Cruising with a Library

My wife, Sharon, our younger son, Michael and myself are crusing from Lima to New York City on the Oceania Cruise Line ship, Marina. One of the reasons I like this ship is the library.

On the 14th deck is a traditional library with a couple of thousand hardcover books. Most are fiction with a healthy selection of crime fiction.

The library has open access to windows looking out over the ocean. Inside the library are big comfortable leather chairs. Around the corner is a free coffee bar which will make up a reader's favourite speciality coffees. (They are included in your ticket.) Cookies are always available to supplement the coffee.

It is hard for me to think of a more inviting place for a book lover. It is a rare time of the day or evening when several people are not in the library.

All of the books are available to be borrowed. The ship requests that each passenger borrow a couple of books at a time.

I went through the crime fiction books. Not surprisingly most are from ongoing series with well known authors. I took back to the state room a pair of books.

I have read some of the books in Stella Rimington's series featuring English spy, Liz Carlyle. The author, the former head of MI-5 is a good writer. I picked up Present Danger from the shelves.

The other book is The Mapping of Love and Death by Jacqueline Winspear in her ongoing Maisie Dobbs series set in England in the 1930's.

Michael is currently reading World Without End by Ken Follett. His second saga from medieval England focused around a cathedral.

When he is finished the book he has In the Garden of Beasts by Erik Larson waiting for him. It is the story of an American family in Hitler's Berlin during the 1930's.

We are happy cruisers.