Medieval Bookworm

One of my goals for the New Year was to start reviewing right after finishing a book, so that I didn’t gain a review backlog, and not allow myself to read another book until the review was finished. Unfortunately, I’ve already failed miserably! My reading in 2011 has been off to a roaring start, but that means I have five reviews (yes, FIVE) already waiting to be written. I’ve decided to amend my goal and instead do all the reviews on the weekend after I’ve read them, when I normally have more time and feel a bit more like writing. This does mean I have five reviews to write today, but I can manage if I get my head in the right place.

In other bookish news, my TBR has similarly skyrocketed this week. In part, this is because I had some money for Christmas, and decided there was no better way to spend it than buying new books. I’ve already welcomed two of these purchases into my house and I’m anticipating more over the next week. It’s bad for my shelves, but I do like to support the publishing industry by buying new, and after accumulating a year-long wishlist of books slightly more expensive than I could buy during the year, it’s nice to just purchase them and have them for my very own.

Plus, I’ve realized how little I’m actually paying attention to my Kindle and under-utilizing it. I know I can read classics on it for free, but I’d never really ventured beyond Amazon, getting stymied whenever there was a charge. But while I was perusing blogs yesterday, I stumbled across this post on Eva’s blog, and with her new Nook she’s downloaded lots of classics that I too would love to read. I must admit I’ve now gone a little crazy with public domain books, but I think this should mean I’ll feature more classics in time, as I get them read.

Speaking of ebooks, I wanted to let you all know about a free e-novella from HarperCollins. David Vann, author of the upcoming Caribou Island, has released his novella Sukkwan Island for free. It previously appeared in his collection, Legend of a Suicide, and won the Prix Medicis award for best foreign novel in France. Definitely worth a download. It’s available on Amazon, the Sony ebook store, and for the Kobo ereader, and I’m told will shortly appear for the Nook as well.

Finally, in terms of reading today, I’ve begun to read A Tale of Two Cities for the read-a-long hosted by Jen at Devourer of Books and Nicole at Linus’s Blanket over on What’s Old Is New. I’ve wanted to re-read this for years, and doing so with the actual publication schedule seems both fun and doable. I’ve finished the first installment and it took less than half an hour, so my initial impressions were correct. I can’t wait to get a bit deeper in and see if I enjoy it as much as I did in high school. I also managed to read one of those way-too-old ARCs, Something Missing, between today and yesterday, which was surprisingly delightful and shouldn’t have sat in my review pile for so long. Yesterday I completely devoured The Raising by Laura Kasischke in one sitting, and only wish I didn’t have to hold my review until March! It was excellent and I’m not sure how I’ll keep the gushing out of my review – I was totally consumed by the book and put off everything I’d planned for the day just to keep reading.

This week, I think I’ll be spending some time in the realm of non-fiction, with Notes from a Small Island by Bill Bryson and Packing for Mars by Mary Roach. I’m very excited about both of these and plan to savor them over the course of today and the next few days.

What do you have planned for this Sunday? Any great books on your horizon?

There are only one and a half months left in my Year of Reading Deliberately and I find myself with quite a few books left that I haven’t read.  Not overall unreads – but books that I went into 2010 certain that I wanted to read this year, or which I acquired very early on in the year and haven’t actually gotten to yet.  The worst part?  None of them are even in my immediate TBR stack, which is making it look increasingly unlikely that I’ll get to them.  Clearly, if I want to read them, I’ll have to make them a priority over the next month and a half.

I didn’t really have a list when I originally set out on my goals – I just had broad priorities.  One I’ve definitely achieved – I’ve read more non-fiction.  In fact, it feels like I’m reading loads of it, and I love that!  I’ve also managed to get my reading plan going with 1/3 library books, 1/3 review copies, and 1/3 own books.  So overall, I’m not doing too badly, but there are still a few books on my shelf staring at me, telling me that I was supposed to read them months ago!  Here are just a few of them:

1. Warbreaker, Brandon Sanderson – I’ve had this book since it came out, and purchased it in hardcover no less.  I love Brandon Sanderson and I actually was convinced I’d read it right away.  Yet here we are, with the book out in paperback, and no less than three new books out from Sanderson (including his WoT books), and I still haven’t read it.  If anything, this book seriously proves that I’m turning down long books, because I still really want to read it.  This is going on the immediate TBR.

2. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Michael Chabon – I got this one for my birthday right at the beginning of the year and was so excited – I finally had a copy, I could finally read it!  Once again, didn’t happen, despite the fact that it’s now been recommended by far more people than it had been when I originally bought it, and I’ve really wanted to read something by Chabon.  And it’s another long book.  I’m prioritizing this, too, by pulling it off the shelf and putting it in the stack.

3. Generation A, Douglas Coupland – I didn’t actively seek this book out, I won it, but after that it received boatloads of praise in every review I found.  I even mentioned on Twitter that I wanted to read it soon.  And still I haven’t – even though I’ve owned it for just under a year.

4. King’s Shield, Sherwood Smith – I persuaded myself to read the second in this series over a year ago, and finally found myself so wrapped up in it that I bought this one, number 3 – and number 4 in hardcover! – convinced I wanted to know what happened next so badly that I’d read it ASAP.  Did I?  No, of course not; as you might expect, this is another long book that I’d probably love.

5. The Tea Rose, Jennifer Donnelly – Even loving A Northern Light and heaps of praise didn’t convince me that I wanted to pick up this massive chunkster.  But it’s another book I’m sure I’ll adore, once I pick it up.  I’m so sure that I even have the sequel!  Sensing a pattern yet?

Anyway, just because I’ve left those unread doesn’t mean I’m not getting to books that have been waiting equally as long.  I’m in the midst of A Company of Liars by Karen Maitland, a book that has been on my shelves for two years, and I’ll be reading The Book Thief soon, a SantaThing gift from two years ago. It just seems that there isn’t enough time to read all the books that I’d aimed to read.  I get interrupted by the vast amount of new books available to me, and it’s certainly gotten worse since I picked up the Kindle.  I’ve been downloading books from Netgalley like there’s no tomorrow, and then reading them instead of my physical TBR pile.  I have loved all but one of those, but that doesn’t mean I won’t love the books I have, too.  To top it all off, I just purchased no less than 11 new books, my last “hurrah” before a buying ban that should last me until Christmas.

But these five are coming out of hiding.  I’m putting them in a spot where I can’t miss them and making it a goal to read them before 2010 is up.

What books were you certain that you were going to get to this year?  Have you read them yet?

It seems like that’s all I do these days!  Obviously, I didn’t blog while I was in Paris last weekend, and shortly after we returned I (and my husband) promptly got sick with a cold.  All I did this week and go to work, get home and try not to fall asleep immediately!  I’m just starting to feel better now, though, so I’m hoping to catch up on all the blogging I’ve missed over the last week and a half while I was gone.  Halloween isn’t going to be celebrated around here; I know it’s not a very popular attitude but it’s actually my least favorite holiday!  My only observation has been the spooky books I read for the RIP challenge, which I still haven’t wrapped up.

I meant to write a quick recap of our Paris trip – at least the literary bits of it – before now, but better late than never, right?  I’d read about so much of what we saw, and it added an extra layer onto everything which was fantastic.  It was especially awe-inspiring to be in Versailles, having read numerous books, fiction and non, about Marie Antoinette in particular.  Here’s the bedroom which was last hers:

Unfortunately I couldn’t get the bottom because there were simply so many people there.  At times we felt like cattle being herded through the palace – I can’t imagine how busy it must be in the summer if it was this bad at the end of October!  They also had contemporary Japanese art scattered around that, to be honest, I wasn’t sure worked in that context.  The whole place really made me interested in reading more about the others who lived there, though.  I’ve learned about Louis XIV in school, but was never particularly inspired to read further about him – seeing evidence of his work, and that of his descendents, has definitely brought about a change in attitude.

Seeing history from a French perspective was so fascinating and I’m reminded of how limited I am by the fact that I only speak English fluently enough to read in it.  Many times victories for the English, of course, were defeats for the French; almost everything I’ve read has been from an English perspective, or an American writing on an English perspective, and I can’t wait to try and seek out some French authors who’ve managed to get their work translated into English.  I want to learn French (I have for a while now) but while I’m learning SEO I don’t think I can handle both.  That might be a goal to start in 2011.

