Bookish Bodrum

I haven't had much time to write this week as I've been busy reading.  In what seemed like a good plan at the time, I thought it would be a nice idea to have a joint meeting between the two English speaking reading groups on the peninsula  and rather than read one book, choose a selection of extracts about Bodrum.   So I've been grazing my book shelves and raking through the internet picking out snippets that ranged from the first millennium BC to 2011 AD and bombarding the inboxes of fellow readers on an almost daily basis.  It turned out to be a good plan despite the amount of time it ate up. Memoirs always make interesting reading but when the authors are walking the same paths we tread today, the words are all the more vibrant and exciting.  So many things change that we forget that others stay the same. The overwhelming  impression that flows through the chapters set from the 1960s to the present day is the sense of welcome a stranger feels when settling in Bodrum.  This hasn't changed, a fact attested to by one of our members who has recently moved here.

As well as good readers, we are all pretty good cooks too, the plate above is just a starter, we had chicken and tomato curry and pilav plus chocolate truffle tart, quince dessert and pear frangipane pie to finish. Everyone left with a sense that we should repeat the performance sooner rather than later. I hadn't  anticipated quite how much has been written about Bodrum and with a few more weeks of intensive reading, I'm sure we can find another angle to discuss which will be a welcome excuse to meet up again.