More coronatime reading

Tags

18th century, Alaska, Corona virus, Cotswolds, Czechia, Lake District, London, South Wales, Sussex, Zatopek

So, corona virus restrictions are being reimposed.  Less socialising, less going out of the house, maybe worse to come.  But the upside of all that is, you can top up your lockdown reading …   Your Books To Be Read pile might have shrunk in the past six months, but why not add to it now?  Why not choose something new, maybe something you wouldn’t normally touch?

Taking some books at, er, random – you can enjoy historical fiction, thrillers, comedy, romance, novels exploring relationships and the human heart; revel in the settings of London (in the 18^th century and today), modern Czechia, Sussex, the Lake District, Alaska, South Wales, Devon and the Cotswolds.

Or you can read biography and moving memoir; and if you are a manager and your staff are all working from home, why not take advantage of their absence and bone up on management thinking?  And if you’re a parent or doting grandparent, get a lovely book for the little one.

Last, but not least, there’s poetry.  What better way to cope with today’s vicissitudes than settling down with some great poetry ‘the best words in the best order’, as I think someone said.

Happy reading!

 

 

 

Congrats to The Servant

Tags

18th century, London, squalor

The Servant – the book we hope to be reading soon!  Many congratulations to ninevoice Maggie Richell Davies, who has won the Sharpe Books/Historical Writers’ Association Unpublished Award 2020.

The other eight ninevoices have heard this book progress (and change form) for some time now and we know how good it is.  We’re in 1765: and, to quote the HWA website, “Fourteen-year-old Hannah must go where she’s sent, despite her instincts screaming danger. Why does disgraced aristocrat William Chalke have a locked room in his house? What’s sold at the auctions taking place behind closed doors?”   The story evokes 18^th century London and its squalor and brutality and also its redeeming features. 

It’s clear from the descriptions of the short- and longlisted novels how strong a field the judges had to choose from.  Our congratulations to all those authors in those lists!  See http://www.historiamag.com/hwa-sharpe-books-unpublished-novel-award-winner/

National Bookshop Day

Tags

Bookshops, Daunt's Bookshop, Libraries, London

Let’s all raise a glass in praise of our wonderful bookshops. Along with libraries, they are the best friends of all readers and writers.

My other half and I spent time (and a modest amount of money) in Daunt’s Bookshop in London yesterday. A magical place in Marylebone..

It is tempting to save a pound or two by buying books from Amazon – though by the time you’ve added postage, the difference may not be great – but let’s not shoot ourselves in the foot by making book selling on the high street uneconomic. We don’t want to deny ourselves the thrill of one day seeing our own efforts on public display, do we?

 

Punctuation matters

Tags

Cycling, Fenchurch Street, London

Indeed they don’t.

Cheering up Man Flu – Londonopolis

Tags

Christmas presents, Daphne du Maurier, East India Company, London, Londonopolis, Man Flu, Martin Latham, Rebecca, William II

I’m reading Londonopolis – A Curious History of London at the moment (thanks to my family for a great Christmas present). The author, Martin Latham, says, “You can read this book in any order, or leave it in the lavatory for the occasional reverie.” I can add another good use for it: silent entertainment for a case of Man Flu. It’s written in easy chunks (chronologically ordered), and so can be picked up and put down as fitfully as the suffering patient desires, with no loss of continuity.

It’s amusing and full of interesting oddities. It encouragingly takes on received historical wisdom: eg William Rufus was actually quite a good King (his Westminster Hall is a masterpiece), and the East India Company was in some respects better than the Raj that replaced it in India, and it had enlightened HR policies here at home (thieving employees would merely be publicly whipped through the street rather than be hanged or transported to the colonies). The illustrations are fun. While reading this the invalid won’t be plaintively and feebly calling to his devoted nurse for more lemon tea or more pillows or fewer pillows.

I was reading Daphne du Maurier’s excellent Rebecca (a 2016 Christmas present!), but felt that if I was already feeling sorry for myself that book’s atmosphere of tension and worry was hardly going to help. So Rebecca is on hold. Better something quirky that brings a smile.

There’s a fuller review of Londonopolis on the Turbulent London website, at https://turbulentlondon.com/2016/02/11/book-review-londonopolis-a-curious-history-of-london/.

Nasty germs apart, a Happy New Year to all ninevoices’ readers!

Historical novels – how much research?

Tags

Anachronisms, Bohemia, Forsooth, Francis Spufford, Golden Hill, Lewis, London, New York City, Thirty Years War

Historical novels – how much research should you do, what lengths should you go to to get the details and the whole feel right?

I’ve been pondering this as I’ve just read Golden Hill by Francis Spufford, who manages to create what seemed an authentic picture of New York in 1746. How authentic it in fact is I can’t verify, short of doing the research myself. But it certainly worked for me: we learned about the city’s dimensions, architecture, weather, race relations, commerce, justice system, politics, religious observance, card games, Bonfire Night customs, and even its smells. I believed it.

To find all that out must have taken a very long time. But when to stop? Do you draw a line somewhere, and avoid venturing into unknown detail, or do you draw that line and just wing it, hoping that few of your readers will notice any errors in the areas you didn’t delve into? Can you get away with finding out what people ate and wore in your chosen period, and maybe what their houses looked like, and assume that that will so impress your average reader that they believe the rest?

Warning – I’ve recently seen an episode of ‘Lewis’ in which a fraudster who has forged an ancient Greek text is brought low because in it he mentions a constellation that was discovered only in the C17. There’s always an expert out there who will spot these lone errors …

One of the ninevoices has produced a novel set in C18 London. I know she’s done much research, and the detail seems convincing. If the rest of us think we’ve spotted an anachronism we’ve said so, but usually we’re wrong.

I once thought of stepping into these deep waters myself when I started a story set in Bohemia during the Thirty Years War in the C17. It didn’t get beyond the first chapter because my creative writing tutor told me it had too much exposition, too much scene-setting. She was probably right, but I started writing something else instead.

What about the dialogue? Options could include:

• Having your characters speak in modern-day English, just avoiding obvious anachronisms like ‘Facebook’, ‘celeb’ or ‘infomercial’;
• Ditto, but with your characters saying ‘Forsooth’, ‘Gadzooks’ and ‘By St Leonard!’ every now and then;
• Immersing yourself in the literature of the time (more research – when are you actually going to get started?) and trying to replicate at least some of its rhythms and vocabulary?

‘Have at ye, Sirrah!’

Are there rights and wrongs in this field? Advice please.