Typically I don’t read American historical fiction. I had to do a lot of American history in school, and so I learned a dozen dozen times about the Revolutionary War and the Civil War and Reconstruction and the dreadful dusty Depression. I feel like I have already paid my dues where learning about those things are concerned. Louisiana history too. That project on the flood of 1927 was both tedious and depressing, so I have decided that Louisiana history and me are quits. I am a grown-up now, dammit, and that means I get to choose what countries and time…
36 CommentsTag: historical fiction
For some reason I can’t seem to finish any books these days. There are a number of factors involved. I have a lot of good books right now. I am rereading Fables as well as several volumes of L.M. Montgomery’s generally-predictable-but-sweet-nevertheless short stories. I’m also reading The Two Towers, The Bell, Yes Means Yes, and more of Tom Stoppard’s plays. I have fallen back in love with a still-untitled (I’m crap at titles) story I’ve been working on for ages, so I’m working on rewriting that. Having scheduled a Lord of the Rings Extended Edition Marathon with my sister and…
22 CommentsHaving read, now, two of Georgette Heyer’s Regency romances (the other being The Reluctant Widow), and having begun making plans to dole them out to myself when I am having difficult days, I have been trying to decide what I like about them, and to remember why I refused to read them for so long. The facts as I knew them were that a) my mum, who gave me half of my favorite books, liked her; and that b) Stephen Fry liked her; and that c) Sorcery and Cecelia, which I love, was essentially Georgette Heyer with magic. Why would…
39 CommentsHouse of Leaves put me in the mood for Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, which I can’t account for because they are two wildly dissimilar books. House of Leaves is terribly modern and American and all sort of up in your face, and Jonathan Strange is set in early nineteenth-century England (alternate England, but still) and is much with the fairies and book-learning and wry gentility. Anyway I fetched out my convenient three-volume box set of paperbacks, and I read it starting in 2009 and finished in 2010. There should really be a word for a book you start one…
37 CommentsI have been hearing about this book all over. The first line is captivating: “After she threw the baby in, nobody believed me for the longest time. But I kept hearing that splash.” So I decided to read it even though it is several things I tend not to like: a Southern novel, set in the Depression, and featuring The Mines. My final opinion is, The Well and the Mine is quite good for a Southern Depression Mines novel, which – it confirmed once more for me – is just not the best kind of book for me. Nine-year-old Tess…
25 CommentsREREADING IS AMAZING. Sometimes I forget how many amazing books I have already read, because I am busy reading new books, which are also (sometimes) amazing. But this is what I’ve been reading lately. Magician’s Ward, Patricia C. Wrede Much like Mairelon the Magician. Too many names of people, but I don’t care because I am more interested in Kim’s learning magic and having a Season and Coming Out at a ball and having Offers of Marriage to turn down. In pretty dresses. Can there be more pretty dresses? And God, pretty shoes? I need new shoes so much. My…
33 Comments
Review: In the Garden of Iden, Kage Baker
Embarrassing confessions can be good for the soul, so here’s one of mine. Sometimes when I read a book by a new author, and I really really like it, and then I go to the library and see there’s a whole shelf of books by that author – sometimes, when that happens, I get a little internal sound effect of a deep, serious voice going “So it begins.” Well, okay, always. Every time that happens, I get the sound effect. And it doesn’t always work out. Sometimes the author breaks my heart. Sometimes I accidentally read the best book first…
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