Genre
I have a weakness for historical fiction. Which is why I love Lindsey Davis (although the last two books have left me resigned to reading her no more.) Past Imperfect by Jullian Fellows has caught me today, given that I am only 46 pages in. I clearly remember The Death of Attila, by Cecelia Holland, gleaned from the shelves of a small branch library when I was perhaps 12, and part of my devotion to the genre. Jean Plaidy and Victoria Holt were the only author (singular) whose romance novels I continued to read after gorging myself one summer with the Romance Shelf, and never going back.
Perhaps I just like stories, and history tells the best ones of all. Real history is full of holes and unknowns, and I like authors who try to fill in the gaps, while using everything they can glean from factual accounts. Maybe it's just my intellectual laziness, wanting it all pulled together for me, and call it good. Or I enjoy thinking that real people, like us, were the impetus behind the great changes, and who survived and loved and strove to live their lives through the ages. Not different, save in what they were taught, the assumptions they made, the choices available to them. That we would be much the same, given their circumstances.
Maybe we have changed, as a species, though. Maybe we are less irrational, more willing to question and challenge, abler to change.
Ultimately, I think I just love the idea of time travel, and historical novels are my time machines.
Perhaps I just like stories, and history tells the best ones of all. Real history is full of holes and unknowns, and I like authors who try to fill in the gaps, while using everything they can glean from factual accounts. Maybe it's just my intellectual laziness, wanting it all pulled together for me, and call it good. Or I enjoy thinking that real people, like us, were the impetus behind the great changes, and who survived and loved and strove to live their lives through the ages. Not different, save in what they were taught, the assumptions they made, the choices available to them. That we would be much the same, given their circumstances.
Maybe we have changed, as a species, though. Maybe we are less irrational, more willing to question and challenge, abler to change.
Ultimately, I think I just love the idea of time travel, and historical novels are my time machines.
Labels: conversations
Posted by Zhoen on Sunday, March 14, 2010
8 comments:
When I was a teenager I read a lot of novels by Kenneth Roberts, and I think they gave me some feel for the early history of this country. Of course it was romanticized and probably biased, but I think by that age I was aware of these things.
A time travel kind of book I really love is by Elizabeth Marshall Thomas (a high school classmate of mine) called Reindeer Moon. It is really pre-history, about people before recorded history. But it has the merit of being quite accurate to what is scientifically known about the time it was written. In addition, it is beautifully written.
20th,
Oooo, thank you, I shall look it up.
Have you read Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel?
I'm in the middle of it now and it will transport you straight to the court of Henry XIII.
same here. Makes the books seem real!
Or if the author has based the story in history and done his research really well, the Sharpe books by Cornwell for example
I think I only survived my mid-teens because of Jean Plaidy books, I loved them and they sustained me, especially the stories about Lucretia Borgia. Haven't read her since then and it might be interesting to re-read something. But Wolf Hall, yes - will definitely get round to this one.
"Perhaps I just like stories, and history tells the best ones of all."
The last historical fiction I encountered was a recent film about the Red Baron - which was predominantly made-up.
The most annoying thing about it is that the real story is so interesting, I can't see why you'd want to fly so close to it and then ignore it.
>:-/
Pacian,
Try watching a historical movie with an historian. It gets ugly, lemme tell ya.
Like when D tries to watch a movie with medical scenes with me. Things get thrown.
(o)
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