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.