Books of a Lifetime by Peter Lefcourt (And an Excerpt)

Today we welcome author Peter Lefcourt to Historical Tapestry share his Books of a Lifetime.

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When I was in my early twenties, I was swept up by the works of Lawrence Durrell, especially The Alexandrian Quartet, and of Henry Miller. I was enamored of their way of capturing the exotic worlds of Alexandria and Paris. I read Vladimir Nabokov, Saul Bellow, Phillip Roth – for their distinctive narrative voice and the rich texture of their writing.

As I got older I gravitated more toward irony and wit: I fell in love with Kurt Vonnegut, John Barth, J.P. Donleavey, Thomas Pynchon, Gunter Grass and other “black humorists.” I think these are the writers that had the most influence on my first seven novels – The Deal, The Dreyfus Affair, Di & I, Abbreviating Ernie, The Woody, Eleven Karens, and The Manhattan Beach Project. These books are comic conceits set in the world of Hollywood, baseball, politics, etc.

This new book, An American Family, is the closest thing I’ve written to emotional, autobiographical fiction. It’s more Dickens than Vonnegut, and somewhat different than my other books. Though there is humor in the story, it is not conceptual humor as much as cultural humor..

Excerpt from An American Family by Peter Lefcourt

Nathan was proud of him, introducing him to the people at J&J Frocks as my son the lawyer, even though Jackie was two years and a bar exam away from practicing law. He wondered what his father would think if he knew that his son the lawyer was working during the day as a bag man for a Nassau County politician.

If Jackie made good time, he could stop off for a belt. He turned on the car radio. Fiddling with the dial, he landed on a radio soap. As he passed Howard Beach, the organ music stopped abruptly, and in its place, a faltering voice announced, “We interrupt this program to bring you a special news bulletin…”

The Alpha Epilson Pi house a Syracuse University, a three-story Greek Revival brick building, built in the nineteen-twenties by a wealthy Jewish alumnus, housed sixty undergraduates in small, double rooms, with dormer windows and built-in bunk beds.

An American Family is available as a Kindle e-book found here.

Julie K. Rose's Books of a Lifetime (includes giveaway)

Today we welcome Julie K. Rose, author of Oleanna to Historical Tapestry to share her Books of a Lifetime.

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When you look back on your life, it's sometimes surprising to remember who you were.  At least it is for me.

I know conceptually that I was a child, a teenager, a young woman. The flashes of memory are still there, images and smells, snatches of song, feelings, photos, family stories worn around the edges with use. But it's disconnected now, not a continuous line of consciousness over the course of 14,660-odd days (some more odd than others).

Certain things have held this life together, given it structure and meaning, a through-line: my husband, friends, and family. Music, art, wonder at the world. Writing.  But it's books, always books, that give me something to hang onto, to anchor me in a point of time.

  

And it all really started with Little Women. It was the first "grown up" book my parents read to me, when I was quite young. The March girls imprinted themselves in my brain, especially fellow tomboy and voracious reader (and writer) Jo. This was the first book that book taught me the joy of being transported to another place and time; watching my mom's face as she read to me, I knew she was transported too.  Our shared love of reading and Little Women gave me a connection with my mom. When the 1994 movie came out, we saw it together, crying, and laughing because we were crying, like the sentimental saps we were. It was the only time we went to the movies together as adults; I remember it like it was yesterday.

Rewind to another crucial point in life marked by a book: the dreaded, dire teenage years. When I was 14, mom loaned me her copy of Trade Wind by M.M. Kaye. With the wonderfully named Hero Athena Hollis, yet another tomboyish, independent heroine, and a completely different time and place (19^th century Zanzibar), the book fired both my imagination and my wanderlust. It stoked my courage. It reinforced my independent streak.  And when I wrote a fan letter to Mollie Kaye, and got a response back, it sowed the seeds for what I would become almost 20 years later: a writer.

But well before that, I went to college, and the book that really rocked my world didn't have a single spunky heroine. Instead, it was an existentialist classic of the mid-20^th century: The Plague by Albert Camus, a terribly grim, beautifully written story. What struck me then, and has stuck with me in the years since, is the deep, aching humanity of the book. No matter what faith you profess, or what your beliefs are, when it comes down to it, it is up to us. We are all here together, and we must always, always take care of each other.  And, despite circumstances and the look of things, there is always hope. It's the book that really marked my passage, intellectually and emotionally speaking, into adulthood.

And frankly, adulthood just sucks sometimes. There was a point about ten years ago where I lost my way, when I lost sight of hope.  As a response to the darkness, I began writing fiction, and the path began to clear. And then a year later, I read the Lord of the Rings trilogy for the first time. The obvious love Tolkien had for the land helped restore my sense of peace (and influenced my writing as well). But what was even more important was being reminded that you have to press on, you have to have heart, that anyone and everyone can be a hero. Those three books helped me recover my courage and hope and now I re-read the books once a year, to remind me that the light will always win out over the dark, in the end.

I can vividly remember reading each of these books for the first time, the expansiveness I felt when I was immersed in their worlds. Books are one of the through-lines, the anchor points in my life, reminding me who I was, and showing me who I have become, and maybe even giving me a preview of who I will be in the future.

“A book is made from a tree. It is an assemblage of flat, flexible parts (still called 'leaves') imprinted with dark pigmented squiggles. One glance at it and you hear the voice of another person, perhaps someone dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, the author is speaking, clearly and silently, inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people, citizens of distant epochs, who never knew one another. Books break the shackles of time, proof that humans can work magic.”
― Carl Sagan

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About Julie K. Rose

I'm an author of unique historic and contemporary fiction, and I'm particularly interested in the intersection of the spiritual and secular, the supernatural and the everyday, the past and the present, and the deep, instinctual draw of the land.

Oleanna, short-listed for finalists in the 2011 Faulkner-Wisdom literary competition, is my second novel.  The Pilgrim Glass, a finalist in the 2005 Faulkner-Wisdom and semi-finalist in the 2009 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Awards, was published in 2010.

