What Are You Reading? March 2011

Misfit · Post by **Misfit** » Fri March 4th, 2011, 3:29 am

Lily Cigar by Thomas Murphy. It promises to be a big fat ole' rags to riches soap opera from New York to San Francisco.

Brenna · Post by **Brenna** » Fri March 4th, 2011, 3:04 pm

Finished The Heretic's Daughter by Kathleen Kent and have now started Nan Hawthorne's An Involuntary King. I am a little curious about the spacing issue but I'm not sure if that is a Kindle thing or not. Easy read so far.

Misfit · Post by **Misfit** » Fri March 4th, 2011, 5:41 pm

About 100 pages into Lily Cigar by Tom Murphy and loving it. Very well written, about a young orphan who goes from being the backstairs maid for a wealth NY family 1850's to disgrace at the hands of the young spoiled son and shunted off to San Francisco. I think it ends around the 1906 earthquake/fire with lots of adventures in between. Loving it.

annis · Post by **annis** » Fri March 4th, 2011, 7:32 pm

Reading Stewart Binn's Conquest, a novel about post-Norman Invasion resistance fighter, Hereward the Wake. A lot of readers clearly love this book, but though I'd like to love it, I find I'm struggling with it. I accept that Hereward's story has always contained elements of fantasy- even the monk-historian who wrote the original chronicle about his exploits got carried away, despite having actually interviewed men who had personally known Hereward,. Even so, Hereward is presented here as just too much of an epic fantasy hero for my taste. There's also something about the writing style which prevents me from becoming immersed in the story as opposed to just reading it.

Kudos to Binns though, for not going blindly with Charles Kingsley's version of Lady Godiva as Hereward's mother. This is highly unlikely but adopted by many authors, probably because it's a name readers will actually recognise. Like me, Binns believes Hereward's father to have been an Anglo-Saxon thegn named Leofric (not Leofric, Earl of Mercia) and his mother to have been of Danish extraction.

Elysium · Post by **Elysium** » Fri March 4th, 2011, 9:44 pm

Started By Fire, By Water by Mitchell James Kaplan

Kasthu · Post by **Kasthu** » Fri March 4th, 2011, 10:24 pm

Hester, by Margaret Oliphant.

Misfit · Post by **Misfit** » Fri March 4th, 2011, 10:27 pm

[quote=""Kasthu""]Hester, by Margaret Oliphant.[/quote]

I really liked that one a lot. IIRC some real quirky characters.

Tanzanite · Post by **Tanzanite** » Sat March 5th, 2011, 1:19 am

[quote=""annis""]Reading Stewart Binn's Conquest, a novel about post-Norman Invasion resistance fighter, Hereward the Wake. A lot of readers clearly love this book, but though I'd like to love it, I find I'm struggling with it. I accept that Hereward's story has always contained elements of fantasy- even the monk-historian who wrote the original chronicle about his exploits got carried away, despite having actually interviewed men who had personally known Hereward,. Even so, Hereward is presented here as just too much of an epic fantasy hero for my taste. There's also something about the writing style which prevents me from becoming immersed in the story as opposed to just reading it.

Kudos to Binns though, for not going blindly with Charles Kingsley's version of Lady Godiva as Hereward's mother. This is highly unlikely but adopted by many authors, probably because it's a name readers will actually recognise. Like me, Binns believes Hereward's father to have been an Anglo-Saxon thegn named Leofric (not Leofric, Earl of Mercia) and his mother to have been of Danish extraction.[/quote]

I'm glad it wasn't just me - I liked it but didn't love it as much as I hope to. I also didn't really care for the whole "magical" talisman plot line and the set up of the whole story meant a lot of telling at times. I really hope Helen Hollick writes his story...

As for what I'm reading now - The Queen's Rival by Diane Haeger.

annis · Post by **annis** » Sat March 5th, 2011, 3:02 am

Posted by Tanzanite

---the set up of the whole story meant a lot of telling at times.

This is what stopped me from becoming involved in the story - Binns would have done better to let the story tell itself a bit more, so to speak. I've noticed that historians and academics who turn to writing historical fiction write well, but are sometimes rather lacking in a sense of story-telling. I couldn't warm to Torfida either - she just never felt like a realistic character.

Helen Hollick is supposed to be writing a novel about Hereward, but says it won't be ready till next year. There's also another novel about him coming out later this year by James Wilde, called Hereward. The Wake is certainly having a renaissance as an HF subject!

Nefret · Post by **Nefret** » Sat March 5th, 2011, 4:51 am

Calendar by David Ewing Duncan (non fiction from college library.)