Suggestions

I've been thinking about books I recommend and ones I'd like to get for Christmas. Here are a few I've read, that you might consider.
A different take on the vampire novel: Vlad by C C Humphreys. No teenage angst no wild sex scenes. This is a well written novel about the life of the real Vlad, full of detail, great backgound. He gives a looong list of resources, and has a glossary. It begins when Vlad is a young hostage of the Turks, and ends with, perhaps, his death. It's absorbing, and I was caught up in the story of a period when the Turks spread over a large part of eastern Europe. This is a fine book for a history buff.
Having read The Birth of Venus for my book club, and enjoyed it, I am now reading Transgressions, also by Sarah Dunant.This  is a totally different sort of novel. A woman and her lover have had a rancorous separation nine months before, and now odd things are happening in the house she owns in London. She comes home to find all her CD's are stacked in the middle of the kitchen table.Later, she  finds her kitchen table set for dinner, and two pots of food for her cat on the floor. Hmmm. And I'm sitting here not knowing what comes next.
Maggie O'Farrell's novel, The Hand That First Held Mine is a haunting look at interconnecting lives, and a past that shapes their future. I read till 2am with this one.
Others I'd recommend: Garth Stein's The Art of Racing in the Rain; The Hearts of Horses or anything else by Molly Gloss; Behind the Scenes at the Museum or anything else by Kate Atkinson.
Mysteries by Peter Robinson, Tana French, Fred Vargas.
Funny books by Christopher Moore, Carl Hiaason and Janet Evanovich.
Fantasy by Rodrigo Garcia y Robertson
As for books I want-the next book by any of the above.

Janeites

A Truth Universlly Acknowledged  is subtitled 33 Great Writers on Why We Read Jane Austen. Among them are Sir Walter Scott, Anythony Trollope, Virginia Woolf  and C.S. Lewis. What a lineup!
I read and reread Jane Austen because I thnk there is no other author who so describes human interaction. The language may change, but the soul is the same. I read Jane Austen to relearn how to write irony. The descriptions of characters, without giving more than an indication of how they look-wish I could do that. The book is edited by Susannah Carson, and  her essay is first, followed by (gasp!) Eudora Welty, followed by many more writers, from the 18th, 19th, 20th, even 21st centuries. While Pride and  Prejudice  remains my favorite, I also like the more complicated Emma and the disturbing  Mansfield Park.  Right now, because of the intense work on my own rewrites, I'm  back reading Pride and Prejudice  for the umpty umph time, to soothe my battered soul.
This is a great Christmas Gift for  your Janeite.

Well!

Thought you'd enjoy this. How many symptoms do you have? I DO NOT have books in my bathtub and that stack on the dining table can be easily explained.
http://www.ehow.com/how_2334878_identify-bibliomania.html

Bah!

This has been a hard post to write, mostly because I suddenly lost most of the post that had been saved. So, anyway, let me explain again that today I am being a scold, which I understand is the feminine version of curmudgeon. I checked out the NYTimes best sellers and saw the same old names. Some are good writers, some write the same old book over and over and... I'm not even sure the old standbys write. Maybe they just tell someone, "Let's do another about a terrorist with a nuclear briefcase." Don't get me wrong. I love Janet Evanovich and Steig Larssen. I have read Lee Child and think he's a very good writer, just not my taste. I've read a couple of Ken Follett's doorstops and liked them.
So that's one scold. Another is publishers who, in this tricky time, only want sure things. It's not only my own  problem with getting a novel published; it's seeing some of the really, really bad stuff that does get published. Dan Brown comes to mind.
Scold #3. Maybe it's me, but...First let me say I do read Literature (capital L) and, as every other kind of book, I like some, love some, throw some across the room. Recently I began to read The Wake of Forgiveness. Maybe some other time I would have liked it. That certainly happens. But I read over 100 pages and thought that was enough. The descriptions of East Texas are great, the horse races were great-the people not so much. I simply couldn't get involved. This is petty, but I have to tell you, I laughed at the part where the protagonist is examining a place where a heifer bites him and draws blood!  In my childhood I had a lot to do with ranch animals. I was bitten by horses, dogs, cats, rabbits, snakes, but never by anything bovine. Cows do not have upper front teeth. I've been thrown from them and stomped and kicked by them, but never bitten. I told you it was petty, but it's also a red flag to me as a writer. ALWAYS check your facts. Some smartass out there will catch you.
Now I'm going to do my NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writers Month) 2000 words  for the day.Then I'm going to start  reading Ape House.

