Weekend reads and feeling funky...

No cute picture today; I'm not exactly between books so much as sandwiched in a pile, all half started. 

Real life has me a bit funky lately -- the last four weeks or so -- and I'm having a hard time focusing on reading, never mind reviewing.  (Funk isn't helped by the pile of review books staring at me!)

What are you reading this weekend?



[image credit: Mo Willems]

Historical Novel Society 2013 Conference Panelist: Meet Stephanie Cowell

I'm excited to share another Q&A with an author participating in the 2013 Historical Novel Society Conference this year, Stephanie Cowell.  Her books have long been on my TBR and now I'm breathless with anticipation for her newest (see her second to last question).  

Stephanie Cowell

What got you first interested in historical fiction?

Since an early age I believed I belonged in an earlier time, that my real life and were waiting for me there. I read historical children’s novels such as A LITTLE PRINCESS and felt that was my life, if I could only get to it. Even today certain places and times are a home I miss with all my heart.

How do you find the people and topics of your books?

Oh I am interested in many people and topics, and they come rushing at me. I can hardly leave a street in Europe or England without some fictional character tapping me on the shoulder and pouring out her story. Years ago I was walking behind my parents in a tiny village full of stone houses in Switzerland, and my father called back, “Daughter, where are you?” And I replied, “A character is following me.” My poor stepmother got SO upset and rushed back, thinking some deranged ragged person was trailing me. After that when I lagged behind, I simply called out “I’m just twenty feet and four centuries behind you.”

Do you follow a specific writing and/or research process?

I research as I write. I know something about the person or the times of course to begin with. In the last stages of the novel, I drop in all sorts of specifics…hat pins, things like that. I rewrite each novel several times trying to make a rising dramatic plot line out of a life.

For you, what is the line between fiction and fact?

I think it is most important to get the essence of a story, which means my character may have one big argument with her husband rather than seven, and live in one place in steady of fourteen. You have to change things a little to make a dramatic piece. We can’t change when Marie Antoinette died or the way she died, but we can change when she was playing with her children.

Do you have an anecdote about a reading or fan interaction you'd like to share?

Someone e-mailed me photos of the bookshop in Salzburg which sold my Mozart novel in German; it happened to be the same very old shop where Mozart himself bought books. So many things have happened! And Monet’s house in Giverny has a bookshop which carried my novel on him.

Where do you feel historical fiction is headed as a genre?

I don’t know. We go through fads. Considering everything from the beginning of time thru WWII is considered HF, we are taking over the world! That leaves us contemporary fiction and books set in the future.

Is there an era/area that is your favorite to write about? How about to read?

Oh many different times…I prefer to read about people in the arts than kings and queens on a whole.

Is there a writer, living or deceased, you would like to meet?

I would like to be with Shakespeare at rehearsals of HAMLET.

What book was the most fun for you to write?

Marrying Mozart…it took nine months and was pure joy. I adore Mozart. It was my love story for him.

Can you tell us about your latest publication?

My newest novel which will not be out for some time is about the Victorian poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning. She was a invalid with great family problems when the handsome gifted Robert Browning swept her away to Italy where her passionate love for Robert was in conflict with her family devotion, her laudanum addiction, her refusal to consider her health and her newly freed genius…among which were the sonnets she wrote for him. “How do I love thee?” etc.. It’s about a woman of genius handling love, health and life.

Do you have a most interesting question or crazy anecdote related to your writing you would like to share?

My first B&N reading for my first novel (NICHOLAS COOKE) outside the city was a disaster! The book had debuted well as a People Pick, great printed reviews, etc so off I went to Albany. The reading space was situated between the busy front door and loud café and there was no mike. I screamed out my readings….then many many people came through the door but not one of them stopped for me. Finally I asked the manager where they were all going. She said, “Oh, Spot the Dog is appearing here today!” It was profoundly depressing! I had an ice cream sundae after and was almost too sad to eat any of it.

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Learn more about Stephanie Cowell: check out her website or see her speaker profile here (scroll down).

A Prince to be Feared by Mary Lancaster

Title: A Prince to be Feared
Author: Mary Lancaster

Genre: Fiction (Historical / 15th Century / Eastern Europe / Romania / Ottoman Empire / Court Intrigue / Historical Figure Fictionalized / Romance)
Publisher/Publication Date: Self published (4/2013)
Source: Historical Fiction Virtual Book Tours

Rating: Liked a good deal.
Did I finish?: I did.
One-sentence summary: The lifelong friendship and love affair between Vlad the Impaler and a Hungarian noblewoman in 15th century Transylvania.
Reading Challenges: E-book, Historical Fiction

Do I like the cover?: I do -- it's ambigu-royal but I think it conveys the more serious (non-paranormal) heft to the story.

I'm reminded of...: Jeanne Kalogridis, Matt Rees

First line: He made a perfect villain.

Buy, Borrow, or Avoid?: Buy -- the ebook is $2.99!

Why did I get this book?: I love hist fic in unusual settings, and having traveled through Transylvania over the winter, I'm eager to return -- in person or via book!

