LUCY PICK BOOKS

Just got back last night after ten days at the cottage in the Eastern Townships with a side trip involving a night in Montreal and a weekend in Quebec City. Much good food was eaten and conviviality shared, but what struck me was the potential for good historical fiction about this whole area.

There is an old and noble tradition of historical writing about French Canada during the ancien regime and the British colonies to the south, including the war of Independence — I’m thinking of authors like Thomas Costain, Thomas Raddall, and Kenneth Roberts. But when I say old, I mean old. Surely we are due for some reinterpretations. I thought of my friend with Renaissance and Early modern interests as I strolled the streets of old Quebec, still intact within its original walls, and couldn’t help feeling that this town in its restored beauty might provide as strong a sense of how the French lived in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries as any in France.

The photo at left is from Old Montreal, and it shows the “sailor’s church,” Notre Dame de Bon Secours (immortalized by Leonard Cohen as “Our Lady of the Harbour”) with the silvered dome of the Marche de Bonsecours in the background.

Aw shucks, it’s my first internet meme. It seems reading habit discussions are going around the internet these days. I got this from Teresa and there was a great post this morning on BookEnds on childhood reading. I’d love to hear your answers, either in the comments, or on your own blog.

Do you remember how you developed a love for reading?

I don’t remember a time when I couldn’t read, but I do remember that the first chapter book I read was Enid Blyton’s Five go to Kirrin island.  I also remember being in grade one and trying to go to the section in the library where I could find Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, and the librarian gently but firmly steering me back to the picture book section.  Being read to as a child was crucially important.

What are some of the books you read as a child?

Do you have a few hours?  I would typically bring ten to twelve books home a week from the library. Favourites, at different ages, were Enid Blyton, L.M. Montgomery, Arthur Ransome, Laura Inglis Wilder, Edward Eager, E.M. Nesbit, Elizabeth Enright, Eloise Jarvis McGraw (Greensleeves - I still reread this one), Grace Richardson (Apples Every Day - this one too), Noel Streatfield, Mara Kay, Maud Hart Lovelace, Joan Aiken, Alison Uttley, Rosemary Sutcliff, etc. etc.  I also started exploring the adult section at a fairly young age, and discovered Jean Plaidy and Victoria Holt (who were, of course, the same person).

What is your favourite genre?

I’m eclectic — I’ll read the best books in any genre.  Literary fiction and historical fiction, especially about times and places I don’t know much about, are old favourites.  Mysteries/thrillers and fantasy are more recent loves.  I haven’t read much SF (does William Gibson count?) but I expect I’ll get to it some day.

Do you have a favourite novel?

Every time I reread Doris Lessing’s Golden Notebook, Carol Shields’ Republic of Love, and Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings I get something completely different out of them.  So they would be god desert island candidates.

Where do you usually read?

On my bed.

When do you usually read?

In the evening,

Do you usually have more than one book you are reading at a time?

Not happily.  If I do, it means that I wasn’t enjoying my first book and I’ll probably never go back to it.  So I suppose technically, I have one book that I’m reading and another I think I should be reading.

Do you read nonfiction in a different way or place than you read fiction?

I read cookbooks like I read novels.  I read other non fiction for research purposes, so I am usually taking notes.

Do you buy most of the books you read, or borrow them, or check them out of the library?

I buy them, used and new.

Do you keep most of the books you buy? If not, what do you do with them?

I try to cull them periodically and I usually end up donating a bag or two to a book sale.  But since much more than a bag or two of books enters my house every year, there is a problem here.

If you have children, what are some of the favourite books you have shared with them? Were they some of the same ones you read as a child?

It has been fascinating rereading old books to my son and seeing which hold up and which don’t.  Madeleine L’Engle, Susan Cooper, Arthur Ransome, and The Phantom Tollbooth were as good as they ever were.  All my Narnia book preferences had changed.  Some old friends were not as good on rereading.  

What are you reading now?

I’m in the middle of an old Elizabeth Peters, The Camelot Caper.  Good fun.

Do you keep a TBR (to be read) list?

A TBR stack on the top of one bookshelf.

What’s next?

Not sure, but I just bought my very first book by Lois McMaster Bujold, Paladin of Souls, so that may be it.

What books would you like to reread?

I reread books often, which is why I keep most of the books I buy.  I suspect the book I have read the most often is L.M. Montgomery’s Rilla of Ingeside.  If it’s not that one, it is definitely one of hers.

Who are your favourite authors?

In no particular order, Laurie Colwin, Margaret Elphinstone, Dorothy Dunnett, Carol Shields, Mary Wesley, Margaret Drabble, A.S. Byatt, Doris Lessing, Charles de Lint, Elizabeth George, Dorothy Sayers, J.R.R. Tolkien, Angela Thirkell, P.D. James, Sarah Caudwell, Cecelia Holland, Pamela Dean, Vera Brittain, Garth Nix, Gail Godwin, Connie Willis, Susan Howatch, Susan Isaacs, Melissa Banks and I should probably shut up now because I could go on forever but there was probably something else you planned to do today.