The other literary highlight to the trip was seeing one of Michelangelo’s statues in person for the very first time.  I’ve really wanted to since I read The Agony and the Ecstasy last year, and at the Louvre I got my chance.  Here’s a picture again if you missed Wednesday’s post:

The two Slave statues really did stand out from the others; the muscle definition and level of reality was truly a step above. I wasn’t sure my inexperienced eye would be able to catch that, but even in the dimmed light it was remarkable.

This week is going to be all about catching up.  I have a few reviews to get done and a lot of blogs to comment on.  So I’ll end here, and hope you all have a wonderful Halloween and a great start to November.

This week, I posted a review of Shadow of the Swords, a book that I enjoyed but found too many historical accuracies in to be entirely comfortable with.  I loved the idea of it, but worried that the doubts the changes would leave in readers’ minds would undermine the otherwise important story the author was trying to convey.  The author, Kamran Pasha, dropped by, and left his opinion on my review; namely that fiction is an art and is still enjoyable despite changes made to history, that it’s more than a dry retelling of facts.  You can read his comment in full here.  I’ve really appreciated the fact that he left a comment because it led us to an interesting email discussion, which has given me the idea for this post and the desire to find out whether others agree or disagree.

In essence, my opinion of historical fiction when it involves mainly real characters and events is this; that it should follow historical fact as much as we know and use the author’s imagination to in effect fill in the blanks.  I do think that sometimes minor changes are necessary, and fictional characters inserted into said history don’t bother me particularly, but I really dislike the changes of major events, the omission of important historical characters, and in general anything that could give a reader the wrong impression about the period, the event, or the person.

Undoubtedly a book can be a wonderful read even if it gets history wrong, but I know some people do read historical fiction and allow it to influence their beliefs and feelings about the historical period in question.  Yes, this includes me, although I do try to read history about any period that I am really enjoying in fiction, to make up my own mind.  I love that historical fiction has really taken off in the past few years, but I am often running into people who believe they know something but they’ve been misled by a book or a movie.  Historians do get it wrong and historical understanding can change over time, which is why it’s important to read a few different sources in order to escape bias, but so few people do that and I dislike the fact that they could easily pick up and spread a mistaken belief because of a fiction book they read.

Even major politicians get history wrong and many people seem to have lost the ability to think for themselves; that probably doesn’t apply to anyone reading this blog, but I firmly believe we should get it right whenever we possibly can.  Think about all the backlash against immigrants; how many Americans are from immigrant stock themselves?  All of us who aren’t Native Americans, if you think about it.  As an example, how many of us are proud to be Irish now, and how many of those have neatly forgotten the discrimination our grandparents endured and insist on perpetuating it by discriminating against others?  This is why history is important, because it does profoundly affect what is happening today and can help us to determine how we react to the calamities of the future.

Finally, I also think a lot of my desire for history to be as accurate as possible in historical fiction is simply because I love history.  I think it’s all fascinating on its own.  I love historical fiction because it can bring that history to life, and I will admit that I feel misled and cheated if I believed what I read and the author had in fact changed things to suit his or her story without saying a word about it anywhere.  In the book I first referenced in this post, Shadow of the Swords, Pasha does freely admit that he changed things in his author’s note, and in general if changes are necessary I like when they’re detailed somewhere.  I still probably won’t agree with what was changed, but at least I know what to believe and what not to believe and I can respect the author’s desire to construct his or her own version of the story.

Perhaps I’m thinking too deeply about historical fiction, but I do believe an understanding of history is important in becoming an informed citizen of the world.  Many of us do feel we’re learning from historical fiction; it’s not just mindless pleasure that is immediately forgotten.  Fiction can be a powerful tool to inspire us to learn more, to understand the world that much better, to become better people.  As a result I do feel we should get it as close to the truth as we can; the wonderful stories are there.  They just need a clever mind to give them life and make them accessible to those who prefer not to read straight non-fiction.  Obviously, much of my own personal preference as represented in this post is due to the fact that I think everyone should have some basic understanding of history.  My own studies have massively expanded and drastically changed my own view of the world in ways that I appreciate on a regular basis; I wish that for everyone else, too, and I think historical fiction could be an important first step.

What do you think?  Do you agree or disagree?  Am I missing the point of fiction?  How much history do you like in your historical fiction?