Review: A novel about Dracula that doesn't involve vampires?! Be still my heart!

Needless to say, when I was offered to be on the tour for this one, I leapt at the chance, and my leap was rewarded: this is a great novel of court intrigue, war, and love -- and I'm happy to say, this isn't a Tudor-esque fic simply plunked into Transylvania.

Alternating between 1474 and 1454, the novel follows Ilona Szilágyi, a Hungarian noblewoman, and her friendship, courtship and love affair with Vlad Dracula.

My historical knowledge of Vlad Dracula is fuzzy (or, really, nonexistent), and Lancaster's novel quickly and neatly delves into his violent and heartbreaking life -- hostage to the Ottomans, a pawn during war, an ambitious military leader regarded with awe and horror for his unapologetically brutal ways -- who becomes a Prince and eventual political prisoner.  Vlad's ambitions are boundless as is his determination to remain a ruler, and he allows himself to be used by the Wallachians and Hungarians to remain in power. Lancaster opens with Machiavelli's quote (better a prince be feared than loved), which is coined some forty years after Vlad's reign and yet exemplifies his leadership style.

And still, knowing all that, I was kind of into Vlad. Even with a mustache and his cruel military prowess, I was digging him! It helped that our heroine, Ilona, was fun, a realistic mix of innocence and boldness, a bit fiery and a bit shy; I could relate to her, and when she was smitten, I was a tiny bit smitten.

Lancaster's writing is effortless, geeky with detail without feeling like infodumping or oversharing. She plunges us into the story, opening with the end of Vlad's imprisonment before taking us back to his youth, when he first met the impetuous Ilona. The political tangle of that region is lightly explained but really offered through context, and I appreciated that. (For those who are curious, you can read Chapter One on Lancaster's website.)

There's a long cast of characters at the beginning of the book as well as a map of the region. There's no Author's Note or Afterward, which I would have liked -- I'm intensely curious about this era and the players now!

I'm unsure how to describe this one: it's beach-y fun to read, but it isn't a bodice ripper or a sexed up historical ala Philippa Gregory. It isn't the weighty military historical necessarily but it's obviously a novel of war and conflict. It's a tiny bit coming-of-age for our young noblewoman; it's a bit middle-age-looking-back-at-youth as well. Whatever it is, it's fun, and effortless to read, and worth picking up if you like court intrigue but want a little variation, or if you're curious about Eastern Europe in the 15th century, or even if you just want to know a bit about the historical Dracula. (And, at the moment, it's $2.99 as an ebook.)

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GIVEAWAY!

I'm thrilled to offer an e-book copy of A Prince to be Feared to one lucky reader! To enter, fill out this brief form. Open to US and international readers, ends 5/31.

Winners!

I'm super behind on life -- reading, reviews, and apparently, sharing giveaway winners! -- so my apologies for the wait!  Here are the winners for this week!

The winner of Pain, Parties, Work is ... Krystle C.!

The winner of The Bequest of Big Daddy is ... Emily of The Bookshelf of Emily J.!

Congrats to the winners! Folks have until the end of day Wednesday to get back to me. If you didn't win, be sure to check out my open giveaways!

Mailbox Monday, May 13

In May, Mailbox Monday is hosted by Abi @ 4 the LOVE of BOOKS. Some wonderful arrivals this week! To learn more about any title, click the cover and it will open in a new tab/window.

What did you get this week? What do you think of these titles?

For Review







Swapped/Gifted/Purchased














All gifted to me by the amazing Amy of Passages to the Past! Thanks for letting me get these out of your house! ;)

Historical Novel Society 2013 Conference Panelist: Meet Stephanie Dray

This year, I'm going to be attending the Historical Novel Society's annual conference -- a first for me -- and I'm going as a panelist! (So surreal!) 

For the next few weeks, I'm going to be sharing some short interviews with a few of the panelists planning to come to the conference. I hope, even if you aren't attending, you'll find some new authors to add to your TBR!

I'm particularly excited to be hosting Stephanie Dray here -- as some of you may know, I kind of have a thing for her writing. (Good luck to me if I have a chance to meet her; there will be much gasping and swooning.)

Here are some questions Ms. Dray answered for HNS about her writing and books.

Stephanie Dray

How do you find the people and topics of your books?

I'm fascinated by the bad girls of history, not to mention the under-appreciated heroines of our past. When I learn about a woman that I feel I should know about, and don't, it's almost as if she's calling out to me to bring her to life. It's a miraculous thing.

For you, what is the line between fiction and fact?

I can be obsessive about getting the facts right. My agent and my husband once staged an intervention to stop me from fermenting crustacean shells in my back yard to see if I could recreate the ancient process of making purple dye. That said, I try not to be a pretentious person. I know what my job is. I am a novelist, not a biographer. My responsibility is to the story, first and foremost. I try to remember that history is written by the victors and that, especially when it comes to the ancient world, facts are fragmentary and a small piece of the puzzle. So I treat the facts respectfully, but I try never to be tyrannized by them.

What book was the most fun for you to write?

