Stuck In The Past (And I Feel Fine)

The interior of the Key West Library at the Knights of Columbus Hall, 1021 Duval St., in the 1930s. Photo from the Monroe County Library collection.

My reading so far this year has been almost exclusively historical fiction (with two exceptions, one good and one not-so-much).

I went on a Bernard Cornwell binge, picking up the Saxon Chronicles with the second volume, The Pale Horseman, then gobbling down the the next five after that in fairly short order (The Lords of the North, Sword Song, Death of Kings, The Burning Land, The Pagan Lord). I did this even though I’m not sure this is the best way to read this series. I got a little tired of Uhtred sometimes. But these are fine adventure tales and now I feel a tiny bit more educated about the history of England before it was England and the various Norse incursions. If you like the TV show Vikings, these are definitely worth a read.

I read The Day of Atonement by David Liss, a writer of historical fiction whom I’ve admired since I reviewed his book The Whiskey Rebels for Solares Hill back in the day. This new one is an interesting take on European historical fiction, set in the 18th century with the hero being a Portuguese Jew who is forced to flee to England as a boy and returns to take his revenge. Another fine adventure tale.

Not historical: on the recommendation of Cheryl Tan, I read Man V. Nature by Diane Cook. It’s a book of short stories and the first published work of fiction by a former This American Life Producer (yay, radio!). Dystopian on the rocks from a woman’s perspective. If you like the world of George Saunders, check these out and keep an eye on Cook.

In February, around the time that Fifty Shades of Grey movie hype was reaching full cry, I retreated to much-better works of romance written by another E. James — this is Eloisa James, who writes very good historical romances (and in real life is Mary Bly, a professor of literature at Fordham). The books I read this time were her Duchess Quartet (even though they don’t all feature duchesses, whatever) — not quite as good as some of her more recent titles but enjoyable nonetheless and if you want some enjoyable entertainment with some sex in it and possibly unrealistic romantic scenarios — skip Fifty Shades and read her instead.

I also caught up on a couple of historical crime series in my favorite period — the Tudors! Treachery by S.J. Parris wasn’t published in the U.S., so far as I can tell, so I broke down and ordered a copy from Amazon UK. It’s the fourth in her Giordano Bruno series and it’s as good if not better than the predecessors. I continue to have concerns about her hero’s future prospects, based on the fate that befell the real-life Bruno. But I enjoy these stories anyway.

And finally got around to An Air of Treason, the latest from P.F. Chisholm, aka Patricia Finney when she’s writing her excellent series about Sir Robert Carey, cousin/nephew of Queen Elizabeth. And this one has a couple cameos from QE I herself, along with Carey’s usual entertaining way with the ladies and his enemies.

I got an early look Dennis Lehane’s third novel about the Coughlin family, World Gone By, because I reviewed it for The Miami Herald. If you follow the link you’ll see I liked the book a lot — it continues the story of Joe Coughlin, the center of the previous book, Live By Night. This one is set in the 1940s and while Joe hasn’t left the world of organized crime he’s stepping back from running the show. As you can imagine, though, extricating yourself and protecting those you love isn’t that easy, even for an exceptionally smart guy like Joe. I think this book stands on its own though it would be enriched by having read Live By Night and even the first in the series, The Given Day. Apparently, Lehane’s contemporary crime fiction sells much better, which is a shame if it discourages him or his publishers from more books like this.

The best and worst for last. The best book I’ve read so far this year is another work of historical fiction: All The Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr. This was a National Book Award finalist, for good reason. It’s an immersive novel set during World War II, with the intertwining stories of a blind French girl and a talented German radio operator. The chapters are really short so it has the page-turning propulsion of a thriller but with beautiful writing that makes you simultaneously want to slow down and savor it. Just a great read, on just about every level.

Not so great: I Am Pilgrim by Terry Hayes. This is disappointing because it came at the recommendation of a reading friend whose tastes are very similar to mine. While I don’t read a lot of thrillers, I enjoy them occasionally (I liked Red Sparrow a lot when I read it last year). This one had promise, coming from a veteran screenwriter — I have come to trust that writers from the world of screens know how to craft stories. But this one, while far better written than, say, the works of Dan Brown, hit my plausibility buttons too many times. I *know* these are not supposed to be realistic. I enjoy James Bond and Jason Bourne movies. But the idea that this one guy would be at the center of all these events that happen to all collide at one place on the Turkish coast? Oh well. I did finish it even though it was annoying me and I didn’t really care how our hero was going to save the world. Since then I’ve been bouncing off a couple different books, which is REALLY annoying. Which has led me to conclude: I’d rather be immersed in a book I don’t like all that much than not immersed at all. Is there a name for that syndrome?

Don’t get attached to …

In high school, one of my husband’s friends ruined Top Gun before Mark got to see it with one phrase: Don’t get attached to Goose. That phrase has become our household shorthand for spoilers, or mock spoilers.

