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What Are You Reading? February 2012

For discussions of historical fiction. Threads that do not relate to historical fiction should be started in the Chat forum or elsewhere on the forum, depending on the topic.
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Veronica
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Posts: 344
Joined: July 2009
Location: NT, Australia

Post by Veronica » Mon February 20th, 2012, 1:37 am

Had to give up on The beloved - Posie Graeme Evans.

Reading Duchess - Susan Holloway Scott instead.
"Time you enjoy wasting, was not wasted"

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javagirl
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Posts: 118
Joined: May 2009
Location: Florida

Post by javagirl » Mon February 20th, 2012, 3:40 am

I finished Nancy Bilyeau's The Crown. I was almost 2/3 of the way in before I finally started enjoying it. In the end, I did enjoy it and would probably read the next in the series some day when it's available.

Now I'm a little more than half way on Dennis Lehane's The Given Day which takes place in the US (mostly Boston) in the 1910-1920's.

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EC2
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Joined: August 2008
Location: Nottingham UK
Contact:

Post by EC2 » Mon February 20th, 2012, 11:39 pm

I'm still reading Sworn Sword by James Aicheson - enjoying it although it's taking forever due to stuff.
I'm also re-reading The Silver Brumby for an Australian Women's Month contribution and enjoying it almost as much as I did as a child. I can see why I loved it back then - all those descriptions of prancing silver horses!
Les proz e les vassals
Souvent entre piez de chevals
Kar ja li coard n’I chasront

'The Brave and the valiant
Are always to be found between the hooves of horses
For never will cowards fall down there.'

Histoire de Guillaume le Mareschal

www.elizabethchadwick.com

rebecca
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Joined: July 2011

Post by rebecca » Tue February 21st, 2012, 12:28 am

I think there is a move here to kill off the brumby as they are seen as 'pests', which I think is sad :( . I only ever read about it once and hope they didn't go through with it.

Bec :)

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Nefret
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Favourite HF book: Welsh Princes trilogy
Preferred HF: The Middle Ages (England), New Kingdom Egypt, Medieval France
Location: Temple of Isis

Post by Nefret » Tue February 21st, 2012, 4:16 am

Carrot Cake Murder by Joanne Fluke
Into battle we ride with Gods by our side
We are strong and not afraid to die
We have an urge to kill and our lust for blood has to be fulfilled
WE´LL FIGHT TILL THE END! And send our enemies straight to Hell!
- "Into Battle"
{Ensiferum}

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Leyland
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Posts: 1042
Joined: August 2008
Location: Travelers Rest SC

Post by Leyland » Tue February 21st, 2012, 2:38 pm

I am 4% into Camp Follower, A Mystery of the American Revolution by Suzanne Adair and am very intrigued so far. It's still a Kindle freebie and worth downloading.

The setting in the Carolina backcountry and the battle of Cowpens was the main draw for me as Cowpens is about 30 or so miles down the road from my house.

Per Amazon:
A deadly assignment. A land poisoned by treachery and battle. She plunged in headfirst.

Late in 1780, the publisher of a loyalist magazine in Wilmington, NorthCarolina offers an amazing assignment to Helen Chiswell, his society page writer. Pose as the widowed, gentlewoman sister of a British officer in the Seventeenth Light Dragoons, travel to the encampment of the British Legion in the Carolina backcountry, and write a feature on Lieutenant Colonel Banastre Tarleton. But Helen's publisher has secret reasons for sending her into danger. And because Helen, a loyalist, has ties to a family the redcoats suspect as patriot spies, she comes under suspicion of a brutal, brilliant British officer. At the bloody Battle of Cowpens, Helen must confront her past to save her life.

Praise for Camp Follower, nominated for the Daphne du Maurier Award for Excellence in Historical Mystery/Suspense and the Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction:
We are the music makers, And we are the dreamers of dreams ~ Arthur O'Shaughnessy, Ode

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LoobyG
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Joined: April 2010
Location: Derbyshire, UK

Post by LoobyG » Tue February 21st, 2012, 5:57 pm

[quote=""Misfit""]Angelique and the King[/quote]

I loved Angelique's relationship with the Marquis Philippe du Plessis-Belliere! Ahh he was fab. I've got all the Angeliques after picking them up second hand in South Africa, but I've only read to 'Angelique in Revolt' so far, and I didn't finish it - I found the tone very different from the previous Angeliques and quite dark, and at the time I craved the lightness and escapism from the Golon's previous titles :) I very much intend to revisit them soon though. I finished 'The Poseidon Adventure' by Paul Gallico yesterday and started 'The Love Machine' by Jacqueline Susann who wrote 'Valley of the Dolls'.

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Misfit
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Location: Seattle, WA

Post by Misfit » Tue February 21st, 2012, 6:05 pm

[quote=""LoobyG""]I loved Angelique's relationship with the Marquis Philippe du Plessis-Belliere! Ahh he was fab. I've got all the Angeliques after picking them up second hand in South Africa, but I've only read to 'Angelique in Revolt' so far, and I didn't finish it - I found the tone very different from the previous Angeliques and quite dark, and at the time I craved the lightness and escapism from the Golon's previous titles :) I very much intend to revisit them soon though. I finished 'The Poseidon Adventure' by Paul Gallico yesterday and started 'The Love Machine' by Jacqueline Susann who wrote 'Valley of the Dolls'.[/quote]

That relationship really surprised me, but as I just noted in another thread I can see some of today's PC readers not faring well with some of that.
At home with a good book and the cat...
...is the only place I want to be

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Ludmilla
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Location: Georgia USA

Post by Ludmilla » Tue February 21st, 2012, 7:33 pm

[quote=""Leyland""]I am 4% into Camp Follower, A Mystery of the American Revolution by Suzanne Adair and am very intrigued so far. It's still a Kindle freebie and worth downloading.

The setting in the Carolina backcountry and the battle of Cowpens was the main draw for me as Cowpens is about 30 or so miles down the road from my house.

[/quote]

Sounds interesting, Leyland. The nice thing about eBook freebies is that you haven't wasted any money or shelf space if you decide you don't like them. :)

We took an extended weekend with the kids and went skiing in NC (well, hubby and kids did -- I watched). Driving through that area reminded me that Thirteen Moons by Charles Frazier has been languishing on my shelf. I'm about 75% through and really like it so far. The story is a bit rambly (but not without a purpose and very much in the storytelling tradition) and the history is very interesting. A real slice of pre-Civil War, frontier life and I'm - as usual - in awe of Frazier's prose.

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TiciaRoma
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Location: Alexandria, VA

Post by TiciaRoma » Tue February 21st, 2012, 8:22 pm

I just started The Forest Laird, by Jack Whyte. The first two sentences of the prolog:

"It pains me to hear people say nowadays that William Wallace died defiant, a heroic patriot, with a shout of “Freedom!” on his lips, because it is a lie. William Wallace died slowly and brutally in silence, to my sure knowledge, for I was there in London’s Smithfield Square that morning of August 24th in 1305, and all I heard of defiance was the final, demented scream of a broken, tortured man driven beyond endurance long before he died."
Tish

"If you would tell me the heart of a man, tell me not what he reads but what he rereads." Nobel Laureate Francois Mauriac

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