I am a current co-chair of the Historical Novel Society, Northern California chapter and former reviewer for the Historical Novels Review. I live in the Bay Area with my husband and our cat Pandora, and love reading, following the San Francisco Giants, watching episodes of Doctor Who, and enjoying the amazing natural beauty of Northern California.

About Oleanna

Set during the separation of Norway from Sweden in 1905, this richly detailed novel of love and loss was inspired by the life of my great-great-aunts.

Oleanna and her sister Elisabeth are the last of their family working their farm deep in the western fjordland. A new century has begun, and the world outside is changing, but in the Sunnfjord their world is as small and secluded as the verdant banks of a high mountain lake. With their parents dead and their brothers all gone to America, the sisters have resigned themselves to a simple life tied to the land and to the ghosts of those who have departed.

The arrival of Anders, a cotter living just across the farm's border, unsettles Oleanna's peaceful but isolated existence. Sharing a common bond of loneliness and grief, Anders stirs within her the wildness and wanderlust she has worked so hard to tame. When she is confronted with another crippling loss, Oleanna must decide once and for all how to face her past, claim her future, and find her place in a wide new world.

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We have 2 copies of Oleanna to give away. Open worldwide. Please leave a comment on this post to enter. The winners will be announced on July 1st. And don't forget to return tomorrow for our review of Oleanna.

Nicole Galland's Books of a Lifetime

Today we welcome Nicole Galland, author of I, Iago to Historical Tapestry to share her Books of a Lifetime.

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I move with absurd frequency. Most moves require me to shed books; I give away thousands to used book stores, libraries, friends. But some books survive all the moves, even if I have not opened them for 20 years. They are a part of me.
Looking over these books I cannot abandon, I find most of them fit into one (or more) of four general categories. From most cerebral to most visceral, they are:

1. BOOK-books

Since I was 10 years old, Norton Juster’s The Phantom Tollbooth (illustrated by Jules Feiffer) has been unceasingly my favorite book. One of many things I love about it: it can only be a book. It wouldn’t work as a movie or a stage play; it is, innately, BOOK-ish.

My Shelf of the Unabandoned contains a lot of BOOK-books, that elicit from me a cackle of delight and the thought, “I didn’t know you could do that!”

Among the BOOK-books are: 1339 or So, by Nicholas Seare (a charming historical novella obsessively annotated by a scholar incapable of appreciating its charm); Breakfast of Champions, by Kurt Vonnegut (in which Vonnegut appears as the author of the novel you are reading); If On A Winter’s Night A Traveler, by Italo Calvino (stories interrupted by, commented upon, and interlaced with other stories; his Cosmicomics also deserves mention here, but utterly defies description), Virginia Woolf’s To The Lighthouse (spoiler alert: they never get there) and Fried Green Tomatoes At the Whistle Stop Café by Fannie Flagg (a tale of love and murder told through a fractured lens of newspaper articles, letters, recipes, gossip and traditional narrative, moving freely back and forth through time).

2. BOOKS WITH A MESSAGE

The first book I could recite from memory was The Lorax by Dr. Seuss. The National Wildlife Federation promoted it to bring attention to Ranger Rick, their children’s magazine about the conservation movement (to which I instantly subscribed). I can still recite most of it.
It’s a delicate balance, novels that are About Something without being preachy. Two of the most successful, in my opinion, are Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird and Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible. Just seeing them on my shelf makes me want to make the world a better place, and myself a better person.

3. YUMMY BOOKS, or, Books Written Just For Me
It’s impressive how many authors were put on the planet principally to write a book that was specifically intended just for Nicole Galland’s Reading Pleasure. (I’m sure they have meaningful, productive lives in their spare time.)

Possibly topping this list is a book by the hilarious Christopher Moore: Lamb, or the Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal. I was a Comparative Religion major (and a Buddhist skeptic), and this is the book I would have written while in college, if I’d been funnier. Similarly, Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials felt like a personal gift.

Most other books in this category are historical fiction. For instance, Dorothy Dunnett’s entire Lymond series, but especially The Game of Kings, leaves me as giddy and breathless as if Francis Crawford has just flirted with me in several languages at once. I was studying chess intensively when I was first introduced to Game of Kings, and I was astonished by how perfectly she structured the novel to resemble a chess game. Years later, I went back to re-read it, having forgotten all my chess savvy, and could not find the evidence that so wowed me the first time – a comment on me, not her. There are so many layers of wit and subtlety to her work.

4. BOOKS ON BEING HUMAN

Finally, there are the books I’d save in an apocalypse-proof vault for survivors of whatever apocalypse awaits us.

Tolstoy’s War and Peace contains almost every literary genre, and Tolstoy is a master at them all: political intrigue, daily life, action-adventure, history, philosophy, social commentary, romance – it’s a one-stop reading extravaganza.

I must put in a place-holder here reading: “countless other books.” Kazuo Ishiguro’s Remains of the Day. Dostoevsky’s The Idiot. Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities. Anything by Isabel Allende. This paragraph could go on for weeks, so I’m cutting it off now and moving on.
Besides, the granddaddy of all books about the human condition is not a book in the strictest sense – it’s the Complete Works of William Shakespeare. The beauty, humor, depth, complexity and yet simplicity, of Shakespeare’s stories is really meant to be seen and heard, not read. But his stories have survived the test of time and inspired dozens if not hundreds of other writers.

I’m one of them. My novel I, Iago takes the plot of Othello and tells it from the villain’s point of view. The story of a good man who becomes a bad man without realizing it until it’s too late, it is the most recent in a steady stream of homages going back 400 years. The source material – all of it, all of the Bard – will be last into the box and first out as long as the binding holds together. It is a part of me.

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Nicole Galland’s previous novels include The Fool’s Tale, Revenge of the Rose and CROSSED: A Tale of the Fourth Crusade. Her novel I, Iago has just come out from out from William Morrow. She lives on Martha’s Vineyard, but you can also find her a nicolegalland.com or facebook.com/nicolegalland.