You’ve finished all your Ken Folletts and Dorothy Dunnett is dead and you’re sad because you’re thinking you’ve already read every historical novel on the planet that is set in the Middle Ages? Fear not, for the good people at medieval-novels.com are here to show you just how unlikely that is. The post that will make your head explode (but in a good way) is this one which lists all the medieval novels in alphabetical order with amazon.com links to each one. They have a separate section for medieval mysteries right here for all your Brother Cadfael/Dame Frevisse needs.

So don’t tell me you’ve got nothing to read.

…And where I first learned about them.  My local independent bookstore has a sale every year, and I use it as a time to buy books by new authors, as well as some old favourites. I thought it might be fun to list them, and to try to figure out what made me buy them.

David Blixt, The Master of Verona St. Martin’s Press, 2007.
I definitely learned about this one online first, most likely here. Shakespeare and Dante? Looks yummy.

Charles de Lint, Widdershins (Tor, 2006).
The first de Lint book I read, many moons ago, was his book in the Fairy tale series, Jack of Kinrowan. I loved the Ottawa setting, and I’ve been a fan ever since.

Catherine Delors, Mistress of the Revolution Dutton, 2008.
I first learned of this book when I saw the sale posted on Publisher’s Marketplace last January. “That looks like something I’d read,” I thought, “Maybe her agent would be the right one for me.”

William Gibson, Spook Country Berkley, 2007.
I picked his Pattern Recognition up off a library shelf and loved it, and though I did not enjoy Neuromancer or Mona Lisa Overdrive quite as much, I thought I’d try this.

Conn Iggulden, Genghis: Birth of an Empire Dell, 2007.
This was a spontaneous buy. I love historical fiction about Asia and I read Cecilia Holland’s Mongol novel, Until the Sun Falls for the second time recently with great delight. And he was one of the author’s of The Dangerous Book for Boys. How can i go wrong?

Barbara Kingsolver, Animal, Vegetable, Miracle Harper, 2007.
My only non-fiction book in this group. When I read for pleasure, it is almost always fiction. My sister introduced me to Kingsolver through Prodigal Summer and I have become a fan.

Lisa See, Peony in Love Random House, 2008.
See about abut Asian historical fiction. I haven’t read anything by her before. I suspect I first saw her books on a front table at a bookstore.

Diane Setterfield, The Thirteenth Tale Washington Square Press, 2006.
I am sure I first heard about this one on the internet, and I think it was through some online contest the publisher was running to promote it. I didn’t participate in the contest, but I did remember the book, and I’ve been picking it up and putting it down every time I am in a bookstore for months. This time I didn’t put it down.

Rebecca Stott, Ghostwalk Spiegel & Grau, 2008.
If you’d asked me before I did this exercise how I found new books to read, I would have told you I browse the front tables and shelves of bookstores and choose books that way. This is the only book from this marathon purchasing session that I got that way. It was on the front table in the store, I picked it up, read the cover copy, and put it on my pile.

So, bought any good books lately? Let me know! I’m sure I’ll be back to the bookstore before long…

Before I started writing, point of view was only something I’d ever identified in grade eleven English class.  I’m a voracious reader of fiction, but it never crossed my mind that a book might be written in first person, third person, objective, omniscient, close, limited, whatever.  And I had no awareness of a preference for what I liked to read best — though in retrospect I realize most of my favourite books are either in third limited or omniscient.  Indeed, I was well into the first draft of my book before I realized it was something I might want to pay more attention to (No, Lucy, third limited salted with omniscient for flavour and head hopping when you get lazy is *not* usually an effective style).

Now, I angst over it.  Will readers care about my heroine if they only encounter her in the third person?  Will they be bored of her yapping half way through if I tell the tale in first? Do I have a strong enough narrative voice to write omniscient?  Will I get everything in if I stay limited?

And if any of these terms confuse you, Dear Reader (note rarely attempted second person POV),  and you want to know what I am talking about, I highly recommend Ursula LeGuin’s Steering the Craft on this question and so many more relating to questions of more advanced writing style and technique.

While my sister was visiting me this past week, we spent a lot of time together judging books by their covers. This cover, for Lauren Groff’s The Monsters of Templeton was one we both loved, and though neither of us bought it, I am sure I will one day soon. Almost as good as the cover is the groovy map inside. I am a sucker for maps.