Let me tell you, instead, which was the least fun to write, and that was Song of the Nile. I knew that the book was going to touch on very problematic themes. I write about the Ptolemies, which means incest was going to come up for sure. I write about goddess worship when it was at its strongest and when it was imperiled. I write about the Romans, and rape was as embedded in their culture as it appears to still be in ours. I knew it was going to be a dark book and an over-the-top dramatic one. I kept pulling back the throttle, I kept avoiding writing the hard scenes, and when I did write them, I sometimes sniffled my way through them. In the end, it was my award-winningest book and I think, my most beautiful. But it hurt to write it and sometimes that's okay.

Do you have a most interesting question or crazy anecdote related to your writing you would like to share?

This is a very nerdy anecdote, but one that tickles me. I have been very fortunate to be able to consult with a professor of antiquities on the life of Cleopatra Selene. Because the date of her death is disputed, I wanted to get his opinion. I said, "Professor, I am quite certain that your theory about her death in 5 BC is correct, but that is very inconvenient for my story. Can I justify a later death date since most scholars, up until recently, believed she died in 17 AD?" He was quite firm in his opinion that I should adopt his theory because he was confident in its accuracy and worried that "if there is a cataclysm, and all books about Cleopatra Selene are destroyed about yours, don't you want it to be accurate?" I wondered what kind of person goes around worrying about such things! Then I realized that professors of antiquities do...and must...because so much in the ancient world is lost to us. In the end, I chose 5 BC...just in case there's a cataclysm.

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Learn more about Stephanie Dray: sign up for her newsletter, follow her on Twitter and check out her website. You can also see her speaker bio at the HNS Conference website on this page (just scroll down).

A Constellation of Vital Phenomena by Anthony Marra

Title: A Constellation of Vital Phenomena
Author: Anthony Marra

Genre: Fiction (2000s / 1990s / Russia / Chechnya / Secret Police / Emergency Room / Sex Trafficking / Doctors / Siblings)
Publisher/Publication Date: Hogarth (5/7/2013)
Source: TLC Book Tours

Rating: Liked a good deal.
Did I finish?: I did.
One-sentence summary: Six lives overlap, collide, and crash over a span of a decade, distilled down into five days in war-torn Chechnya.

Do I like the cover?: I adore it -- so sad, so evocative, so bittersweet!

I'm reminded of...: Jennifer Dubois, Valerie Laken

First line: On the morning after the Feds burned down her house and took her father, Havaa woke from dreams of sea anemones.

Buy, Borrow, or Avoid?: Borrow or buy -- I suspect this book will be getting a good deal of praise in the coming months.

Why did I get this book?: If it's from Hogarth, I'm reading it.

Review: I'm a total Hogarth fangirl now, having first fallen in love with I Am Forbidden and then The Headmaster's Wager.

Set in a small town in the Chechan Republic, the novel takes place over five days, shifting from 'present' -- 2004 -- back to 1994.  (The time jumps are beautiful noted at the start of each chapter with this timeline, the year in question bolded.)

The five days in question, the frame of the book, refer to the time spent at a nearly abandoned hospital by Akhmed, an incompetent village doctor, and Havaa, the 8-year old daughter of his neighbor, orphaned after Federal police seized her father and burned her house. Desperate to save her, Akhmed drags her to the city hospital (at one point in the book, he realizes it is the first life he's saved as a doctor).

There they meet Sonja and her crazy nurse. Sonja, paralysed with guilt and fear over her sister Natasha, missing again after being a victim of sex trafficking, works automaton-like numbness at the hospital, amputating limbs with quick practice and dealing with gangsters to resupply the hospital.

Every night, Akhmed returns home to care for his invalid wife, living in fear of his neighbor Ramzan, who is a snitch for the police (Ramzan is the reason Havaa and her father were turned in to the police) while nurturing a friendship with Khassan, Ramzan's historian father who has taken to ignoring his son as punishment for his betrayals.

Chechnya, a region in Russia perhaps only vaguely familiar to Americans in the last decade, is now increasingly familiar due to the Boston Marathon bombings. I will admit to some -- I don't know how to describe it -- some shaky unease reading about Chechan landmines and amputations when I've been reading about bombs and amputations here.

Marra's writing is gorgeous, not quite poetry, not simple statement, and as a result, whatever he articulates, be it a broken heart or severed limb, reads achingly real. (Which isn't to say it's all lofty philosophy: there are some literally stomach-turning, had-to-put-the-book-down-and-walk-away graphic or grotesque moments, like the aforementioned amputation scene.)  That said, I couldn't stop reading -- or wanting to read -- this book, and Marra's inclusion of such violence emphasizes the unstable destruction of the area, the unceasing  horror these characters live with.

Much like the old medical text that inspired the title, the characters are all points on a constellation, connected and separate.  I finished this book unwilling to start another, still working at the story in my mind.

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GIVEAWAY!

I'm thrilled to offer a copy of A Constellation of Vital Phenomena to one lucky reader! To enter, fill out this brief form. Open to US/Canadian readers, ends 5/24.