Donna Russo Morin's Books of a Lifetime

Today we welcome Donna Russ Morin to Historical Tapestry to share her Books of a Lifetime.

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I can’t remember when the concept of the power of ‘story’ first came to me; it is so firmly embedded in my memory it’s as if I was born with it. Add to that the sight of my mother, a book in hand whenever possible, and the power was firmly cemented. There are so many children’s books still alive in my mind, it’s as if I just read them again yesterday—Winnie the Pooh, Jungle Book--so profound was their impact on me. But the first to make the Books of Lifetime list would have to be Charlotte’s Webb by E. B. White.

I have no doubt that a primary reason for its importance to me was the power of the female characters, both human and insect. When Fern stood up to her father, when she showed such courage in saving Wilbur, she showed the essence of the feminist revolution taking root all around me, and I wanted to possess the same courage. In Charlotte’s self-sacrifice one felt distinctly the treasure of unconditional love (“’Why did you do all this for me?" he (Wilbur) asked. ‘I don't deserve it. I've never done anything for you.' ‘You have been my friend,' replied Charlotte. 'That in itself is a tremendous thing.’”) Throw in all those marvelous quirky sub-characters, and my imagination was ignited beyond reckoning; I believe I slept with the book—carried it with me everywhere I went—for the better part of a year. 

Not so strangely, my next literary obsession also revolved around a spunky female protagonist. The Trixie Belden books were a part of my life for years; they were the feminist version of The Hardy Boy Mysteries. The varying settings, the clues and the mysteries to be solved, were all great escapism for the awkward and confusing pre-adolescent years while firmly giving credence and more emphasis to the female lead. Additionally (pun intended) my complete empathy with Trixie was firmly planted in our mutually struggle with math. By this time, I had already begun writing myself and that concept of empathy became very intrinsic to my literary development—the importance of it in character formation. These stories also solidified my proclivity for a forthright feminine central character; a proclivity that would shape the entirety of my own writing, and will continue to do so.

My late teenaged years and college days were held captive by two male writers…Stephen King and J. R. R. Tolkien. The King taught me, more than any of my ‘literature’ classes in college, how to tell a complex story with brilliant simplicity, a characteristic of his writing that has only gotten better with time. The Lord of the Rings ignited my imagination like little else had before, showing that, when well written (in this case magnificently written), there is nothing beyond a reader’s suspension of disbelief. Tolkien’s mastery at world building emphasized the importance of it, no matter what the ‘world’ may be.

The notes of my genre were first sung to me by the like of James Michener, Margaret Mitchell, Leon Uris and John Jakes, but the first to make me truly think, ‘this is what I want to write,’ was Rosalind Laker’s To Dance With Kings. A family saga, like Jakes, it featured women as the leads amidst the opulence of French royalty; it was a combination I found intoxicating. The historical genre was astoundingly solidified with my final book of a lifetime, Outlander by Diana Gabaldon. Never was the powerful female protagonist so perfectly formed and the dual edged sword of entertainment and education that characterizes historical fiction so perfectly displayed.

Taking this look back has really held up a mirror to the influences that these great books have had on my own work. It has to be the goal of every writer that they create, for some reader or perhaps some yet-to-be-writer, they’re own Book of a Lifetime.

Tour Information

Link to tour schedule: http://hfvirtualbooktours.blogspot.com/2011/11/donna-russo-morin-on-tour-for-kings.html
Links for author Donna Russo Morin: WEBSITE | FACEBOOK | TWITTER
Twitter Event Hashtag: #KingsAgentVirtualBookTour

Author Bio

Donna Russo Morin was born in Providence, Rhode Island in 1958. Her writing endeavors began at age six and covered such timely topics as The Pink Pussy Cat for President and The Numbers 2 and 4 are in Love.

Traveling through adolescence on the wings of the ‘60s gave Donna a lot of grist for her writing mill. Feminism, civil rights, the Vietnam War were all a disturbing yet highly motivating muse. Donna found her voice in fiction and with the appearance of a new horror writer on the book scene, a little known author named Stephen King, she turned her pen to the gruesome and the grotesque.

After graduating from the University of Rhode Island, Donna worked in marketing and advertising for large corporations and small non-profit arts organizations. When she had her children, she knew with a certainty that she needed to show them, by example, that if you believe in yourself, anything is possible.

In addition to writing and teaching writing, Donna has worked as a model and actor since the age of seventeen, when she did her first television commercial for Sears. Since then she has appeared in more than thirty television spots and print ads, everything from changing the oil in her car (that was acting) to modeling fur coats. She also appeared in three episodes of Showtime’s THE BROTHERHOOD, as well as in Martin Scorsese’s THE DEPARTED.

Donna lives peacefully, close to the beautiful shoreline of Rhode Island that she loves so much, with her two sons, Devon and Dylan, her greatest works in progress.

Books of a Lifetime by Amanda Grange

I’ve always been an avid reader and I’ve always read widely across almost every genre, but the books I love the most are the ones with a lot of humour in them. As a child, some of my favourites were Paddington, Winnie the Pooh and 101 Dalmatians. I used to get most of my books from the local library, but even then I loved books as objects as well as sources of entertainment, and I often used to ask for hardback editions of my favourites for Christmas and birthdays. These represented the height of luxury for me and I loved curling up with them, revelling in the illustrations and laughing at, and with, all my favourite characters.

 

As I moved into my teens, I found plenty more books to make me laugh. As soon as I discovered P G Wodehouse I was hooked. I absolutely adore Jeeves and Wooster, and I think it’s a tribute to their genius that they translate so well to the screen and the radio. No matter who plays them, they always work, though my favourites are probably those with Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie. Other favourites were Three Men In A Boat, The Diary of a Nobody and the Mapp and Lucia books by E F Benson. They’ve all stood the test of time and it’s because they are so well observed. The authors understand the foibles of human nature, which are surprisingly unchanging over the years - and even the centuries. We still worry about many of the same things, and laugh at our worries.

