The Bertolini – “The Signora had no business to do it,” said Miss Bartlett, “no business at all. She promised us south rooms with a view close together, instead of which here are north rooms, looking into a courtyard, and a long way apart. Oh, Lucy!”

A Room with a View
By E.M. Forster
Source: Personal copy

So begins the story of Miss Lucy Honeychurch and her chaperone Miss Charlotte Bartlett. The two English women have traveled to Italy and are getting settled in their pensione when they realize that they do not have rooms with desirable views and frankly everywhere they look reminds them of home.

At once Mr. Emerson who has heard their dismay offers to exchange rooms with them. He and his son, George, would be delighted to trade their rooms which do have views. This behavior seems unseemly to the women but they are persuaded to trade their rooms. Now the ladies finally have rooms to their satisfaction and armed with their trusted Baedeker Guidebook can set to visit Florence.

As days unfold, Lucy continues to get to know Mr. Emerson and his son better. George is quiet but there is something that intrigues Lucy. Still it is not until one fateful day where they witness a tragedy and then they end up sharing a kiss. This will not do and Miss Barlett decides that they must leave Florence at once and move on to Rome. In Rome they meet the Vyse family and immediately Cecil begins to pursue Lucy.

The setting them moves to England where Lucy has accepted to marry Cecil but the past is going to catch up with Lucy and once again she’ll meet George.

There were so many things I thoroughly enjoyed about this novel, from learning about travel in the early 1900s to feeling for a young woman who is finding out about love. Does she follow convention or does she give in to her heart? If you’ve not read this classic I hope you will add it to your reading list. It will surely transport you to another place and time.

**This counts for the Back to the Classics Reading challenge, travel category, and Mount TBR Challenge

It’s time for another entry for, First Chapter, First Paragraph Tuesday Intros. Thank you to Yvonne, from Socrates’ Book Reviews who hosts this meme. As a reminder this is your chance to post a bit from a book that you are reading or planning to read. My entry comes from a book I’ve recently started:

“Beginnings, it’s said, are apt to be shadowy. So it is with this story, which starts with the emergence of a new species maybe two hundred thousand years ago. The species does not yet have a name — nothing does — but it has the capacity to name things. As with any young species, this one’s position is precarious. Its numbers are small, and its range restricted to a slice of eastern Africa. Slowly its population grows, but quite possibly then it contracts again — some would claim nearly fatally – to just a few thousand pairs.”

The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History by Elizabeth Kolbert

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction, the book’s premise is that the earth is the midst of a sixth extinction. There have been fix mass extinctions over the last half-billion years where life on earth has dramatically changed but this extinction, and this one is predicated to be the most devastating and is one that is man-made.

You are probably thinking we are in a pandemic why read this? Isn’t there enough gloom and doom? Well, at the beginning of the year my mom and I were watching a news report about a finding of 2,000 mammoth bones in Mexico City, which were unearth during the current construction of a new airport. The finding is the largest collection in one place.

I was fascinated by that story and the efforts they are making to ensure that they take precautions in case of further findings and what the plan is afterwards. I hope that one day I can go and visit the planned exhibit. I am sure I’ll be in awe.

In the meantime though that made me think of animals that are no more and just how the world has changed and how little time we are on it yet how much of an impact our actions have. So I remember hearing about this book especially around nonfiction November and I thought it’s time to read it.

Anyway let me know what you think and if it’s a book you’ve read or would read.