The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest

At 1am I finished the book. At 2, I finally got to sleep. Have you ever read a book that was so intense you had to put it down and go for a walk? Of Steig Larsson's three books, this one is the most hair raisng. It starts where The Girl Who Played With Fire ends. For you who haven't read that one yet, I won't say any more.
Anyway #3 takes the tension to a whole new level. It's brilliant, I think the best of the three-much more involved, believe it or not.I hate to say too much, but as a writer I amazed at the way he was able to keep so many story strands going so smoothly.
There's a lot about his background on the home page and you might want to check it out. I regret that he died at such a young age. Whether the lawsuit will solve the future of a next book is anyone's guess.

Anne Perry

I don't know how she does it. I read her two mystery series about Thomas Monk and  Charlotte and Thomas Pitt, and learned a lot about 19th Century London. Then she came out with the World War I novels, also containing a mystery, as well as devastating descriptions of the war itself.
Now she's taken us back to 13th Century Constantinople in a stand alone novel, The Sheen of the Silk.  I'm not far into it-it's a long one, a little over 500 pages, but I'm captivated.
A young woman,Anna, trained as a doctor by her father, disguises herself as a eunuch, Anastasius, and comes to find her twin brother Justinian, who has disappeared after  being accused of killing a nobleman.
She gets involved in court and religious intrigue as nobles and church hierarchy use her rmedical skills. This is a time when the Church of Rome and the Orthodox Church are battling over the meanings of true  Christianity.
More on this as I read the book. But check out Anne Perry-she's so skilled at setting up suspense.

Other news: Whidbey Writers Group has published its new book, Whidbey Writes Again.  As always, the cover is beautiful, and the stories and poems are worth reading.

Time Slips

Mark Twain started all this, I think, with A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court.When I first wrote my book, twenty odd years ago (before Diana Gabaldon came on the scene) I came up with a heroine coming to Scotland, staying in a castle B&B, and ending up in the 18th Century, dying at the Battle of Culloden. Over the years and many incarnations, the novel turned into a straight up historical novel, partly because I got more interested in the history, partly because I found Gabaldon's first novel unsatisfactory. I haven't read any more of hers, though heaven knows they're popular. Anyway, I haven't stopped enjoying time slip novels, such as the Jane Austin ones.

Recently I stumbled on the books by Rodrigo Garcia y Robertson. Is that a great name? At any rate, he has written a trilogy beginning with Knight Errant about The Wars of the Roses. The fact that Garcia y Robertson actually taught medieval history at UCLA and Villanova has a lot to do  witih the excellence of the books. The heroine, Robyn Stafford, is smart and likeable. The hero is Edward Plantagenet. Robyn works in the movie industry, was a barrel racer, and is learning withchcraft. She gets into and out of some horrific situations, and in the second book, she manages to bring along essentials back to the middle ages: coffee, tampons, her notebook, etc. Sounds silly, but for me  it works. The author's knowledge of details of the 15th Century  gives the books authority.  I have his two latest waiting for me at the library. Can't wait.

A Couple of Winners

Once again our book club is reading a winner-this time a memoir: Heart in the Right Place by Carolyn Jourdan. I'll admit one point in the book's favor for me is the locale, the East Tennessee mountains. My ancestors came from there, and I'm pretty sure there are some distant relatives still there.  The story sounds a little trite: city gal, making big bucks as aide for a state congressman, has to come home after her mother has a heart attack. Her father is a small town doctor and her mother was his receptionist. Of course the story  arc is predictable. The longer she stays, the more she becomes involved in the people her father cares for. But it's the people, many so poor her father doesn't charge them, who make this story so funny and so poignant.