 

Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is another favourite. Although it has a science fiction setting, the humour is still based around real people, their faults and failings, and the absurdities of life. Douglas Adams brilliantly satirises our own age by having a Vogon space fleet about to destroy earth to make way for a hyperspace bypass. The characters are wonderful, from the eternally gloomy Marvin (“brain the size of a planet and they’ve got me parking cars” ), the hyper Zaphod and the permanently harassed Arthur Dent, who just wants to go back to the now-demolished Earth and have a nice cup of tea.

 

I also discovered Georgette Heyer in my teens and I was in raptures when I realised she’d written so many books, because I used to read two or three books, at least, a week. Some of the titles, like The Black Moth, promised adventure, whilst others such as Sprig Muslin promised clothes, promenades and balls. But all of them promised – and delivered – books which frequently made me smile and often made me laugh out loud.

 

But my favourite of all time was, and is, Pride and Prejudice. It has everything. Humour? Tick. Romance? Tick. Memorable characters? Tick. It manages to effortlessly outclass every other book, and each time I read it I find something new to enjoy. Small wonder that I’ve spent the last eight years of my life writing retellings of Austen’s major novels from the heroes’ points of view! My latest, which completes the series, is Henry Tilney’s Diary. Henry is one of Jane Austen’s wittiest characters and I loved inventing a childhood for him, with his irascible father, downtrodden mother, rakish brother and utterly delightful sister. And of course I loved seeing the events of Northanger Abbey through his eyes.

 

I still love books that make me laugh, from Evelyn Waugh to Terry Pratchett. So if you can think of any I might have missed, please let me know!

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Amanda Grange is the author of Henry Tilney’s Diary and many other historical and regency novels. She lives in England. Visit her website at http://www.amandagrange.com/.

Stephanie Dray's Books of a Lifetime

Stories are about the soul. They tell us who we were, who we are, and who we want to be. I suppose I’ve always loved historical fiction because it’s sometimes too painful to look at who I am and too scary to look at who I might still be, but the past gives me clues to both. 

When I started this list, I was certain that all those literary novels I read in college would end up on this list. They were important award-winning books, many of which made me feel very smart to have read. But when I look at the books that I actually treasure, I realize that they are the not the polite and quiet little novels about ennui. The novels I treasure are the ones that elicit some very powerful emotion from me.

The first Roman era historical I ever read was Quo Vadis, by Henryk Sienkiewics. I’ll confess right now that I was an impatient teenager and skipped over some of the long drawn-out descriptions. Moreover, the deeply religious theme of this novel did not touch my soul. However, this was a book I shared with my father and my sister. It was the first time we all read a book and started talking about it together. That bonding experience was special for all of us. The second thing that made this book so important to me is that for all it was set in ancient Rome, the politics were surprisingly modern to my ear. That people who lived so long ago and in such an alien culture could be so similar to me was an eye-opener. For those of you who have read the book, you know that it’s a total nail-biting thriller towards the end. It captured my attention and wouldn’t let go; it may even be responsible for my lifelong love of classical historicals.

Much later in life, I stumbled over Wilbur Smith’s River God. Now, as historical fiction, this novel falls afoul of all kinds of rules. It’s really a melding of historical time periods with a mix of fantasy thrown in. It’s an adventure story aimed squarely at the masses. It’s accessible and beautiful and probably considered low-brow in some literary circles, but this was the first book to teach me how much fun historical fiction could be. I swooned over the narrative voice of an arrogant slave telling me the story of two star-crossed lovers in ancient Egypt. And I cried when things went terribly wrong. And I didn’t care that it wasn’t all true, because it should have been.

Octavia Butler’s Wild Seed, for me, was a revelation. We have in this book two characters who are god-like and one of them is both evil and sympathetic. It’s a science fiction book--I suppose I should say that up front. Doro is a being who farms people. You read that right. The heroine is a shapeshifter, but not of the variety you typically see in commercial fiction today. It’s a story about slavery, gender, race and … desire. Because of that, I never remember that it’s science fiction and always think of it as a psychological drama, a power struggle both epic and tragic. It’s historical, fantastical, and allegorical. Can you both love and hate someone at the same time? This book says that you can. It’s not for the faint of heart, but it captured mine.

Making up this list makes me realize that I’m more demented than I realized. Apparently, books that make me cry are books that I love. And one has to truly be a little deranged to love Philippa Gregory’s Wideacre the way that I loved it. I love books about bad girls and you just don’t get any worse than Beatrice Lacey. The narrator of Wideacre is unlike any main character I have ever encountered before with the possible exception of The Marquise de Merteuil from Dangerous Liaisons. At first, I read Wideacre because I was shocked. Then I kept reading because I couldn't wait to find out what awful thing she'd do next. But eventually, I became so absorbed in the darkness of her heart and the desperation of her struggle that I was unaccountably moved to tears. Ultimately, Wideacre must be understood as a woman's fable. A lesson in violent passions unrestrained by conscience. A myth of epic proportions. And though it purports to be historical fiction, there are some plausibly deniable fantasy elements that make it more speculative fiction than anything else. Beatrice is a woman and a goddess, with all the potential for destruction that entails and this book still haunts me.

About Stephanie…

Stephanie graduated with a degree in Government from Smith, a small women’s college in Massachusetts where–to the consternation of her devoted professors–she was unable to master Latin. However, her focus on Middle Eastern Studies gave her a deeper understanding of the consequences of Egypt’s ancient clash with Rome, both in terms of the still-extant tensions between East and West as well as the worldwide decline of female-oriented religion.

Before she wrote novels, Stephanie was a lawyer, a game designer, and a teacher. Now she uses the transformative power of magic realism to illuminate the stories of women in history and inspire the young women of today. She remains fascinated by all things Roman or Egyptian and has–to the consternation of her devoted husband–collected a house full of cats and ancient artifacts.

Blurb

Sorceress. Seductress. Schemer. Cleopatra’s daughter has become the emperor’s most unlikely apprentice and the one woman who can destroy his empire…

Having survived her perilous childhood as a royal captive of Rome, Selene pledged her loyalty to Augustus and swore she would become his very own Cleopatra. Now the young queen faces an uncertain destiny in a foreign land.

