Saturday Roundup
I like the “Saturday Round-Up” format. I may still occasionally post during the week if I have something special (like a contest) but other than that I think I’ll stick with Saturdays.
Just a reminder that the release date of The Second Duchess has been changed to March 1, 2011. Two more months to wait but for a really good reason. Can’t explain quite yet. Mark your calendars!
Reading this week: finished Dark Road to Darjeeling by Deanna Raybourn. Simply wonderful, as have been all her Lady Julia Grey books, and highly recommended—a new and exotic setting, a crop of deliciously eccentric characters, and of course the working-out of the newly-married relationship between Lady Julia and Nicholas Brisbane. Boo gives it five aroos, and adds that he considers his profile quite as handsome as Mr. Brisbane’s. He’s also giving his “I am the Lord and Master” stare to Cressie, who’s trying to get into the picture to tell everyone to know how much she loves the gorgeous cover.
What I cooked this week: chili. Fall is here and it’s cooler and I just craved chili with a crusty baguette. I have three secrets to chili: flour, beer, and molasses. Sound weird? Read on.
First, I mix the spices (chili powder, cumin, this ‘n’ that) with a little flour (masa harina, or fine corn flour, preferred, but plain white flour will do in a pinch) and add the spice-flour mixture to the cooked crumbled beef before adding any other liquid. When I stir it creates a sort of roux which makes the chili deliciously thick. Second, a can of beer is the first liquid I add after the flour-spices mixture. Sometimes I just stop there for all-beef, non-tomato chili (the Broadcasting Legend’s™ favorite). Third, if I’m using tomatoes, I also add a tablespoon or so of molasses. You know how you sometimes add a little sugar to Italian-style tomato sauces, to smooth out the acidity? Well, molasses does the same thing for tomatoes in chili and it’s a deeper, richer flavor.
Wrist x-rays: no news. Pain is manageable but I really wish we could get this figured out and fixed.
Writing: Writing a book is damn hard work. That’s all I have to say about that.
And finally, I am the guest editor for the Autumn 2010 issue of Solander, the magazine of the Historical Novel Society. (This is a mostly honorary title and the real editors do all the real work.) Solander features interviews, articles, short fiction and commentary, and is the only such magazine in the world for enthusiasts of historical fiction. It is fantastic. To subscribe, join the Historical Novel Society today.
Catching Up
I am working away on The Silver Casket. One of the most fascinating things is the way Rinette, the heroine, uses her idiosyncratic system of floromancy to characterize the other people in the story. By the time I’m done the “Floromancy” part of my notes will be a book in itself!
Sincere thanks to everyone who has voted for The Second Duchess on Goodread’s “Historical Fiction 2011” Listopia list—“Books we are excited about coming out in 2011.” Are you excited about Duchess? Yay! Please add your vote.
Delicious things I have cooked/baked this week: well, it’s not really cooking, but I made the best carrot and broccoli slaw. Healthy and easy. One bag of shredded carrots and one bag of broccoli slaw—take a handful of each and throw in a bowl. Drizzle with olive oil and balsamic vinegar, add a pinch of salt, and toss. (You could shred the carrots and broccoli stalks yourself, of course, but think how much more trouble that would be!)
On the unhealthy but yummy side, doughnut muffins. Mmmm! All the pleasure of a glazed cake doughnut but baked into a muffin rather than fried. Start here for the recipe. I used all butter instead of butter and oil, and cut way back on the nutmeg—the merest soupçon of nutmeg is fine with me. And I glazed them with Alton Brown’s doughnut glaze instead of rolling them in butter and cinnamon sugar. Incredibly good.
Meanwhile, the medical community is still trying to figure out why my wrist is hurting so much. This week, had a new series of x-rays. Should have results next week.
Have been reading Mary Anna Evans’ Strangers (an advance copy of which I won on the DorothyL mailing list) and Deanna Raybourn’s luscious Dark Road to Darjeeling. I have a lovely new-bought extra copy of Dark Road to Darjeeling and signed bookmarks on the way from Deanna, and I will be giving it all away next week. Watch this space!
Cooler weather seems to be tiptoeing into north Texas, thank goodness. This morning it brought some rain with it, and we’re grateful for every drop.
The Confessions of Catherine de’ Medici
A patch of sun and a good book—who could ask for more?
