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Category: Reading

Posts in which we talk about reading habits and preferences

Trolling the Regency – Carolyn Finds the Best Book Ever

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The next midnight beheld Ruth Tudor in the cave, seated upon a point of rock, at the head of the corpse, her chin resting upon her hands, gazing earnestly upon the distorted face. Decay had already begun its work; and Ruth sat there watching the progress of mortality, as if she intended that her stern gaze should quicken and facilitate its operation. The next night also beheld her there, but the current of her thoughts had changed, and the dismal interval which had passed appeared to be forgotten. She stood with her basket of food: ” Wilt thou not eat!” she demanded; ” arise, strengthen thee for thy journey; eat, eat, thou sleeper; wilt thou never awaken? Look, here the meat thou lovest;” and as she raised his head, and put the food to his lips, the frail remnant of mortality shattered at her touch, and again she knew at he was dead.

Published in 1826.

Check the contents:

This is the BEST BOOK EVER! I mean that.

Karl and his horse Nikolaus, a Mysterious Tale !
Oh, Karl, you naughty boy!
 
Sir Guy the Seeker?

Oh. Whatchya seeking, Sir Guy? A Gal?

Ulric the Bold?
I love a bold fellow. Ulric is awesome and you all know it.

The Black Rainbow or the Death of Charles the Bad.

Charles the Bad? Are you kidding me?

I did some poking around:

From British Short Fiction in the Early Nineteenth Century, Tim Killick, Ashgate, 2008, page 160

Legends of Terror ! was clearly aimed at a general readership.

(I added the big font. Because it needs it.)

To which I say, booh-yah.

I’m writing a heroine who loves scary stories, I swear.

How do you feel about LEGENDS OF TERROR !

Posted in Former Riskies, Reading, Regency, Research | Tagged , , | 11 Replies

The Nuclear Option

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First, let me preface this by saying I am sleep deprived because of a day job production database situation that kept me up and tense for about 10 hours Sunday afternoon through about 2:00am Monday. So the brain is a bit mushy.  Things came right in the end, but it was scary bad for a while.

Anyway.

It seems to be the case that when I buy books, physical reference books in particular, eventually, I run out of places to put them. My stacks are out of control. In fact, they no longer resemble stacks. Instead, they slid around like there’s a layer of jelly between them.

If I go higher, someone, probably me, is going to get hurt.

If I go wider, someone, probably me, is going to fall down in the attempt to find floor space for my feet.

So I have had to get mean.

Yes.

REALLY mean. Meaner than that Spartan cat.

I have begun to throw away books. Paper books. In my TBR. Book I bought and wanted to read. I loaned my copy of Wise Man’s Fear (a behemoth) to someone and told the loanee to take his time because when I do have time to read the book myself, I will buy it for Kindle. I just don’t do big books in paper anymore. Sorry.

Big Freaking Hardback Fantasy vs. iPad3?

The ipad3 wins. The iPad3 wins in just about every category actually.

The substructure beneath my TBR has begun to emerge.

My GOD!!!! There’s a floor here!!!!

I have found other things, too. Like, my copy of Thieves Kitchen, the Regency Underworld. I’ve been wondering where that went. People, there was a LOT of crime in the Regency.

Until such time as an eBook can adequately display the contents of some of the great, image-heavy reference books, I won’t be giving up my reference library. I suspect none of those reference books are making it to digital anytime soon.

Shame that, because eventually the presentation for books like that will be BETTER than paper.  (video, color, 3-D image rendering. — Imagine if your fashion book showed you a 360 of that gown and zoomed in on the details, or showed a person wearing it, not a mannequin but a person. THAT would be awesome. I can’t wait.)

My TBR I’m afraid, is physical toast. It’s going digital.

My Questions to You

  • How close are you to going nuclear with your physical TBR?
  • What’s in it?
  • What’s a book you’re dying to read but haven’t yet?
  • What’s the best book you’ve read lately?

Next week, Crime?

P.S. Whichever Risky was nice enough to put the cover of Not Wicked Enough in the right-hand column over there ——>
Thank you. That was really nice.

