It's E T Tuesday & cloudy...

It's pretty miserable weather for a Sydney November. Extremely overcast and a dreadfully cold day. It's perfect reading weather (not that I need a certain kind of weather to want to read). I do love winter just oh so much and am really envying the northern hemisphere right about now. The thought of cosying up in bed with a good book & a hot cup of coffee seems blissful.

Wouldn't reading on this lovely Parisian balcony with a... Café au lait, probably a cigarette (you're in France remember) & a macaron from Laduree...be perfection?

As much as I love the Eiffel, I wouldn't be reading about it.

I'd be page-turning this...

 

I'm not surprised Helen Simonson's Major Pettigrew's Last Stand has become a New York Times Best Seller, in the Top 5 at Angus & Robertson's Bookstore & is soon becoming a favourite of mine. It's so delightful. Here's a little synopsis:

"Honour, duty and a properly brewed cup of tea ... get ready for the Major to steal your heart in the sweet, moving and uplifting story of a highly unlikely relationship between a very proper English gentleman and a widowed Pakistani shopkeeper. Major Ernest Pettigrew (retired) leads a quiet life in the small rural English village of Edgecombe St Mary where he values the proper things that Englishmen have treasured for generations - honour, duty, decorum and a properly brewed cup of tea.

The Major takes pleasure in his well-organised and rational life until he finds that his patronising son, and the kind yet interfering ladies of the village seem to have their own, rather special plans for him. It's his brother's death, though, that sparks an unexpected friendship with Mrs Jasmina Ali, the Pakistani shopkeeper from the village. Drawn together by their shared love of literature and the loss of their respective spouses, the Major and Mrs Ali soon find their friendship blossoming into something more. But although the Major was actually born in Lahore, and Mrs Ali was born in Cambridge, village society insists on embracing him as the quintessential local and her as a permanent foreigner.

A most unlikely hero, Major Pettigrew finds himself contending with irate relatives, an outraged village and a mad old woman armed with a knitting needle before he comes to understand his own heart. Written with warmth, feeling and a delightfully dry sense of humour, this very modern love story will have you cheering wildly for the Major and Mrs Ali."

I think it may be time for some coffee (I prefer it to tea) & Major Pettigrew.

Happy Tuesday mes amis ♥