Books and Book Reviews

My Favorite Reads of 2011, and Books to Look For in 2012

Happy New Year! I wanted to end the year by listing (in no particular order) some of my favorite reads of 2011. Most of these weren’t books that appeared in 2011, just books I read in 2011. Nonfiction: My Thoughts Be Bloody: The Bitter Rivalry That Led to the Assassination of Abraham Lincoln by Nora

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The Horsey Master Stokes and the Gullible Mr. Marples

Where would the history of Lady Jane Grey and her family be without the intrepid Victorians? I came across this gem today while looking up a reference for Adrian Stokes. It’s from a piece in the 1885-86 Proceedings of the Liverpool Literary and Philosophical Society called “A Noble Family of the Middle Ages” by one

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A Book to Avoid: The Nine Days Queen by Mary Luke

Last week, I picked up this 1986 biography of Lady Jane Grey by Mary Luke, a historical novelist who also dabbled in nonfiction. While I had been warned that this book was a heavily fictionalized account of Jane’s life, I had no idea just how fictionalized it was. In fact, it’s essentially a novel, and should

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A Christmas Scene at Barnes and Noble

While buying a gift card at Barnes and Noble today, I overheard the following exchange: Clueless customer: “Do you sell Kindle gift cards?” Clerk: “No, we have Nooks here.” Clueless customer: “I need a gift card for my friend.” Clerk: “Well, the Nook gift cards are right here.” Clueless customer: “But where are the Kindle

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Mean Girls, Historical Fiction Style

As some of my Facebook friends know, there’s a group called The History Police where like-minded individuals congregate in order to decry books and movies that distort history. Because a lot of us in that particular group are interested in medieval and Tudor history, books dealing with those periods get a good going-over there. One

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