February is Black History Month so I thought I’d go with the obvious theme. While I know a lot of you are familiar with the Chevalier Saint-Georges (champion fencer, friend of the Prince Regent, Marie Antoinette’s music teacher, forgotten composer [thanks to Napoleon banning his music!]), I thought Abram Petrovich Gannibal might be unknown. He certainly was to me until the brilliant Twitter account @medievalpoc introduced me to him.

Abram Gannibal, bust in Petrovskoe.

Gannibal was kidnapped from what is now Camaroon when he was about seven and given as a gift to Peter the Great. The zar took a shine to him, noting his intelligence, and essentially made him his page. The boy was raised in the royal household and accompanied the zar on military campaigns. He was sent to Mez to be educated, spoke several languages, and was part of the intelligentsia in Paris in the early 1700s (supposedly, Voltarie himself called Gannibal “the dark star of the Enlightenment”).

Russian medal adorned with Avraham Hannibal’s coat of arms

Eventually became a powerful member of the Russian court under Peter’s daughter Elizabeth and was made a major-general in her army. He was given estates (complete with serfs) and raised to the nobility. He was married twice, once very unhappily to a Greek woman and then later to a woman from the nobility of Scandinavia and Germany. The second marriage was extremely happy, and produced ten children, from whom some very surprising people are descended: Most famously, Aleksandr Pushkin! Yes, that Pushkin. But many British aristocrats are also Gannibal’s descendants, including the wife of the 6th Duke of Westminster, the wife of the 5th Duke of Abercorn, and the current Marquesss of Milford Haven.

School of Dmitry Grigorievich Levitzky Portrait of Ivan Abramovich Gannibal (1735-1801) Gannibal’s son.

And of course this is really where my brain started ticking. I have a character in my current series who is based on the Chevalier Saint-Georges. His heroine’s race was determined entirely by which model showed up at the cover shoot. And the model who showed up first was black. I’d been toying with the idea of basing her on Belle, but this just seemed sooooo much cooler. A black, French fencing champion and the granddaughter of an Afro-Russian nobleman? Say it with me: OOOOOOH, YEEEAAAAAH.

Over organized. That is one way that I describe myself. Sometimes that’s good (I do know where almost everything is in our house) and sometimes that’s bad (I really do try my best not to fiddle with Paul’s stacks of stuff.)

So it may be that only over-organized types like me who see the value in a Book Diary. I first started keeping one in 1972 but stopped in 1974 when child #1 made all but the basics impossible. I came across it recently (while tidying, of course) and was intrigued by how much more literary my reading tastes were then. It was well before I discovered the pure joy of reading romance. That happended after child #2 was born in 1975.

It’s interesting (to me at least) that I started a book diary again when Paul retired and our life slowed down considerably, giving me more time to read and more time to keep track of what I read.

Most people complain that they do not have time for a book diary but anyone has time for the sort that I keep. It is nothing more than Date/Title/Author and one or two words about the book that will jog my memory if necessary. If it’s great I give it a star. I do one book per page in a small 5 x 7 notebook (see photo above for current edition) and if I do not finish the book I draw a diagonal line through the page with Date/Title/Author and one or two words describing why I tossed it across the room.

Once or twice I’ve thought about doing a spread sheet so I could look at the diary in different ways — by name of author or by date read but that begins to feel like work. Heaven knows I don’t need to find more ways to spend time at the computer. So it’s still the old-fashioned paper and ink method for me.

My last starred entry is THE WAR THAT SAVED MY LIFE – juvenile fiction. It’s the story of a girl and her brother who are evacuated from London at the beginning of WWII. Loved it, laughed and cried. My last literary entry is THIS IS HOW YOU LOSE HER by Junot Daiz (for my book club) My note says great writing, unlikable characters but I did not need my notes to remind me. It is a fascinating look at the Dominican immigrant culture and filled with bad language and sex which would not have bothered me a bit if I had actually liked any of the characters. My last unread entry is THE NEW YORK TIMES PRESENTS SMARTER BY SUNDAY which defines itself as “fifty two weekends of essential knowledge for the curious mind.” I can tell you the topics were not ones that I was curious about. My most recent romance is Lavinia Klein’s latest RAVISHING RUBY. Erotic is not my favorite romance subgenre but Lavinia’s are so clever and endearing that I enjoy every word.

So why keep a Book Diary? So you can remind yourself of books you’ve read. (Oh, yeah, I loved that book) So you know where to look when someone asks for a good book to read and you draw a blank. (Better than “Uhm.”)So you can congratulate yourself on how much you read.

What about you? Do you keep a Book Diary and if not can you tell me what was the last fabulous book you read, or the last literary book or the last one you did not finish. Oh and the last romance!