Both on this blog and on other sites I’ve visited, the question of historical accuracy in historical fiction has come up. As I said in one of my earlier blog posts, I think it’s the reader’s ultimate responsibility to check the accuracy of what he reads. Historical fiction, after all, is exactly that–fiction. By saying …
The other night, my husband channel-surfed and landed on Braveheart, which I missed seeing at the time it was released (a) because it wasn’t anything that interested me then and (b) because it came out when I was in law school, a time in which I was blissfully oblivious to all around me but the …
Well, I’m back, having spent the last few days at the hospital where my daughter was having surgery. I’m sure she’ll be blogging about the subject soon. I took the precaution of bringing several books with me, including Jean Plaidy’s In the Shadow of the Crown and Murder Most Royal. The first, about “Bloody” Mary, …
Family obligations have kept me offline for the past couple of days and probably will until the weekend at least, but I’ll be back posting soon–I’ve had plenty of time to read!
A series of rules for writing various sorts of historical fiction has been circulating in the blogsphere. Here’s a link to the original list, created by Alan Fisk and posted on Sarah Cuthbertson’s blog: Sarah’s Bookarama: The All-Purpose Rules for Writing Historical Fiction/Writing Ripping Yarns The list is quite amusing, as are some of the …
I posed this question on a group I belong to, but got no response, so I thought I’d post it here in hopes of getting one. There are many novels featuring characters who first appeared in classic novels. Jane Austen’s works, particularly Pride and Prejudice, seem to have spawned the most progeny. John Updike tried …
Still chugging along with Jean Plaidy’s In the Shadow of the Crown, about Queen Mary. (I was interrupted for a couple of days by my reading of another novel for review purposes. Can’t discuss it until the official review is posted elsewhere.) The first few chapters in the Plaidy went by fairly slowly, mainly, I …
Finished Marrying Mozart today. It was enjoyable reading, but on the whole it was a little disappointing. It was the story of the four Weber sisters, one of whom becomes Mozart’s wife at the end of the novel. After the girls’ father dies, the sisters leave home one by one, mainly, supposedly, because of their …
Why? Because it’s Girl Scout cookie month. I am a temperate person in most respects, but I have a weakness for Girl Scout cookies—or, to be more specific, the Trefoils. The rest I have no liking for, but the Trefoils I can polish off at the rate of a box a day (two if I’m …
Finished the Plaidy book on Katharine of Aragon. It ends, of course, unhappily, with Katharine dead after having lived in very reduced circumstances and with Anne Boleyn’s neck in considerable danger. All in all, I thought it was one of Plaidy’s better efforts. I’m looking forward to reading Murder Most Royal (I think that’s the …
Moving on to Mozart, with Some Musing on the Side Read More »