So, I recently read a couple of recent specfic books that reminded me how much I like straight-ahead historical fiction.\n
One of them was Jo Walton’s The Just City<\/a>, which is very much a speculative book: one of the main characters is Apollo, one of the main plot points is whether the robots are sentient, and one of the Sources of Reader Pleasure is the interaction of people from different times and places. I more or less enjoyed it; lots of Sources of Reader Pleasure and Irritation, with the balance in question throughout, but on the whole I think tipping towards approval. I wonder if, in three months, I will remember liking it or disliking it. It reminded me, I think at the author’s deliberate evocation, of Mary Renault’s Greek books, which as Gentle Readers are probably aware are my very favorites. Love those books. Ms. Walton’s book is sort of a cross between Ms. Renault, earlyish Isaac Asimov and, well, Jo Walton. I may read the second one, and I may not; it’s a little hard to imagine the Pleasure outweighing the Irritation in a second book, but then, I have no idea what sort of book the second one is.\n The other was Guy Gavriel Kay’s latest, a massive tome called Children of Earth and Sky<\/a>. It fits into Mr. Kay’s ouvre quite well: a lightly-fictionalized version of history with some minor fantasy elements. The book is largely terrific; I find the invented names for cities to be profoundly irritating. Because I begin by translating them back to the real world (this one is largely set on the road between pseudo-Venice and pseudo-Istanbul, with a few scenes taking place in those cities and a few in pseudo-Dubrovnik and pseudo-Prague) I have to pause, when a place is mentioned, and translate them back. Oh, right, that’s the Dubrovnik one<\/i>, I thought to myself, or more accurately in that case That’s the one that’s down by Split or somewhere, I’ll have to look it up at some point<\/i>, because my central-European geography isn’t very good. I know Mr. Kay has reasons for what he does, but I would be happier if all the maps were our maps and the cities our cities, and the historical figures had their right names, too.\n Or at least I think I would. I do like historical novels without speculative elements, but I haven’t been reading new ones for a long time. I’ve actually never read anything by Samuel Shellabarger other than Prince of Foxes<\/a>, which is one of my very favorite comfort books. I have read two or possibly three Thomas Costain books, but haven’t sought out the others. Mary Renault hasn’t been writing much lately, what with having died in 1983. I didn’t like the one Phillippa Gregory book I read<\/a>; I could try again, I suppose. I should pick up Wolf Hall<\/cite>; I didn’t make it through the tv series. I enjoyed the first couple of Sarah Waters books (and didn’t blog them?) although the last one I tried didn’t work for me. Hm.\n Anyway, do any Gentle Readers have recommendations? I’m not looking for Romance Novels, although I certainly don’t object to a love plot of some kind. I like my historical novels with adventure, politics, philosophy, art and economics… but mostly adventure.\n I suppose I could just read more Walter Scott.\n Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus<\/I>, In Which Your Humble Blogger can, too, post two book reports in one note, so there. Actual real essayists do that sort of thing all the time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[194],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15369","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-report"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15369","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15369"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15369\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16385,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15369\/revisions\/16385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15369"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15369"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15369"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
-Vardibidian.\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"