Posted in Former Riskies, Reading | Tagged , , , | 7 Replies

Miscellanea Plus A Question for You-All

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Today is my father’s birthday. His 81st. He’s a retired physician who worked so many hours during his working life that he never had time for all the things he wanted to do around the house. “Projects” piled up that he was going to get to some day, although I suspect we all do a bit of that “someday” thinking.

I will fix the flibberty-gibbet when I have time…

Only when you do have some time it’s more fun to take a nap or read or do something that is less like work. And now, for various reasons, he cannot do the things he was saving up to do.

Anyway, he loves to read. He doesn’t read on a Kindle, so it’s paper for him all the way. Which gets me into the bookstore pretty often. I try to think of books he might like, but he’s a tough cookie. Very picky. Sometimes I give him a dud, and I feel terrible.

A while back, after I read my first Lee Child book, I knew my dad would love Jack Reacher. And I was right.

Unfortunately, eventually, I had both of us caught up with his backlist. At that point, my dad actually started trolling the internet looking for information about the next Jack Reacher book. He would duly print out whatever he’d found and bring it to me with instructions to please get that book for him. So cute. Then I signed him up for Child’s newsletter. Smash hit. I think I am his favorite daughter whenever a newsletter arrives.

I went to Bouchercon a couple years ago and, as it happens, Lee Child was a speaker and doing a signing. I brought the penultimate hardback with me, and purchased the new book Child was signing, and I stood in a very, very long line and got the books signed for my dad. Child was completely gracious. And my dad was tickled pink to get personally autographed books.

Now my Dad prints off all the newsletters and brings them to me to make sure I get the book for him right away. But I get the newsletter too, and I’m faster on the ‘Net and always have the book on order at the local independent for him.

Dad likes (I’m pretty sure) Navy SEAL books; I got him the bin Laden op book and a couple others and he seems to have liked them. I get him political thrillers because he’s got some rather looney political conspiracy theories himself. (Fiction for us, non-fiction for him?)

My Question to you

Dad loves mysteries and I’ve been thinking that I should possibly get him some of the Heyer mysteries. But I have not read any of them. Have any of you? Which would you recommend? Please let me know in the comments!

Other stuff

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Not Proper Enough by Carolyn Jewel

Not Proper Enough

by Carolyn Jewel

Giveaway ends October 23, 2012.

See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.

Enter to win

 

Posted in Former Riskies, Giveaways, Reading | Tagged , , , | 11 Replies

Book Review: The Last Duel

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First some News

I just turned in my story for Midnight Scandals, a historical romance anthology with Courtney Milan and Sherry Thomas. I immediately started work on Book 5 of the My Immortals series. Now that Free Fall, my My Immortals novella is out of Kindle Select, I’ve also worked on getting it published to all other vendors. It should start showing up shortly.

Naturally with all this writing to do, I’ve been reading a lot because I can tell myself it’s practically work and almost writing! Writers need to read!

One of the many books I’ve read recently is Eric Jager’s The Last Duel. I’m really surprised I never heard about this book when it first came out in 2004. It’s exactly the sort of book I would have bought right away.

The gripping, atmospheric true story of the “duel to end all duels” in medieval France: a trial by combat pitting a knight against a squire accused of violating the knight’s beautiful young wife.

I loved this book. It’s everything I adore about history books and more. While I read the Kindle version– more about that later –I bought it in hardback for my dad, who I think will like it a lot, too and will also get my mom a Kindle copy. I’ve been pimping it to everyone. Even you. Especially YOU!

Based on extensive research in Normandy and Paris, The Last Duel brings to life a colorful, turbulent age and three unforgettable characters caught in a fatal triangle of crime, scandal, and revenge. It is at once a moving human drama, a captivating detective story, and an engrossing work of historical intrigue.

The quote sounds like it’s overblown, but you know what? It’s not. I finished this book nearly 10 days ago, and I read it steadily until I was done. I’m STILL thinking about it. At times I forgot I was reading about something that really happened. And then I remember that lives were truly at stake.

One of the things I really enjoyed about the book was the meticulous research. The duel and the circumstances surrounding it were sensational at the time and for centuries afterward. There is, therefore, an unusual amount of surviving documentation.