Forced to marry a man of the emperor’s choosing, Selene will not allow her new husband to rule in her name. She quickly establishes herself as a capable leader in her own right and as a religious icon. Beginning the hard work of building a new nation, she wins the love of her new subjects and makes herself vital to Rome by bringing forth bountiful harvests.

But it’s the magic of Isis flowing through her veins that makes her indispensable to the emperor. Against a backdrop of imperial politics and religious persecution, Cleopatra’s daughter beguiles her way to the very precipice of power. She has never forgotten her birthright, but will the price of her mother’s throne be more than she’s willing to pay?

Berkley Trade October 2011 (Trade Paperback)
# ISBN-10: 0425243044
# ISBN-13: 9780425243046

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CW Gortner's Books of a lifetime

It’s almost impossible to highlight two or three books out of the hundreds that have both touched me as a reader and influenced me as a writer. I’ve been a hopeless bibliophile all of my life; books clutter my writing study and sit in sealed plastic containers in my basement, having traveled with me wherever I go. Some have had to be replaced over time, from sheer wear-and-tear; others remain as pristine as the day I bought them (I have this OCD thing about cracking book spines, and try my utmost never to do it).


For this post, I decided to open one of my older containers and take a look at the books that have obstinately stayed with me through my numerous moves, some even international. Here they are:

I first read REPORT TO GRECO by Nikos Kazantakis in my troubled adolescence and have re-read it several times since. While Kazantakis is most famous for writing the exuberant Zorba the Greek, in this semi-autobiographical confession that remains defiantly unfettered by that genre’s restrictions, he details his complex journey to discover his relationship with himself and with his shared humanity. It is a rich testament to every person’s quest to know the inner workings of our soul.

IMMORTAL QUEEN by Elizabeth Byrd was a gift from my mother, who encouraged my burgeoning passion for history by giving me historical fiction to read. You can blame this book for starting my 16th century obsession; I fell madly in love with its eloquent account of the doomed Mary of Scots. Though my lifelong fatal attraction for powerful ladies in history has expanded to encompass many others since then, this is the novel which sparked my proverbial tinder.





I read HOUSE OF THE SPIRITS by Isabel Allende several years after my family had returned to the US after living in Spain. I was nineteen, struggling to assimilate US culture; a struggle that, for me, has never completely resolved. This novel, steeped in allegory and eccentricity, captured my imagination, reminding me both of the continent I’d left and the one I had yet to explore; it also spurred me for the first time to start writing a novel in earnest, even as I despaired of ever producing anything as gorgeously inventive as this.

Lastly, MY COUSIN RACHEL by Daphne Du Maurier is, for me, that rare jewel— the perfect book. From its haunting opening line to the final, heart-shattering dénouement, this tale of a young man haunted by doubt and enamored of an older, enigmatic woman who might be a murderer transcends its Gothic underpinnings in every way. It is, in my opinion, a classic: timeless, elegant, and unforgettable.

C.W. Gortner’s latest release is THE CONFESSIONS OF CATHERINE DE MEDICI in trade paperback. He is also the author of THE LAST QUEEN and THE TUDOR SECRET. Visit him at http://www.cwgortner.com/.

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This guest post is part of the blog tour for The Confessions of Catherine de Medici being run by Historical Fiction Virtual Blog Tours. You can follow the blog tour by visiting the tour schedule here.

We currently have a paperback copy of The Confessions of Catherine de Medici available to win! Read my review of the book, and enter the giveaway by commenting on the review post!

Tony Hays' Books of a Lifetime

I have always loved reading, especially historicals. There has always been something seductive about historical novels and their ability to send you whirring across the centuries. I’m sure that I’ve read thousands, but a few stand out.

Herman Wouk’s World War II epics The Caine Mutiny and The Winds of War are probably two of my all time favorite historicals. Wouk’s strengths lie in his ability to create a believable world. When you read The Caine Mutiny, you find yourself on the Caine. But in a larger sense, both books are romances – I’m of the opinion that all novels have a romance at their heart. Willie Keith’s quest for Mae Wynn is, in many ways, ultimately as important as the mutiny itself.

In brief, the story follows the adventures of Willie Keith, a budding pianist and scion of a wealthy New York family. While his parents would prefer that Willie study literature, he wants only to play the piano in bars. Shortly after the outbreak of World War II, he meets a beautiful singer, Mae Wynn, and as their affair heats up, Willie is forced to join the Navy for officer training rather than be drafted as an enlisted man.

Willie is assigned to an antiquated minesweeper/destroyer, the USS Caine, a rust bucket of a ship and one that sees mostly menial duties in the Pacific, almost never sees combat. Until they encounter a typhoon one night, while the ship is commanded by Captain Philip Queeg, a deeply-flawed man. Fearful that the captain’s actions will cause the ship to founder and sink, the officers essentially mutiny and relieve the captain of his command.

I loved this book when I first read it, and it is one of those that I can re-read time and time again. But it was brought home to me again in the fall of 2002. I took a job through the Navy College to teach courses onboard one of our amphibious ships during its Atlantic crossing and Med cruise. But what should have been a pleasure cruise turned into a cruise into war.

Wouk’s strengths lie in creating atmosphere, the tedium of life onboard ship, the tension of those rare and fleeting moments of combat, the petty tyrannies of an overbearing captain. And while I felt all of those emotions when I first read Wouk, it was only on that cruise that I understood how truly accurate and skillful Herman Wouk really was.

There was the Atlantic crossing where rough seas sent dozens of sailors to their bunks. Standing the bridge during our Gibraltar transit when a small fishing boat came at us from the Moroccan coast, refusing to divert or even acknowledge our hails. The fear and suspense when we were ordered through the Suez Canal and into a war zone. The uncertainty when al-Qaeda was reported to be planning attacks on US ships with small aircraft. The palpable tension when we were ordered near the Yemen coast to participate in a search and rescue mission, that could have been a ploy to get us close enough to launch a USS Cole type attack.