Tana French's mystery novels, set in Ireland, mostly Dublin, are books about a tough, gritty Ireland, with lots of bad guys and an undercover cop who's not exactly a total hero. In order (and it helps if you read them in order) they're In The Woods, The Likeness, and Faithful Place.  Now that I've read all three, I want to go back to the beginning. In the early books we find out that detective Frank Mackey has nothing to do with his very dysfunctional family. In this one we find out why. It begins as a flashback. He's nineteen, waiting for the girl he's going to run away with, away from the slums where he was raised. You're grabbed right there, and French doesn't let you go for 400 pages. I finished reading the book at 1am, and  just reread the last 20 pages again. Now that's a good read.

The prologue of my second book, Gang Warily. I have about 41 thousand words-halfway through



MAY 1746



After the Battle of Culloden the armies of King George, led by his son The Duke of Cumberland, swept through the Highlands, stamping out any perceived sign of rebellion. Captured Jacobites, the supporters of Prince Charles Stuart, were imprisoned in Inverness and on ships in Moray Firth and the Thames in London. They were held in inhumane conditions, without medical help, and died in hundreds, their bodies tossed in the Firth and the Thames. The Royalists recaptured Fort William and Fort Augustus, and used them to spread terror. Women and children watched as their homes and crops burned, and starved in the following months. The clan system that had existed for hundreds of years died.

The composer Handel wrote Hail the Conquering Hero and Judas Maccabeus to honor the Duke of Cumberland. A flower, Sweet William, was named after him. In Scotland, it’s called Stinking Willie. Men under Cumberland showed an unparalleled viciousness. One such man was Captain Caroline Frederic Scott, who had been in charge of the prison in Inverness before he became one of the men leading retribution along the Great Glen. He was determined to wipe out all remnants of rebellion.
                     ------------------------------------------------
 Captain Caroline Frederic Scott stared at the man held between two redcoats, a sword and a musket at his feet. Rannoch Moor, barren and windswept, dotted with lochans, stretched around them under gray skies. Patches of snow still clung to the Grampian Mountains surrounding the moor.

The young man spoke in Gaelic, then in English. “My name is Davey MacGregor. I am bringing in my arms as you hae ordered.”


Scott, tall and blond, his face round and cherubic as a child’s, his blue eyes cold as the bitter wind, said, “I think you were planning to ambush my men. You are a MacGregor, not to be trusted, known to have fought for the usurper Stuart. You fought against His Majesty’s army at Culloden.”

Davey MacGregor shook his head. “I am obeying your orders to bring in my weapons.”

“You filthy Papist. Do you dare to question an officer of the rightful King?” Scott turned away and mounted his horse, then told his men, “He is a traitor. There are no trees to hang in from. Treat him as he deserves. Do not waste ammunition on him. And bring his horse. It looks a good mount.”

Davey MacGregor, 19 years old, younger brother of Calum MacGregor, cousin of Niall MacGregor, was bludgeoned to death by the musket stocks of His Royal Majesty’s loyal soldiers.

Zora Neale Hurston and the book club.

My book club just talked about Their Eyes Were Watching God.  I had not read Hurston's books before and wasn't really excited about reading it. But you know, in a book club you read things because it's your duty. I'm glad I did my duty.
This book is about black people in a black society, not about the downtrodden, but about everyday small town lives. And about finding love.The writing is so exquisite, so poetic, that I kept going back, rereading, then reading phrases out loud. After I read it I went back to the first pages and read them again. I had to, because the beginning was also the ending of Janie's story.
Here are the last sentences in the book.
Here was peace. Pulled it from around the waist of the world and pulled it over her shoulder. So much of life in  its meshes! She called in her soul to come and see.

Dear Old Miscellaneous

There's more to life than just reading...right? Right?Well, there was the PNWA Conference. I had fingers crossed, didn't place, but another writer of Scottish history came in second, and I look forward to reading hers, set in the 19th Century. In the meantime, I have a list of agents and editors to send my ms to, and have taken a vacation from the 18th Century to help out on a nonfiction history of Coupeville (1850-1950). I'm excited about doing this. So far, most of my copy is stored in my brain, and I'm sorting it out.

About books:

During a trip to the used book store in Anacortes, I was looking for a Kate Atkinson book and found another British author I'd not heard of: Isla Dewar. I bought Keeping Up With Magda and was hooked. I've read five more of her books and am addicted. Her books are full of strange events, strong characters who make massive mistakes, and unexpected endings.

