The Content Reader

I have been on Mallorca. It is a lovely place, all the year around, but especially in the autumn, where the weather here in the northern part of Europe is grey, rainy and depressing. We had a wonderful time, and apart from two days of rather windy shores, beautiful sunshine and t-shirt weather. We visited all our favourite places, since we don't know when we will come back next time. I brought two books with me, already started, and thinking I would finish them. And so I did. It was Waiting for Sunrise by William Boyd and Burning Bright by Trace Chevalier. Mostly read at the flat, but managed to read also in beautiful and favourite places. I recently read Brazzaville Beach  by William Boyd, highly recommended from my brother-in-law. Really loved the book, so eager to read another one. This I had on my TBR shelves. It is not in the same league as Brazzaville Beach. Totally different setting, this time starting in Vienna in 1913 where Lysander Rief, an actor, comes for a psych...

This book found its way into my TBR shelves some years ago. Mainly because I loved The Girl with the Pearl Earring  so much. The last story was woven around a painting by Johannes Vermeer with the same name, and considered to be one of his master pieces. This book is about another painting by Domenico Ghirlandaio, Portrait of a Girl.  Not much is known about the painting, but it is thought to have been done around 1490. Inspired by this painting Tracy Chevalier has written a tale of a painter, a young girl from the upper classes, her mother and the weavers of tapestries in Brussels. The painter, Nicolas des Innocents,  gets a commission to make paintings which will be transfered into tapestries. He falls in love with the daughter of the noble man, and it seems, in most women that come his way. Once the paintings are ready he leaves for Brussels where the real weaving masters work. Here he gets involved with the family of the weaving master, who is taking on the challeng...