Good reads

I know I promised this post yesterday, but I got busy at work with some truly horrible nonsense, which will continue to plague me for the next two weeks, and will likely cause me to threaten to quit (again) but actually suck it up and stay here because no one is hiring right now. Anyway, I've been doing some reading lately, so I thought I'd share.

Several months ago, I was bored at the airport, so I wandered into the book store and picked up The Other Boleyn Girl. I hadn't seen the movie, but I am a huge dork who enjoys reading about European history as long as it's exciting. Enter the Historical Fiction genre. Basically the events that happen are all real, but the characters feelings and actions are fictional. A good historical fiction writer does a ridiculous amount of research before writing a book, and then you get to enjoy the fun book without having to deal with the boring research. See how fun that is? Anyway, the book was excellent, and I've always had a weird fascination with Tudor England (no, I've never watched The Tudors, because I don't subscribe to fancy movie channels, but I'm planning to rent the DVDs when I'm bored over Thanksgiving). Anyway, the book was excellent.

So I went to the author's website, and she has all sorts of stuff about research on there and about her books and whatnot, and I decided to buy The Constant Princess, which took place before The Other Boleyn Girl. It is about Katherine of Aragon. It was so good, that afterwards, I went back and re-read The Other Boleyn Girl in order to go in the correct time order (see? I'm dorky). Last week, I purchased and read The Boleyn Inheritance, which is about Henry VIII's marriages to Anne of Cleves and Katherine Howard (wives 4 and 5). It was also excellent. The next book in time order should be The Virgin's Lover, about Elizabeth I. I started it last night.

Philippa Gregory's most recent book moves out of England and to Mary Queen of Scots, but it's not out in paperback yet, so I have yet to purchase it. Seriously. These are good books. I briefly searched for a good book to read about Marie Antoinette after seeing the Sofia Coppola movie, but never found one, so if I have any other dorks out there that know one, let me know.

Well, I have to get back to the grind now, so here's a brief summary: I'm a dork, buy these books, they are good. I'll try to update again soon.