persuasion<\/em>. I&#8217;ve been listening to the audiobook&nbsp;<em>Jane Austen at Home<\/em>&nbsp;by Lucy Worsley. Apparently the British Library is in possession of Miss Austen&#8217;s writing desk. It&#8217;s on my must-see list now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Dickens is marvelous when read aloud and I have <em>Little Dorrit<\/em> narrated by the incomparable Juliet Stevenson, along with Dickens-themed audiowalks.  I&#8217;ll fire up P.G. Wodehouse&#8217;s oeuvre whenever I find myself in need of screwball comedy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But where oh where can I find traces of the brilliant author, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/books\/what-to-read\/terry-pratchetts-10-best-discworld-characters\/\">Terry Pratchett?<\/a> I know Ankh-Morpork isn&#8217;t London precisely, but still.  I suppose I will have to buy a dubious\u00a0sausage-inna-bun from a street vendor and imagine it&#8217;s C.M.O.T. Dibbler.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-medium\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"300\" height=\"187\" src=\"https:\/\/www.virginiaparker.net\/travel\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/Prachett-300x187.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-3873\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.virginiaparker.net\/travel\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/Prachett-300x187.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.virginiaparker.net\/travel\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/02\/Prachett.jpg 620w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>One of the pleasures of traveling is reading books that enrich my experience of a place and audiobooks that accompany me as I walk the streets. I like a mix of biography, history, and fiction. Thus in Russia it was&nbsp;Speak, Memory&nbsp;(Nabokov),&nbsp;The Brothers Karamazov, (Dostoyevsky), Dead Souls (Gogol) and biographies of Peter the Great, Catherine the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[249,257],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-3867","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-britannia-2020","7":"category-london-2022","8":"entry","9":"has-post-thumbnail"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p7OBxc-10n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.virginiaparker.net\/travel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3867","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.virginiaparker.net\/travel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.virginiaparker.net\/travel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.virginiaparker.net\/travel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.virginiaparker.net\/travel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3867"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.virginiaparker.net\/travel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3867\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3883,"href":"https:\/\/www.virginiaparker.net\/travel\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3867\/revisions\/3883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.virginiaparker.net\/travel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3867"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.virginiaparker.net\/travel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3867"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.virginiaparker.net\/travel\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3867"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}