This year's Two-Person Book Club/ Vienna?

My annual round-up of books we have more than one copy of, for a display of selections for The Two-Person Book Club. (< I feel like I missed index-labeling a couple years though. I started this in 2019, and I thought I'd done it every year...)

Rarely do both copies sell, but it's one of my favorite ideas. I almost never read in tandem either, but Ms Chocolate and I plan to read the 3-vol. Kristin Lavransdatter* by Sigrid Undset together this winter.

Every year I find we have different duplicate copies, but some titles are perennials. 
Most days you could find a copy on the shelf of Tuesdays with Morrie, Peace like a River, Cold Mountain (four, here!), and Angela's Ashes. 
And always some title by Alexander McCall Smith (three No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency in this display).

(Also the Bible, and probably there're some Shakespeare repeats--Romeo and Juliet is a good bet--I didn't check for them yet.)

Some titles have faded away--bestsellers of the moment.
 I haven't seen a single donation of Eat, Pray, Love for a couple years--nor, come to think of it, The Purpose-Driven Life.

Some have not. 
Dan Brown. The man is undimmed.
We have a copy of The DaVinci Code in stock, but only the one, but two of Angels & Demons here.
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"Vienna waits for you."

Billy Joel said his song is about:
"Slow down, look around you and have some gratitude for the good things in your life. That’s what Vienna represented to me."

But to me, Vienna is... art museums!

Have you been? I haven't.

 I've wanted to go to Vienna, ever since
1. Watching Museum Hours (2012, interview with dir. Jem Cohen), about a museum guard who befriends a visitor at the Kunsthistorisches Museum. www.khm.at/en

(Or, maybe since watching The Third Man, though that's hardly inviting!)

2. And then, doing a Toy Recreation of "Hunters in the Snow", by Pieter Brueghel the elder--that and the largest collection of his other paintings is in Vienna. 

Jem Cohen, dir. of Museum Hours, in front of a Brueghel (The Fight Between Carnival and Lent) [via]:

There's an excellent museum of design I'd like to see too.

3. And now... my friend John Shk told me his will be in Vienna for a couple days next fall, as part of a river cruise. 
I was so envious, I decided to look into going.

Of course Penny Cooper wants to go!
Only problem: money.

So (instead? in the meantime?), I am thinking I will FINALLY do something I've meant to do: Toys Recreate Art... locally!

Today I am going to the art museum here to see if there's a painting there the girlettes would like to recreate. 
I'll take a couple with me in my bag, as sensors. They can go off like a vibrating phone if/when I walk past one they like.
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* I've never read Kirsten Lavransdatter
but someone recommended it to me highly, and it sounds interesting:

"The novel is meticulously faithful ... in its depiction of conditions in 14th century Norway and presents a broad picture of life in that period at all levels of society. 

But it is not an historical novel as a story of characters whose lives are set against the background of a particular historical event; 
it is rather a psychological study of individuals and the way they seek to confront the truth about their actions and to bring their lives into conformity with the truth about the kinds of beings they believe that we are."

--graham.uchicago.edu/course/sigrid-undset-kristin-lavransdatter