And there were the captains, neither really Queeg-like, but each with his own idiosyncrasies. The captain who stormed across the bridge, cursing and demanding that a machine gun be brought to the bridge so he could fire the first shot. It was a coed ship – something that neither Willie Keith nor Captain Queeg had to face – and one captain would not allow men and women to sit within three feet of each other. And when we had “steel beach picnics” – cookouts on the flight deck – he would not allow men and women to dance together.

Although I had already placed The Caine Mutiny on my favorite book list, after that cruise, it moved to that even shorter list of books of a lifetime.

Tony Hays it the author of an Arthurian Mystery series featuring The Killing Way, The Divine Sacrifice, and the recently released The Beloved Dead.

Books of a Lifetime by Margaret James (includes a giveaway!)

I’m delighted to be a guest blogger on Historical Tapestry, and to have the chance to share my books of a lifetime with fellow readers. 

A big thank you to Marg for inviting me!

The books which mean most to me and will be on my shelves forever have one thing in common – they’re all inspirational and uplifting in some way, even if the stories they tell are sad or even tragic. Whenever I re-read them, I’m always cheered and heartened, because their message is – life can be what you make it. You don’t have to accept defeat. You’ll never be a failure provided you do what you know is right and are true to yourself

These books don’t pretend it’s ever going to be easy to meet the challenges of life. But they do encourage the reader to try harder, do better, and they show us that with a bit of luck and a wagon load of determination it’s possible to win through. As a writer myself, trying to make my way in one of the world’s most challenging professions, I find that concept enormously empowering.

So, let’s get started on my keeper shelf...

A novel which helped me get through a troubled adolescence, took me into a world I hadn’t known existed, and showed me what real courage is all about, is Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, set in the Deep South of the USA in the days of racial segregation. The hero of this novel is small town lawyer Atticus Finch, a widower who is doing his best to bring up two motherless children and keep his own self-respect in the face of prejudice and hostility to almost everything he holds dear.

Atticus takes on a case he can never win, even though his client is obviously innocent of the crime of which he’s been accused. The client is a black man, so Atticus knows he’s defeated before he sets foot in the courtroom. But, as the novel itself makes clear, courage is not a man with a gun in his hand. It’s knowing you’re licked before you begin, but you begin anyway, and you see it through no matter what.

My other favourite read as a teenager was Jane Eyre, another story of courage and determination, narrated in the first person by someone who could easily have been one of life’s losers. Jane is poor, plain and socially disadvantaged, but she has the soul of a born fighter, and this keeps her going even when it looks as if she might lose everything – her livelihood, the man she loves, and perhaps even life itself.

Jane’s love for Mr Rochester is requited, and all that needs to happen for them to end up together is for Jane and Rochester to achieve some kind of parity – for her to go up in the world and for him to come down – which eventually they do. But one of my other heroes, Pip in Great Expectations, suffers the torment of unrequited love throughout the novel, and his courage in the face of constant rejection must surely get every reader on his side. He doesn’t deserve to be put through so much pain, especially as he grows in moral stature throughout the story, eventually risking his own life to save those of two people – Miss Havisham and the convict – who have deceived him, and candidly owning up to all his past mistakes. The ending of this novel is ambiguous, and the reader can decide if Pip marries the cruel beauty Estella, or if they part.  Personally, I think she’s already given him enough grief, so I hope he married someone else, had several children, and lived happily ever after!

Bryce Courtenay’s The Power of One is another story of courage in the face of overwhelming odds. It tells the story of Peekay, an orphaned child living in South Africa at the time of apartheid, a boy who is bullied and tormented by almost everyone, but who finds salvation in sport. Peekay becomes a boxing champion and, in a terrific showdown, beats the hell out of a man who has tried to ruin his life. Hurrah!

Now, before you assume I’m a gore freak, let me assure you I don’t like boxing. I think it’s a degrading and demeaning activity, and as far as I’m concerned the thought of two men trying to beat each other’s heads in is pretty disgusting. So it’s a tribute to the author that I’ve read this book five or six times, cheered the hero on throughout, and been thrilled when he wins through. If you don’t like boxing either, I still recommend you give it a go. You can skip the really brutal bits…

If you’re the runt in a bright and brilliant and physically gorgeous family of brothers and sisters, how do you manage to make any sort of life for yourself?  Robert Graves’s I, Claudius shows us how.  Claudius stammers, stutters, is lame, is ugly, and is not particularly smart, either – or so his family believes. Loyal to his family and friends, even when they don’t deserve his loyalty, Claudius is one of those quiet heroes doing their best in difficult times, and I’ve never found it hard to identify with him – or with his fictional version, anyway. The real Claudius was apparently just as cruel, ruthless and tyrannical as the rest of the Caesars. But we’ll let that pass…

I’d like to end on a lighter note and mention my last book of a lifetime, which is Winnie-the-Pooh.  The bear of very little brain has been delighting me, my children and my grandson for many years and, if you’re going to give a child a role model, you could do worse than Pooh.  He’s kind, he’s loyal, he never makes out his mistakes are anyone else’s fault, he encourages Piglet, he tries to bring a bit of sunshine into Eeyore’s miserable life, and he puts up with the eternally tiresome Tigger without complaint. Sometimes, he even has a brilliant inspiration, for example when he and Christopher Robin escape a flood riding in Christopher Robin’s open umbrella, hastily rechristened The Brain of Pooh.

So there are six of my literary heroes and heroines, whose stories never fail to delight me. I have plenty more heroes and heroines, such Flora in Cold Comfort Farm and the unnamed heroine of Rebecca. But the characters I’ve mentioned above are the ones who inspire me and my own fiction, in which I write about many different kinds of courage, the character trait which always most impresses me.

My latest novel The Silver Locket is a historical romance set during the Great War of 1914 - 1918. The heroine Rose Courtenay is the spoiled, bored only child of wealthy parents, and Rose is expected to marry well. This means marrying the man her parents have chosen, but Rose falls in love with Alex Denham, the local bad boy, who is also a married man. When war breaks out, Rose goes to London to become a nurse, and later she is sent to France, where she meets Alex again. They begin an affair which has huge repercussions – enough for two more novels, in fact!