My sister said she prefers covers that have illustrations, and she is winning me over to her point of view. Best are covers like Groff’s, which were drawn specifically for the book. I also think of the covers for the hardcovers of Dorothy Dunnett’s Niccolo series (at least the ones I have, which were bought in Canada). In second place, and more common, are paintings and drawings that are reused as illustrations for book covers. We both enjoyed Sarah Johnson’s gallery of reused cover images for works of historical fiction. Sometimes the images were totally transformed in reuse and sometimes … well, let’s just say that certain covers could cause a lot of confusion.

Markus Zusak, The Book Thief

This story of a young girl in Nazi Germany during World War II was the other great historical novel that I read at the end of last year, cover to cover in one go on a transatlantic flight. The most important thing I can tell you about it may be that even though the narrator tells you how the book will end on page 22, and reminds you a couple more times during the course of the book, I still had no power to stop tears streaming down my face at the end.

There are two big ideas in this book. The first is about the dangerous and beautiful power of story telling, and the way story shapes action, for better or for worse. The second, and more interesting, is about the consequences of these actions. The heroes of this book perform with the best of intentions acts which sometimes have very good ends, and sometimes very tragic. It struck me today as a result of a conversation about something quite different, that Zusak’s attention to this problem of our actions and their results may be derived from the way Hannah Arendt connects freedom to action. The characters are only free when they act, when Eric Vandenburg protects Hans Huberman from battle, when Hans gives bread to a prisoner from Dachau, when Leisel Meminger writes a book in the basement.

This book commands us to do good even in the worst circumstances, not because doing good will change the world and make it good, but because doing good and not just thinking good, knowing good, and believing good, is the only way to be free. In a culture that believes anything is possible if you only try hard enough, this message may resound as pessimistic, but I found it intensely hopeful.

Sarah Dunant, In the Company of the Courtesan.

I read a fair amount of rather middling historical fiction in 2007, trying to figure out what worked for me, why, and why not, but two wonderful novels I read at the end of the year made up for all the previous suffering I did for my Art. The second, I’ll write about in my next post (which will be soon, I promise) but the first is Sarah Dunant’s tale of the dwarf Bucino, and his life as companion to the talented courtesan, Fiammetta, in sixteenth-century Rome and Venice.
Why did this work? First of all, I felt that Dunant has an excellent period sense which is beautifully conveyed through her writing. I found the world she created entirely satisfying and convincing. I know just enough about the period to be tiresomely opinionated, but Dunant won me over from the first page. The mood she created reminded me very much of novels like Helle Hasse’s The Scarlet City or Jeanette Winterson’s The Passion.
The other great strength of this novel is Dunant’s main character, Bucino. He is a sidekick in the drama that is Fiammetta’s life, and he knows and accepts he’s a sidekick, but Dunant pulls him out of his ancillary role into the spotlight. The story is about his development as a human being, how he comes to term with the fact he is a dwarf, how he learns to love and to live for himself and not always through others, the sacrifices he makes, and the price he pays. The dramatic and exciting events that happen over the course of the novel serve as catalysts for the development of this memorable and appealing character.

C.W. Gortner in his blog, Historical Boys, had an interesting post yesterday on the popularity of historical fiction in Spain. He found new novels covering many time periods and written by authors from all over Europe. His impressions of the market there reflect the sense I got when I was in Spain last July. Waiting for a friend at the Barajas airport in Madrid, I stopped in the airport bookstore to see what people were buying. I think fully one quarter of the novels there were on historical fiction, mostly about medieval and early modern topics and set in Spain and the rest of Europe.

I thought that was pretty neat.

I want to write soon about Vikram Chandra’s Sacred Games but it is taking me a long time to finish it, not because I am not enjoying it, but because it is so wonderful that I am savouring it slowly, like a box of Vosges truffles that you eat one a night for fear they’ll be gone too soon. So in the meantime, I thought I would list a few of the websites discussing historical fiction that I have found and liked over the past few months. I am doing this because many of these I did *not* find through a simple google search, but rather by tracking my way through a forest of links.

The first place to start is the Historical Novel Society. They publish reviews of recent historical novels (in print, for members) and have a twice yearly magazine. They also hold a yearly conference that seems to move between the States and the UK.

My favourite site for historical fiction, however, is the blog, Reading the Past, which is maintained by HNS reviewing stawart, Sarah Johnson. She is a university librarian with a knowledge of historical fiction that is both deep and wide-ranging, and I have spent many fun hours digging through her archives. She keeps track of reviews, deals, book covers, gossip, and much more.

I am intrigued by another blog, C.W. Gortner’s Historical Boys, which plans to concentrate on men who write historical novels. I am enjoying his author interviews so far. And how can I resist the blog of someone who has written a novel about Juana la Loca? What a wonderful figure to explore.

Historical Fiction is a bulletin board/web forum whose members discuss historical novels about all times and places. They also have a section where they post reviews. I haven’t spent much time here, but I like the breadth of what they talk about.

That’s probably enough for today.