By VIKTORIA SUNDQVIST

Last year when I had to have surgery, I brought Enid Blyton’s “The Island of Adventure” with me to the hospital. I figured the easy-to-read children’s book would help pass the time without making me completely exhausted.

I had read it many times before - when I was a lot younger, of course, and have always enjoyed reading anything she has written.

I was discharged from the hospital before I made it to Chapter 4, but at least the book brought me to the rocky hillside of north Britain for a few hours. With sentences like “It was pleasant at tea time that day” and “It was really most extraordinary,” I almost started reading it with a British accent.

During my first few days home from the surgery, a friend dropped by with a stack of books. “P.S. I Love You” by Cecelia Ahern immediately caught my attention, and it took me to Ireland for about a week, where people go to pubs and wear trainers and knickers and jumpers and sometimes have to go to hospital (without the “the,” which has always fascinated me – how can British English and American English be so different in some regards?).

Ahern's book was delightful, although a bit sad since it centers around coping with the loss of a loved one and how to move on.

Another book dropped into the mail a few days later from a friend in Sweden – “500 Reasons Why I Hate The Office.” It seemed like the perfect book at first, but after skimming through the first 65 pages or so, I realized it was just a bit too British for me. Perhaps I just didn't get it because I don’t work in a regular office, where “client entertainment” or “office creeps” or “dress codes” are discussed on a regular basis. It was funny, though, to read about organisations (spelled with an “s” instead of a “z”) and “socialising (same thing) with colleagues.”

But it wasn’t until I picked up Bill Bryson’s “Notes from a Small Island,” – where he tours England one last time before moving back to the United States – that I realized all my recent books had centered around the British isles. Bryson took me on a delightful trip via motorways and Marks & Spencer to zebra crossings and Towcester (pronounced “toaster,” allegedly). And again, I am reminded how much I like his humor and self-loathing voice.