Waverly

 No, not this guy:

Nicola Walker as Annika Strandhed

source: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/nicola-walker-annika-1920x1080-1.jpg

I watched the second episode of season two of Annika on PBS Sunday night.  Annika is a murder show but with a twist, the main character, Annika Strandhed, is the head of the Marine Homicide Unit in Scotland.  The twist is that Annika, played by Nicola Walker, talks directly to the viewer, often with some aside about her own life but mainly to bring up some cultural/historical facts that may be related to the case (or her own life).

Annika was originally a series of brief radio shows on the BBC.  In that show, Annika is still a detective but in Norway.  But as with the TV show, the crime and detection tends to be cut and dried but the cultural asides are a hoot, and of course Annika speaks directly to the listener.

the BBC radio show mp3 files:  https://archive.org/details/AnnikaStrandedr4

the PBS web page for Annika:  https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/shows/annika/

Anyway in episode two of season two Annika mentions a novel by Sir Walter Scott called Waverly.  In fact there are a whole Waverly series of books including the most famous ones: Ivanhoe and Rob Roy.  My Dad bought a set of the Waverly novels but I've never touched them.  Apparently Waverly is a formidable novel so I'm thinking that instead of reading it, I'll listen to it, as I did with Moby Dick:

https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2022/08/it-is-done-135-chapters-and-epilogue.html

Librivox has a recording of Waverly so I'm going to download it and try listening to it:

https://librivox.org/waverley-volume-1-by-sir-walter-scott/

Waverly should be a good candidate for listening to while exercising (it's hard to nod off while exercising).

Best Regards,
Chuck, WB9KZY
http://wb9kzy.com/ham.htm