The phrase returned to me recently when I was reading the latest entry in a newish historical crime series. I am a big fan of Tudor-era crime fiction — C.J. Sansom’s Shardlake series, Rory Clements’ John Shakespeare series, Patricia Finney’s books, the David Becket/Simon Ames series under her own name as well as the Sir Robert Carey series under the pen name P.F. Chisholm — I devour them. After reading lots of biographies and novelizations of the various royals, it’s fun to see the action from around the edges and to imagine how life might have looked to an ordinary person, navigating the not-so-easy daily realities of life as well as the larger shifts in religious beliefs and power structures. There was certainly enough intrigue and ill will around the court during the reigns of both Henry VIII and Elizabeth I to come up with fodder for plausible crimes, aside from the never-ending human motives for murder (love, jealousy, money, etc.).

I was intrigued when S.J. Parris’ series debuted a few years back, with Heresy, a mystery set around real events, with her hero the real-life scholar and fugitive ex-monk Giordano Bruno. Bruno really did spent a couple years in England in the 1580s, the heart of the Elizabethan era. He may well have been an agent for spymaster Sir Francis Walsingham and in the books, he definitely is. Heresy was quickly followed by Prophecy and just out, a third volume, Sacrilege (which I was lucky enough to get as an advanced copy through LibraryThing’s Early Reviewers program). I thought this was the best installment yet in this series, and the book itself got better as it went along. All good. But I have one big problem. I don’t want to get attached to Bruno. Between reading the second and third volumes in this series, I read The Swerve by Stephen Greenblatt, which includes a description of the real life Bruno’s fate and it is ugly. After being imprisoned for seven years by the Roman Inquisition, defiant to the end, he was declared a heretic and executed. By being burned alive. With his tongue “bridled,” which, according to some accounts, means he had a stake driven through his face, to keep him from addressing the crowd.

In any of these series, you get attached to your hero, flawed guy that he is: Matthew Shardlake, David Becket, Simon Ames, Sir Robert Carey, John Shakespeare. They’re the protagonists; we’re meant to identify with them and they’re often trying to navigate conflicting loyalties while protecting more vulnerable souls, making them even more sympathetic. But now I don’t want to identify too strongly with Bruno — because I know he’s heading for a prolonged and painful end. There’s also something of a contract in series crime fiction; as readers we expect our hero is going to resolve the problem and be around to take on the next one. So far, the books have generally conformed to that convention but if you’re dealing with the real-life Bruno’s chronology, it can’t continue for long. I wonder why Parris didn’t simply create a fictional hero based on Bruno — it would have given her scope for a lot more books if he could hang around England longer, for one thing. Perhaps she’ll exercise the fiction writer’s license and simply have Bruno head out into an alternate future, where he chooses not to return to Italy and avoids the Inquisition. For the sake of the fictional character and my attachment, I hope so. Otherwise I fear this series is not going to see too many more installments. Sacrilege is set in 1584 and we know Bruno left England in 1585.

More on the real Giordano Bruno, if you’re curious but don’t want to read a whole book on the guy, is available on the Wikipedia page and in a New Yorker review of a recent biography.

My current reading is about another real-life Tudor-era figure who also met an early and unhappy end: I’m reading Bring Up the Bodies, the second in Hilary Mantel’s planned trilogy about Thomas Cromwell, the advisor to Henry VIII. But even though I know where he, too, is headed I don’t mind entering Cromwell’s mind and world. Maybe because it’s literary fiction or perhaps because it is based on real events not embroidering on known facts, like the Bruno series. Or maybe because I knew Cromwell’s fate from the beginning, and thus have been preparing myself all along. The third volume, which will presumably cover the Anne of Cleves disaster and Cromwell’s downfall, should be a doozy.

Besties forever

I am unable to resist best book lists of almost any form so I’ve been keeping an eye on the usual end of the year productions. I’m not as into it as some others, like the blogger Largehearted Boy, who amasses a giant list of best lists, or the librarian/bloggers at the Williamsburg Public Library, who take all those lists and turn them into one mega-list (though that list is broken into different categories, mostly for fiction).

Mostly, I keep an eye out for the lists compiled by the sources I rely on most for book reviews — The New York Times and Salon (which has separate lists for fiction and nonfiction). But I have to admit this year my favorite list came from Lev Grossman at Time magazine (which also had separate fiction and nonfiction lists). Perhaps it’s Grossman’s unapologetic appreciation of genre fiction — which was an awful lot of my fiction reading this year. Or, in a related angle, it’s his noticing books that are not the usual suspects — two graphic novels (The Death-Ray and Hark! A Vagrant!) became Christmas gifts in my house this year after I saw them on the list.

My best list consists of books I read this year, whenever they were published — though a large number were indeed new this year (one of the many benefits of working at a library is access to advanced review copies and awareness of newly published works). I chose my favorites with flat-out enjoyment as my only criterion, realizing that many factors go into that.

Fiction: A Song of Ice & Fire, books 1-3, George R.R. Martin (That’s A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings and A Storm of Swords)

Nonfiction: Rin Tin Tin, Susan Orlean.