I also came back with a copy of The Western Writings of Stephen Crane, Drinking Dry Clouds by Gretel Erlich, The Writing Life by Annie Dillard, and Border Songs by Jim Lynch. I've read that before & loved it, so I must giove this copy to someone I really like.

long time no post

Actually, in addition to writing my own things, I have been reading a lot. At the WIWA conference, I was in a chat house with Jamie Ford, author of The Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet. I had read it a few weeks before and really liked it. It's set in Seattle , in both present day and WWII, and is a wonderfully descriptive look at the 1940's & the internment camps.
I just read Sharyn McCrumb's latest ballad novel, The Devil Amongst the Lawyers, which, thought it wasn't her best, was certainly worth reading. I like the feeling in these books, the sense of place and the otherworldly aspects.
The Empire of the Summer Moon is an excellent nonfiction book, about the Commanche war chief, Quanah Parker. I've decided I have to have a copy of it, so I can reread it. Not only is it as exciting as a novel, and very well written, part of it contains information about my own family. My father was born in Anadarko, Oklahoma, and Quanah Parker was his godfather. A great uncle married a Caddo woman, and is featured in the part about Quanah's coming into the reservation. Quanah's mother was a kidnapped white girl, who was taken away from the Commanches by whites after she gave birth to two boys and a girl. She went unwillingly and died not long after that.
Right now I'm reading one of Kate Atkinson's early books, Emotionally Weird. I found her first book, Behind the Scenes at the Museum when I had left the book I was reading in my hotel room and faced a long flight from London to Seattle without anything to read. Any bibliomaniac knows that's one of the circles of Hell. I went into a bookstore at Heathrow, went to the sale books and found Behind the Scenes, bought it and was gifted with one of the shortest flights of my life, thanks to Kate Atkinson.
My own writing is going well-at least I'll be sending chapters to an agent and an editor I met at the Pacific Northwest Writers Conference. I was a finalist in the Historical Novel Division but didn't place. Meeting competitors in the same genre was fun-from very nice to downright sharky!

Catching Up

I haven't stopped reading-just blogging. I'm reading manuscripts for an agent friend too. Anyway, let's see:
Alison Weir's new book, The Lady in the Tower is brilliant, but a slow read. You get a lot of background, then the events leading up to the imprisoning of Anne Bolyn. If you read the novel, Wolf Hall, about Thomas Cromwell, this is another look at the man-in nonfiction. He comes across as a master power broker, and the court of Henry VIII as a place crawling with factions planning and lying to riise in the king's favor. The phrase, "How the mighty have fallen!" rings through out the book. You might want to keep a chart of the characters. I'm fond of Alison Weir. Her fiction is so readable, and her biographies are excellent.
On a lighter note, Barbara Cleverly's Joe Sandilands mysteries are ones I always look forward to. The new one, Strange Images of Death, is worth waiting for. The books are set between the world wars. Sandilands is a Scotland Yard detective, wounded in WWI. IN this, he takes a young girl to Provence where her father is staying in a chateau with other artists. When he arrives, he is told that someone has destroyed the 600 year old tomb of the wife of a crusader. Hmmm. I've just started the book, and can't wait to get back to it, sooo......

Roots

Ron RashOn both sides of my family, my roots are in Appalachia. On my mother's side, things are a bit hazy, though there's a Zachariah Russell in Kentucky, and his daughter Blanche Delaware(!) who was my mother's grandmother. On my father's side, it's Tennessee, North Carolina And West Virginia, and before that, Virginia. There are names like Cabin Run and Scotch Creek, Kingsport, Blountville. There are words and phrases that belong to that heritage. When I read Sharyn McCrumb and Margaret Maron, they resonate. Now I've found another writer who takes me there: Ron Rash. His novels are The World Made Straight, Saints at the River and Serena. In addition he has books of poetry and short stories. His three books all cover some sort of environmental theme as part of the back story: a valley flooded by a power company, the search for a drowned girl's body leading to the destruction of a wild and scenic river, clearcutting of the southern mountains. Rash's poetry shows through in each of the novels, as does his love of the land he knows well. But it is the people who stayed in my mind long after I finished reading the books: an environmentalist who has claimed a river as his own; a farmer and his wife whose love for each other leads to murder; a woman whose greed destroys forests.
Some of the words used in the characters' conversations take me back to my childhood in Texas, words that traveled with my family from Appalachia.
"Don't sull up," my mother used to say, when I pouted. I read that in one of Rash's books. Even the rhythm of his words reminds me of aunts and uncles repeating stories and songs they had heard from their parents and grandparents.
Sometimes I think the best writers are also poets, and regional writers carry their past with them.

