Hello from Germany

[Rissa]

[quote=""Ariadne""]Hi Rissa, and welcome to the forum! That's excellent news about Rebecca Gable's novels. My husband and I visited Germany in 2009 (he used to live there) and I was sorry my German wasn't better - there were so many wonderful looking historical novels in the local bookstores![/quote]


Thank you! And you're welcome!
The books always look good If you don't mind me being honest: I think that they quite often look better than American ones which might be related to the fixed price the books have to be sold for. And HF is a very popular genre in Germany, becoming more and more popular the last few years.
But like in every other genre there are good and bad novels (I really hate anachronisms...).
Gablé is one of the most popular German authors for HF, I'm just curious if the reception will be as well in England and the US as it is in Germany as you have a lot more books in your own language that you can compare these to once they are available...


[quote=""DianeL""]Hello, Rissa! As many have said, you have no need to apololgize for your English skills: the day a Frenchman told me I speak my native tongue like a European, I took it as a singular compliment to my language skills. The American reputation for linguistic slovenliness is not, unfortunately, entirely unearned; however, of course, here you will be treated to many who defy this conception - literate people are a joy that way.

My own favorite historical is Parke Godwin's "A Memory of Lions", which I love most because it is so fully realized. It includes bitterness, passion, war, politics, and humanity amid one of the best-realized settings in time and place I have ever read, and each of the characters is minutely, considerately drawn. I've loved a great deal of fiction since I discovered that book twenty-odd years ago, but it remains a very strong favorite of mine. It is set in post-Conquest Britain, and is a wonderful read: I still find it incredibly fresh every time, after more than two decades![/quote]

Thank you for the welcome! That's a funny story

And thanks a lot for the suggestion, it sounds good from what you've told me. I've just browsed amazon.de for the book, but it seems like I have too look at .com or .uk if I want to know a bit more about it, but not today any more.

[Veronica]

As far as I can tell your english is excellent! And there are several here who has english as their second language (like myself)

Most of all, welcome to the forum! I have also discovered a lot of new authors and books since I joined this forum. It's great!

[DianeL]

Rissa, I should mention, "A Memory of Lions" was originally published in about 1978, so you might have luck with book swaps or used book sites too. I originally bought it in about 1985, when it had a very "romance novel" cover (I was 17, it caught my eye -heh: http://photo.goodreads.com/books/126924 ... 133013.jpg). My current copy is a slightly funky quasi-medieval 70s take (http://img1.fantasticfiction.co.uk/images/n2/n13764.jpg), with an inexplicably middle-aged male model and a woman suspiciously resembling Sophia Loren on the cover. Hee.

Literally, in this case: try not to judge a book by its cover ...

(Not to break forum rules or anything, but my own novel - complete, but still in its querying stages - so I'm not precisely shilling here - relates to Clovis I. This story is almost untouched on this side of the pond, but while I was researching, I found much more in the way of source material and even fictional treatments both in French and German. Have you read anything aout the early Franks?)

[LoveHistory]

Hi Rissa! I second what everyone else has said (really everybody, couldn't you have left something for me?).

[Madeleine]

HI Rissa and welcome, your English seems pretty perfect.

Sad to say that a lot of English people aren't that good linguistically either, but I suspect it's probably the same with most nationalities.

Have fun on the forum.

[wendy]

Guten Morgen! Welcome to the forum Rissa. I lived in your beautiful counrty for six years (Dortmund and Gutersloh). Where are you based? Hope you have fun here.

[Rissa]

@Veronica, LoveHistory and Madeleine: Thanks for the welcome!
@Wendi: Vielen Dank! So far I have a lot of fun here!
I grew up in a small village near Kassel, now I live in a bigger city near Hannover.

@DianeL: I don't mind horrible covers or getting old books as long as what's written in it is good to read. I just might have to do some more research on where to get older books for a reasonable price as it wasn't translated into German, and it's not that easy to find non-German books that are out of print.
While nowadays many Germans I know read books in English I doubt that this was the case 20 or more years ago, so book swapping might not be an option.
So I'll put it on my research list for now and I might get it some day, along with other novels that share the same problem.

I don't think that I've ever read a novel about the early Franks, which is kind of sad as it's a very interesting time. I got a feeling that most authors try to avoid this time between the Roman times and the High Middle Ages. Most novels I own are set before 100AD or after 900AD with some few exceptions.
(I'll have an eye on your blog then, to see when there's more information to get).

[parthianbow]

Hello Rissa, and welcome to HFO!

[LoobyG]

Hello and welcome Rissa!

[Margaret]

Welcome, Rissa! I would be thrilled if my German was as good as your English. Forgive me if someone has mentioned it in an earlier post (I got to the party late and skimmed), but you can find a huge number of historical novels in the "Medieval" section of my website: http://www.historicalnovels.info/Medieval.html. The quality of the novels varies. I've tried to be thorough rather than make value judgments before adding a book to the lists. If a book looks intriguing to you and isn't reviewed on my site, you can likely ask about it here and find someone who has read it and can give you a good idea what it's like.