Skip to main content

Friday Finds


My TBR list is growing exponentially!

--Flapper: a Madcap Story of Sex, Style, Celebrity, and the Women Who Made America Modern, by Joshua Zeitz. Nonfiction; recommended to me through LibraryThing.

--Fire From Heaven, by Mary Renault. Bought this this past weekend.

--Little Bird of Heaven, by Joyce Carol Oates. This is her latest book, and it looks pretty good. I went through a JCO “phase” in high school, so I look forward to this one.

--Harold the King, by Helen Hollick. Historical fiction about the Conquest; although it looks good, it’s just way too expensive for me at the moment, considering all the book buying I’ve been doing lately (just bought Brian Wainwright’s Within the Fetterlock on Monday).

--Tulip Fever, by Deborah Moggach. A novel set in mid-17th century Amsterdam, about art and the tulip craze.

--Bride of Pendorric, by Victoria Holt. One of my weekend buys.


--Island of Ghosts, by Gillian Bradshaw. Novel about the Roman conquest of Britain.

--Treason, by Meredith Whitford. Novel set during the War of the Roses.

Labels:

Comments

Lezlie said…
I haven't read Fire From Heaven, but I love Mary Renault. The King Must Die and The Bull From The Sea were great, and I'm reading The Praise Singer now.

Lezlie
October 23, 2009 at 10:38 AM
Misfit said…
Harold is awesome, and there have been some comments about the high price on Helen's Facebook page. Hopefully she'll let Sourcebooks have it.

Treason is good as well - pro Richard but still a good read.
October 23, 2009 at 11:25 AM
Nicole (Linus's Blanket) said…
I love me some JCO. I am so in awe of the way she writes. She is always at the Barnes and Noble near me but sadly I have yet to catch her there,
October 23, 2009 at 1:34 PM
A Bookshelf Monstrosity said…
Whoa. Flapper sounds like my kind of reading. It's going on the wishlist pronto.
October 23, 2009 at 4:26 PM
Marg said…
I am currently reading my second Hollick and enjoying it very much!

I read Tulip Fever a while ago and thought it was pretty good. Not amazing but not terrible either.
October 26, 2009 at 4:34 AM
Anonymous said…
Flapper was great! Enjoy!
October 27, 2009 at 7:27 PM
Serena said…
wow you did find a lot of new books.
October 28, 2009 at 9:53 AM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Another giveaway

This time, the publicist at WW Norton sent me two copies of The Glass of Time , by Michael Cox--so I'm giving away the second copy. Cox is the author of The Meaning of Night, and this book is the follow-up to that. Leave a comment here to enter to win it! The deadline is next Sunday, 10/5/08.
194 comments
Read more

A giveaway winner, and another giveaway

The winner of the Girl in a Blue Dress contest is... Anna, of Diary of An Eccentric ! My new contest is for a copy of The Shape of Mercy , by Susan Meissner. According to Publisher's Weekly : Meissner's newest novel is potentially life-changing, the kind of inspirational fiction that prompts readers to call up old friends, lost loves or fallen-away family members to tell them that all is forgiven and that life is too short for holding grudges. Achingly romantic, the novel features the legacy of Mercy Hayworth—a young woman convicted during the Salem witch trials—whose words reach out from the past to forever transform the lives of two present-day women. These book lovers—Abigail Boyles, elderly, bitter and frail, and Lauren Lars Durough, wealthy, earnest and young—become unlikely friends, drawn together over the untimely death of Mercy, whose precious diary is all that remains of her too short life. And what a diary! Mercy's words not only beguile but help Abigail and Lars...
115 comments
Read more

Review: The Piano Teacher, by Janice Y.K. Lee

The Piano Teacher is a complicated novel. On the surface, it’s about a love affair between two British ex-patriots in Hong Kong in 1952-3. Claire Pendleton comes to Hong Kong with her husband Martin at a time when the world is still recovering from WWII; Claire takes up work as a piano teacher for the daughter of a wealthy Chinese family, where she meets Will Truesdale, the Chens’ enigmatic chauffeur. The book jumps back in time between the 1950s and the beginning of WWII, when Will is interned in Stanley, a Hong Kong camp for enemies of Japan. On “the outside” is Tudy Liang, Will’s beautiful Eurasian lover. There’s no doubt that Lee’s writing is beautiful. But there’s something lacking in this short, terse novel that I can’t quite put my finger on. First, I think it’s the tenses she uses when taking about each story: that which is set in the 1950s is in the past tense, while the war scenes are talked about in the present tense (confusing, no?) The interpersonal relationships of the m...
12 comments
Read more