All Nighter

When a book is so good I can't put it down, stay up till all hours reading it, I know I've found a treasure. At 2am I finished Elizabeth Kostova's The Swan Thieves and still couldn't sleep. The ending pages were so gripping that I lay awake thinking about it.

It starts with a man in the National Museum in Washinton trying to attack a painting with a pocket knife. Come to find out, he's a famous artist in his own right. When he's institutionalized a psychiatrist who is also an artist tries to find out why the man attacked the specific painting. The man refuses to talk, except for an occasional cryptic statement.

When the psychiatrist finds letters in the artist's room written in France in the late 19th Century he becomes obsessed with the case. The story is told from several parts of view as the psychiatrist finds clues about the woman the artist paints over and over again. His wife ? His mistress?

The clues are throughout the book, and I kept thinking, "Aha! THAT'S the mystery!" But I found there was always more to discover. This is a brilliant book from a woman whose first book, The Historian, was a best seller.

Let me know what you think

New Books! Oh, Joy!

After stumbling over weighty tomes, I struck gold recently-not once but three books in a row.


After reading The Highest Tide, Jim Lynch's first book, and enjoying the setting, the characters and the story arc, I knew that I would want to read his next one. First: I bought Border Songs, set in the dairy country around Lynden and Sumas, Washington, where there is very little indication about which country-Canada or the US- you happen to be standing in. The hero (of sorts) is a six foot eight dyslexic bird watching Border Patrol newbie who is supposed to be the barrier to stop narcotics and aliens out of the country. As a writer, I want to read about fullblown, rounded characters who drive a story. You get that in Jim Lynch's novels.

Next, I read Jane Hardam's Old Filth, about a retired judge looking back on his life. This is a really shallow description, though. Have you ever heard of the orphans of the Raj? The most famous, I suppose, was Rudyard Kipling. They were children whose parents lived in the farflung British Empire. They were sent "home", that is back to England to be raised by relatives or people who were paid to look after them.The judge is a product of the sort of brutality that many of these children endured. He comes home with his wife and bit by bit we're told about his past.
I'm on the waiting list for the next book, told from his wife's poiny of view.

The Lacuna, Barbara Kingsolver's latest, tells of another man's life, the son of a man who wants nothing to do with him (shades of the poor judge in Old Filth!) and a mother who is always looking for the next rich man to support her. Harrison Shepherd, mostly raised in Mexico, becomes part of the ent ourage of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, and at the ppoint I'm reading now, works of Trotsky. I plan to spend as good part of my Sunday finishing it, because....
Waiting in the Wings:
Elizabeth Kostova's The Swan Thieves and Alison Weir's new book about Ann Bolyn.

Book Club
Next Friday we discuss Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire. I've read it once, a couple of years ago. There was an awful movie made from the book, but it left out a lot. The book is a great look at the role of women in the late 18th Century, and a well written biography.

I Love a History

Doesn't matter whether it's fiction or non fiction. Pat Barker's trilogy about WW1absorbed me from beginning to end, and I wished I could talk about it to my father, who had fought in France.
My love affair with historical novels stretches over decades, and looking back, they began with what we call bodice rippers now. I remember on called The Border Lord. Of course it wasn't nearly as graphic as most are now, but it did have a studly guy & a bosomy gal in costume on the front.
When I discovered Dorothy Dunnett's Lymond series, I found a whole other kind of historical novel, full of richly described characters, real and fictional, and so much historical detail I was enthralled. When I first went to Edinburgh, I had t o go to St Giles Cathedral, just to see where Lymond and bad guy Gabriel fought their duel. Gabriel was indeed a villain unsurpassed.Her stand alone novel, about the real MacBeth, was an eye opener. Much as I love Shakespeare, he did a real hatchet job on a king who served Scotland well and is buried among the kings of Scotland in the Iona graveyard.
Cecelia Holland, Phillipa Gregory, Edith Pargeter are historical writers par excellence. Right now I'm waiting for William Dietrich's newest about Ethan Gage. Dietrich also wrote a fine book about Roman Britain : Hadrian's Wall. Bernard Cornwell has several series. I don't know how he does it.
History: the real thing: the list
Anything by Antonia Fraser, Carolly Erickson or Alison Weir
Simon Winchester's Krakatoa the Day the World Exploded
A Dance Called America by James Hunter
Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire.

and so on...