I’m on Facebook and Twitter – www.twitter.com/majanovelist. I have a blog at www.margaretjamesblog.blogspot.com and a website at www.margaretjames.com. 

The Silver Locket is published by UK independent Choc Lit – http://www.choc-lit.co.uk – where heroes are like chocolate, irresistible!

Giveaway details

If you’d like to meet the handsome, brave and gorgeous Alex Denham, please complete the competition entry form below, and you could win a copy of The Silver Locket. The book is available in either ebook or paper form and the competition is open to all. Entries close on Sunday 8 May.

Entry Form

Rachna Gilmore - Books of a Lifetime

Anne of Green Gables has been a book of a lifetime for me. Its impact has been far-reaching and life-changing. In a curious way, it is even connected to the writing of my most recent novel, That Boy Red – which is about a boy growing up in P.E.I. during the Depression.

Sometimes life is stranger – and so much neater – than fiction.

I first encountered Anne of Green Gables in school when I lived in Mumbai (then called Bombay) in India. I was in Standard Four – that’s Grade 4 – and the school I went to was Cathedral and John Connon School, an English speaking private school, and one of the best in the city. It was run by the Anglo-Scottish Education Society – yes, a hangover from Colonialism, even though India was then an independent country.

True to the British tradition of private schools, we wore school uniforms. The girls – girls and boys were in separate schools then, merging later – wore light cotton dresses with faint grey and white stripes and a sash denoting the house to which each girl belonged. I wore a red sash, as I was part of Red House.

Our class had the unfortunate reputation – just starting to emerge, only to fully blossom later – of being high spirited and difficult. My teacher that year was a western woman called Mrs. Chaubal. I have no idea if she was Canadian, British, American, or Irish – to us, all foreigners spoke with equally weird accents, because, of course, we kids spoke perfect English, with no accent. Or rather, the right one!

One morning, Mrs. Chaubal gathered us together in front of her desk to read to us. Perhaps she thought this would have a calming effect on our high spirits, or perhaps she just wanted to share a book she loved. It was that morning – squirming against the other girls on a hard floor, with the school room smells of chalk-dust, cleaner and sneakers wafting through the air, stirred by the overhead fan – that I first met Anne.

I was hooked from the start. Mrs. Chaubal read with great enthusiasm and expression, and she was clever enough to skip the long descriptive parts that would make us restless. When the school year ended but the book didn’t, I had to find the book and finish reading it to see what happened next; to see if Anne ever forgave Gilbert.

I was an avid reader – there was no TV back then in India. Reading was a source of escape as well as delight. My idea of a great day was to have a stack of books and no one to bug me so I could happily read myself cross-eyed. I spent most of my pocket money on books which I usually bought at second-hand bookstores – which were often just small, open-front kiosks off busy roads – to stretch my rupees to the max. When I finished them, I’d trade them for others – unless, of course, the books were keepers.

So, I hunted through my usual second hand bookstores for Anne of Green Gables, but I couldn’t find it anywhere. I scoured the library as well, to no avail. Imagine my delight, then, when I discovered the book in a new bookstore. I’d found it! Of course, it was rather expensive, not being second-hand, but I didn’t hesitate. I bought a copy, devoured it and read it again many times. I was elated to discover sequels; I bought every one that I could lay my hot little hands on, and I read them over and over again.

Perhaps I loved those books because the world Anne lived in – rural, green, peaceful, with a small contained community – was so different from my own sprawling, crowded urban world, full of traffic, people, and a cacophony of sound and colours.

In the way in which internalized worlds become more familiar than the external, Anne’s world soon became as familiar to me as my own. But I didn’t realize at first, that the world in which the books were set was real – that it existed outside the author’s imagination.

I think I made that discovery when studying Canada in school, when the name Prince Edward Island leapt out and settled with a satisfying click against the name I’d glossed over in the books.
When I did realize it, though, it was one of those blinding light-bulb moments. I decided, in a spirit of joy-filled adventure, that I would go there one day.

When I was fourteen, my family moved to England. I didn’t recognize it then, but the Anne books were a constant thread through my life, old friends who helped negotiate the uprooting and settling in periods of that move. When I graduated from University, I decided that I didn’t want to live in England anymore. Canada, for many reasons appealed to me, so I decided to go there – and of course, it had to be to P.E.I.

And in P.E.I. – which felt very much like home, because it was, of course, already familiar – I met the man I married.. I lived there for fourteen years and began my writing career there – making that leap, overcoming the fear of failure that had stalled me from starting sooner. I celebrated my first publication success there, a children’s book published by an Island publisher, and one that went on to become a Canadian best-seller.

Years later, after we’d moved away from the Island, when I heard again my father-in-law’s familiar anecdotes about growing up on a farm on the Island during the Depression, I realized that there was gold in them thar tales. And I knew with the eager fierceness that each new writing project generates when it catches fire in the belly, that I had to write a novel about a boy growing up in P.E.I. It had to be fiction, not biography, because that’s what I write. I felt freer too, creating characters and incidents rather than trying to restrict myself to facts. Besides, I strongly believe that I can tell a greater truth through fiction than through bald facts – it’s telling the truth through lies.

Seeing That Boy Red in print now feels like coming full circle, coming home. I don’t think I ever imagined when I was a child in India, reading Anne for the umpteenth time, that one day I would go to Anne’s world, live there, marry an Islander and, inspired by family stories, write a book about a boy growing up there, set in the era following the Anne books.