I fell in love a little with LeCog, the attorney for the defendant in the matter. It was plain that he was a meticulous man and quite insightful. I changed my mind once or twice about the two men, by the way. When the duel took place, I was glued to my chair, because not only did I have to know what happened, I was very much aware there was no guarantee that the outcome would be the one I hoped for.

The Kindle version was, in the main, very well put together. The footnotes actually worked, for example, in that I ended up at the right footnote and that footnote took me back to my place.

My Gripes

I have two gripes and one of them is a big one. At normal size, the images in the text were crisp and clear, but too small to read. Once I expanded them to examine maps and artwork in more detail, the images were blurry. Text in the images was unreadable.

My other gripe is that the images were in black and white. I was reading on my iPad 3, by the way, so this mattered to me a lot. Unlike print, color in an ebook does not cost a cent.

Let me say that again: color in an eBook does not cost a cent.

Those source images, many of them contemporary artwork, are in color in real life and my guess is that the original photographs were probably submitted in color, too. The image IN COLOR on the cover is also in the book. In black and white.

I would have paid extra for an eBook with those images in color and in high-resolution.

If you have any interest in the Medieval period, this is a great book to have.

Posted in Former Riskies, Reading, Research | Tagged , , , , , | 7 Replies

“Mistorical?”

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I think it was the fine folks over at Dear Author who coined the phrase “Mistorical” to describe historical romances that are, for lack of a better term, light on the accuracy. “Wallpaper Historical” is a similar term. Mistorical, I believe, is intended to describe not just books that are light on the factual accuracy, but books that appear to be set in a world that never existed. It’s a Meta-Regency setting as opposed to an actual-Regency setting.

The term mistorical is a bit perjorative in that it implies something that is wrong — hence the Latin prefix mis. There is a suggestion in there that perhaps the author is not aware of any errors. Although I think that’s true for some authors, I’m not sure about that as a blanket statement.

The Meta-Regency

The meta-Regency is, for me, a world that never existed and, moreover, is a world that the author and reader very likely both understand did not exist. The stories are built on a set of Regency signifiers that the savvy reader instantly recognizes and navigates.

It’s a world where a woman’s Empire gown can be removed by unfastening a few hooks, no one goes to Church or is genuinely afraid for their immortal soul, and no one blinks an eye when a woman demands to know why she can’t go to Oxford, as if the unfairness ought to be patently obvious (even though, historically, the “fairness” of that prohibition was so obvious as to not need discussion). Reform is in the air and the hero supports it. There may well be sexy lingerie, even though sexy underwear didn’t exist. There are horses and carriages, slippers and ballrooms, eleven o’clock tea and the use of the word “rather” in place of the modern intensifier of “fucking.” I rather think that’s awesome, my lord instead of Dude. That’s fucking awesome.

A Less Meta-Regency

Then there’s the historicals that exist in a Regency constructed through use of a greater set of known facts. In this sort of historical you are unlikely to find a heroine who decides to dispense with her corset in the name of fashion. This heroine might recognize the unfairness of not being allowed to go to Oxford, but she will also be aware that the weight of public conviction is against a change in the policy.

These books tend to explore the impact and meaning of these very real power legal and cultural imbalances and the ways in which the hero and heroine can both transgress those boundaries.

Tomayto Tomahto?

While I enjoy and tend to prefer historicals that are strong on the history, I also enjoy historicals that appear to be set in this Meta-Regency period. I have read and re-read certain “Wallpaper” historicals multiple times.

I’ve reached the point, however, where I don’t feel these two kinds of books should be lumped together at all. When I’m in the mood for the Meta-Regency, I wish I knew a quick way to find one, other than by author name. And when I want a book that gives me a more historically accurate grounding, I wish I could more easily find them, too.

There’s nothing worse than finding out you’ve just paid money for a Historical romance only to find you have a meta-Regency world instead.

So, where do you stand? Do you have a preference? Do you care? Opine in the comments.

Posted in Former Riskies, Reading, Regency, Writing | Tagged , , | 13 Replies