First I just have to say that C.W. Gortner’s The Confessions of Catherine de’ Medici is a physically gorgeous book—a stunning cover, a satisfying heft in the hands, an elegant layout of the pages. Even if I didn’t know Christopher (which I do, in the interests of full disclosure, albeit very slightly) I would have picked up this book for the sheer beauty of it.
So I was ready to sit down in my own patch of sun with a bowl of popcorn and a beagle (or two) at my feet and utterly lose myself in sixteenth-century France.
I wasn’t disappointed.
The fictionalized memoir is a law unto itself. That’s the fun of it—it doesn’t necessarily have to follow recorded history. After all, historians—and particularly those writing in a polarized era like that of the religious wars in France—have their axes to grind. And none of them could really know what was in one woman’s heart.
So Gortner imagines us into what only Catherine de’ Medici herself might have seen and done and known. Do I always agree with the version of history his Catherine recounts? No. But that’s the whole point—it’s history from Catherine’s own point of view. It wasn’t “history” when she lived it, after all. It was her life, her fears and loves and longings and insecurities and triumphs and failures. Her secrets. Her confessions. However much outsiders may have called her Madame la Serpente, from the inside she was a human woman like any human woman today, seeing the world in her own unique way, fighting keep her place (and are we all not fighting to keep our jobs today, in today’s polarized world?) and see her family achieve success.
A satisfying read, and—highest of accolades for historical fiction—one that led me to delve into nonfiction sources (more than I already had) on Catherine de’ Medici and her world.
Book Monday
What I just finished reading (actually for the umpteenth time): my tattered, treasured copy of Zelda, Nancy Milford’s wonderful, terrible, mesmerizing biography of Zelda Fitzgerald. This is the book I return to whenever I’m struggling with my own writing—Zelda and Scott’s struggles are always so much more heartbreaking and heartrending than my own.
What I’m going to read next: a crisp new copy of Cleopatra’s Daughter by Michelle Moran. I loved Rome on HBO (Thirteeeeeeen!) and this looks like it pretty much picks up where Rome left off. I do wish they had kept Max Pirkis as Octavian. He’s certainly the Octavian I’m going to be visualizing as I read this.
Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog it’s too dark to read. —Groucho Marx
Sacred Hearts by Sarah Dunant
Have finished Sarah Dunant’s Sacred Hearts. What a beautiful touch with words Dunant has! This book draws the reader into a leisurely, thoughtful, and ultimately compelling pilgrimage through the labyrinthine world of convent life and convent politics in the late sixteenth century.
Nothing ever happens in a convent, you say? Not true. At the time women were often shunted off into convents for no better reason than to save their families the cost of a dowry, and so it is with Suora Serafina, formerly Isabetta, torn from the musician she loves (a musician! horrors!) and immured behind convent walls. She is befriended by Suora Zuana, the convent’s herbalist and dispensary mistress. What a wonderful character Zuana is—an unwilling nun herself, she has found a hard-won peace in her garden and among her carefully-compounded remedies. That peace is sorely tested when Serafina’s screams of fury—and later her dazzling voice—and still later her equivocal visions—turn the convent on its collective ear.
I was particularly anxious to read Sacred Hearts because it’s set in Ferrara in 1570 (immediately following the ill-fated marriage of Lucrezia d’Este to the young Duke of Urbino, which is a story in itself), which is of course the same place and within a few years of the same time as the setting of my own novel. It turns out, however, there’s very little connection with the Ferrara of the court, other than a few mentions of the bishop and a glance at Duke Alfonso’s younger sister Leonora. The convent of Santa Caterina is a city and a court and a world unto itself, and as the shadow of the Counter-Reformation looms its nuns are a fascinating microcosm of women facing change.
Set aside time to savor Sacred Hearts. It’s not a particularly fast-paced read and certainly not a quick read, but it’s a lovely lovely book and will richly reward your time and patience.
‘S wonderful! ‘S marvelous!
As the Gershwin brothers would say.
Anyone interested in history to the slightest degree must check out this site. Want reviews of wonderful new historical novels? Want to know what the Romans used for toilet paper? (You will be surprised.) Want to read about nose jobs in the Renaissance? (I have to work this into a book somehow.)
Wonders and Marvels is more than just a blog. It’s a “community for curious minds who love history, its odd stories, and good reads.” My kind of place.
FLAT RINETTE
The Flower Reader
Read the First Chapter of The Flower Reader
The Second Duchess
Read the First Chapter of The Second Duchess
The Second Duchess is available on iBookstore!