It feels even more satisfying that the publishers chose this as one of the shout lines for the book:

First came Anne Shirley – now meet Red MacRae

Here’s a brief blurb about the book:

It’s P.E.I. during the Depression – meet eleven-year-old Roderick “Red” MacRae, resourceful, pig-headed, and impulsive, and his large and lively family, as they weather the challenges of farming through a particularly turbulent year. This episodic novel traces the misadventures – some hair-raising, some hilarious – and coming of age of a remarkable young lad, while celebrating the strength and spirit of Canadian families living through the Depression.
For more about this book please see: http://rachnagilmore.ca/novels.html#red
For a sneak peek, check out: http://browseinside.harpercollins.ca/index.aspx?isbn13=9781554684595

Author Bio

Rachna Gilmore is a Governor General’s Award winning author of twenty or so books for children, with multiple honours and awards. When she isn’t writing stories, she’s dreaming up ideas for more. She calls the process of writing plarking, a mixture of play, work and lark. Her most recent middle-grade novels are The Trouble With Dilly and That Boy Red. Rachna Gilmore’s Writerly Plarks – her blog – explores, and offers tips on, the convoluted process of writing fiction.

http://www.rachnagilmore.ca
http://rachnagilmore.blogspot.com

Books of a Lifetime by Elizabeth K. Mahon

I was born a voracious reader. While other kids loved to play sports, I was happiest sitting under a tree with a book in my hand. The first book that I remember reading was Laura Ingalls Wilder's LITTLE HOUSE IN THE BIG WOODS. I had already worked my way through both of the first grade readers by the end of the first semester as well and Sister Mary Sharon was about to rip off her veil in despair. Fortunately she handed me LITTLE HOUSE.  I was entranced from the moment I saw the Garth Williams illustration on the front cover. Laura was six just like me, a little girl who lived a life so different from my own in this place I had never heard of called Wisconsin. I even made maple syrup candy just like Laura and Mary did in the book. I followed the Ingalls family as they moved from Wisconsin to Plum Creek to South Dakota, I cried when Mary lost her sight, winced as Laura struggled with her first teaching job. The courtship of Laura and Almanzo Wilder was my first romance. I felt so possessive of Laura that I couldn't bear to watch the TV series because they changed so much.

I think I was attracted to John Jake's THE BASTARD, the first book in the Kent Family Chronicles, because of the hot guy on the cover. I still can't believe that my parents didn't blink an eye when I walked up to the cash register with it. Phillipe Charboneau is the illegitimate son of an English nobleman. He travels all the way from France to claim his inheritance and is denied. To escape being murdered by his half-brother, he travels to London and then Boston, where he changes his name to Philip Kent. Along the way he meets the usual suspects, Benjamin Franklin, Sam Adams, has affairs, and participates in the Boston Tea Party. And that's just the first book! I devoured every single book in this series but the first two, THE BASTARD and THE REBEL hold a special place because they're set during the American Revolution, an under represented era in historical fiction as far as I'm concerned.

I devoured Susan Howatch's contemporary gothic novels (The Devil on Lammas Night is a particular favorite of mine) but when I read her first family saga PENMARRIC,  I was in 7th Heaven.  Mark Castallack sees his longed-for inheritance Penmarric, a gothic mansion on the bleak cliffs of Cornwall, and the mysterious, mesmerising Janna, he knows that he will make them his and nothing will stand in his way. Yet when Mark realizes his dreams, Penmarric only brings a legacy of conflict, jealousy, infidelity and betrayal. The novel spans the Victorian era to the Second World War.  Howatch based her characters Mark Castallack, and his bride Janna on Henry II and Eleanor of Aquitaine. This is the English cover for the reissue, isn't it gorgeous? Her next book CASHELMARA, set in 19th century Ireland is the story of an Anglo-English family which reinterprets the story of Edward II, Isabella and Piers Gaveston. I can still remember sitting in Algebra class during high school, with my book bag on my desk, trying surreptitiously to read a few pages.

Of course I read Anya Seton.  I loved all her books, but a particular favorite will always be THE MISTLETOE AND THE SWORD. My friend Jenny found it on a trip to England and loaned it to me. This was the book that introduced me to Boudica, Druids and Stonehenge. The novel is set in Britain circa A.D. 60. Quintus Tullius is a standard bearer with the Ninth Roman Legion, who have come to Britain as part of the empire’s efforts to pacify the rebellious tribes. But he is haunted by his quest for the bones of his grandfather, who died seventeen years before in “the place of the golden tree and the stony circle.”  Quintus ends up falling in love with Regan, the beautiful foster daughter of Boudica. I loved this book so much that I never gave it back to Jenny! The book wasn't available in the States so when I went to London I bought a copy at Foyles to give to her.

It was also my friend Jenny who introduced me to T.H. Whites THE ONCE AND FUTURE KING, starting my obsession with the Arthurian legend that continues to this day.  Well actually it had started with the movie version of the musical CAMELOT, but this was the first Arthurian novel I had ever read. Lancelot in White's imagination was not the hot French guy that you normally see in depictions of the legend, he was actually quite ugly but Guinevere loved him anyway. Marion Zimmer Bradley's THE MISTS OF AVALON, and Rosalind Miles Guinevere and Tristan and Isolde trilogy are books that are on my keeper shelf.

I can't forget the late great Eleanor Hibbert who wrote as Philippa Carr, Victoria Holt and Jean Plaidy.  I was tempted to include MY ENEMY THE QUEEN which is about the rivalry between Elizabeth I and her cousin Lettice Knollys (why hasn't this ever been made into a TV movie? Sienna Miller would be awesome as Lettice) but Philippa Carr's THE LION TRIUMPHANT, the second in her Daughters of England series is one of my favorites as well.  Picture it: Elizabethan England, a beautiful fiery-tempered heroine called Cat. meets the arrogant, lusty Captain Jake Penlyon. It is hate at first sight, Cat is already in love with her childhood friend Carey but they are forbidden to marry. Jake is beyond determined to marry her and blackmails her into agreeing to a betrothal. Of course she is kidnapped by a band of Spanish pirates. Cat is certain she has seen the last of Jake Pennlyon, but she is not one to give up. Not ever!!

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Elizabeth Kerri Mahon is a professional actress and amateur history geek. Her blog Scandalous Women (scandalouswoman.blogspot.com) was named one of the 50 Top History Blogs by Zen College Life. A native New Yorker, she still calls Manhattan home. Her book Scandalous Women: The Lives and Loves of History's Most Notorious Women was released March 1.