I Love a Mystery Oart One

So this post will be about mysteries. Right now I'm reading Nightlife by Thomas Perry. He has written a lot of books, and The Butcher's Boy was outstanding. Nightlife has an unforgettable villain: a small, beautiful woman. Warning! This is not a cozy. The protagonist is a Portland police officer who finds herself turning in to prey. Perry writes tight, well written books. Nothing improbable happens. (It always bothers me when plots aren't believable.)
Other writers I follow: Dana Stabenow, Kate Wilhelm, Charles Todd, Ian Rankin, Sharyn
MacCrumb, Earl Emerson, Cara Black. I like mysteries with a sense of place. All of the above fit that. Stabenow's Alaska, Emerson's Seattle, Rankin's Edinburgh, Black's Paris are places that are very real. Sharyn McCrumb's east Tennessee gives a great feeling about the beauty of Appalachia, and lays over that an otherworldliness that haunts me.
Lindsay Davis gives us a funny look at early Rome in the character of Marcus Didius Falco. Charles Todd's post WWI mysteries have protagonist Scotland Yard Inspector Ian Rutledge haunted by his dead sergeant.

Heavy Books

I mean this in both ways. Ones that are slooow reads, and the kind that can do harm to you if they fall on you.
Right now I'm reading The Vikings by Robert Ferguson. It has 451 pages, including notes and index. While I've been reading this I've taken breaks and read a few light books.
First the heavy one. I'm now about halfway through it, and it's definitely a worthwhile read, though I must admit I've had to look up some words in my big dictionary. Ferguson writes with humor and precision, and though I've read other books on the subject, this is the best. The chapters, in a way, are stand alone. Some totally captured me. Others, such as Across the Baltic, were a struggle. Though there are maps in the book, I had to get out my atlas to figure things out. For a largely illiterate people, they left some fascinating traces. I remember standing in Maes Howe on Mainland, Orkney, staring at the runes left behind by Vikings. Our guide said most of them were pretty much what you'd find on the walls of a men's room. One tells us "Ingegerth is most beautiful..." This is a great, exciting read...though heavy.
On the lighter side....
I just finished Michael Crichton's last book, Pirate Latitudes. We're told the finished manuscript was found after his death. I doubt he had really finished it, unless he was really under the influence of Pirates of the Caribbean. I was with him until he introduced the giant squid.

Beach Reads

A funny time, perhaps, to write about them. But I just returned from Belize and the unusually cool, windy weather wiped out plans for snorkeling, so I read a lot,walked the beach, read, checked the clouds, read some more. I read Bob Mayer & Jennifer Cruisie's Agnes and the Hit Man which was a couple of steps off the chicklit beaten path. It was hilarious, laugh and read out loud funny. The place we stayed, Maya Dream in Placencia, is right on the beach north of the village, with a bookcase stocked with light reads, so next I read two of Karl Hiaasen's-more laughter. I've read all of his, but I have no problem rereading them. Then I found an early Sara Peretsky which got into grimmer stuff, and Elizabeth Peters' Seeing a Large Cat. (Her Amelia Peabody mysteries are favorites of mine, especially the early ones.)
Anyway, home again, where the sun sets early & rises late, I just finished reading an exceptional first novel, miss harper can do it by Jane Berentson. A third grade teacher in Tacoma Washington deals with a new class and a lover who is in the army in Iraq, as well as a best friend named Gus, a 93 year old woman and a pet chicken named Helen. Funny and poignant, though I do hate to use that word.
I have eight requests in at the library, including the new books by Ian Rankin and Dana Stabenow, one on crows and one on vikings. I am also number 201 on the waiting list for Barbara Kingsolver's The Lacuna. Jeez-I'll probably be able to get the paperback sooner.