Skip to main content

Wednesday reading experience #26

Choose a historical era and read one or more non-fiction accounts of it, either of the general history of the era, an event that took place within the era (e.g. a war, the discovery of new lands or a royal marriage), or the biography of a person who lived during that era. Then find a historical novel that features the same era, event, or person, or is directly about the same (i.e. a novelisation), and see how an author can use - or in some cases abuse or twist - historically known facts to tell a fictional story.

You may even want to compare the history book and historical novel with a novel about a similar subject that was written during that era.


Some suggestions for historical novels:
Leo Tolstoy: War and Peace
Georgette Heyer: An Infamous Army. Her other novels, which are mostly either pure romances or have a strong romantic element (Infamous Army does too) are more domestic in scope, but they are excellently researched and give one a good idea of the manners and language of the era they cover (mostly the English Regency, but some take place in the 18th century)
Paul Scott: The Raj Quartet
One or more of Steven Saylor’s mysteries about Gordianus the Finder (the rise of Julius Caesar and Roman politics of the time is in the background of the stories)
Ellis Peters: The Brother Cadfael books
Wilbur Smith: River God and its sequels
Patrick Süskind: Perfume - I highly recommend this one
Alexandre Dumas: The Three Musketeers and its sequels, or The Count of Monte Cristo
Victor Hugo: Les Miserables or The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Sigrid Undset: Kristin Lavransdatter
Baroness Orczy: The Scarlet Pimpernel
Toni Morrison: Beloved or The Bluest Eye
James Clavell: Shogun
Sir Walter Scott: any of the Waverly novels, e.g. Rob Roy, Ivanhoe or The Talisman
Charles Dickens: A Tale of Two Cities
George MacDonald Fraser: The Flashman Chronicles
Patrick O’Brien: The Aubrey-Maturin series
Bernard Cornwell: The Sharpe series
Margaret Mitchell: Gone With the Wind
John Jakes: North and South
Umberto Eco: The Name of the Rose or Baudolino
Arturo Pérez-Reverte: The Captain Alatriste novels
Fannie Flagg: Fried Green Tometoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe
Alice Walker: The Color Purple
Labels:

Comments

Geetali said…
What an interesting idea! I'm thinking of Anne Perry's Inspector Pitt mysteries & Dickens. What a contrast!!
July 02, 2009 11:16 am
Bibliophile said…
Funny you should mention Perry and Dickens - I originally wrote an addendum suggesting books to read together, and one of the suggestions was to pair those two.
July 02, 2009 12:36 pm
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Book 40: The Martian by Andy Weir, audiobook read by Wil Wheaton

Note : This will be a general scattershot discussion about my thoughts on the book and the movie, and not a cohesive review. When movies are based on books I am interested in reading but haven't yet read, I generally wait to read the book until I have seen the movie, but when a movie is made based on a book I have already read, I try to abstain from rereading the book until I have seen the movie. The reason is simple: I am one of those people who can be reduced to near-incoherent rage when a movie severely alters the perfectly good story line of a beloved book, changes the ending beyond recognition or adds unnecessarily to the story ( The Hobbit , anyone?) without any apparent reason. I don't mind omissions of unnecessary parts so much (I did not, for example, become enraged to find Tom Bombadil missing from The Lord of the Rings ), because one expects that - movies based on books would be TV-series long if they tried to include everything, so the material must be pared down ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Icelandic folk-tale: The Devil Takes a Wife

Stories of people who have made a deal with and then beaten the devil exist all over Christendom and even in literature. Here is a typical one: O nce upon a time there were a mother and daughter who lived together. They were rich and the daughter was considered a great catch and had many suitors, but she accepted no-one and it was the opinion of many that she intended to stay celebrate and serve God, being a very devout  woman. The devil didn’t like this at all and took on the form of a young man and proposed to the girl, intending to seduce her over to his side little by little. He insinuated himself into her good graces and charmed her so thoroughly that she accepted his suit and they were betrothed and eventually married. But when the time came for him to enter the marriage bed the girl was so pure and innocent that he couldn’t go near her. He excused himself by saying that he couldn’t sleep and needed a bath in order to go to sleep. A bath was prepared for him and in he went...
Post a Comment
Read more

List love: 10 recommended stories with cross-dressing characters

This trope is almost as old as literature, what with Achilles, Hercules and Athena all cross-dressing in the Greek myths, Thor and Odin disguising themselves as women in the Norse myths, and Arjuna doing the same in the Mahabaratha. In modern times it is most common in romance novels, especially historicals in which a heroine often spends part of the book disguised as a boy, the hero sometimes falling for her while thinking she is a boy. Occasionally a hero will cross-dress, using a female disguise to avoid recognition or to gain access to someplace where he would never be able to go as a man. However, the trope isn’t just found in romances, as may be seen in the list below, in which I recommend stories with a variety of cross-dressing characters. Unfortunately I was only able to dredge up from the depths of my memory two book-length stories I had read in which men cross-dress, so this is mostly a list of women dressed as men. Ghost Riders by Sharyn McCrumb. One of the interwove...
Post a Comment
Read more