New Format for That's All She Read

After a short break from full reviews where I let goodreads do the posting, I am going vack to posting reviews and more articles on accessible reading.  The one majoy change is that i will only fully review books I would rate good or great here on thsi blog.  If I read something i am not impressed with, I will only review it at goodreads.  Both will show up on this page, however.

I have my reasons but shan't publish them publicly.  It boils down to what books are worth my time.

So from today on I will review books good or bad, but the better ones will get the more in depth reviews for which this blog has come to be known.  Those that did not impress me will get a line in the goodreads widget.

Thanks for your patience.

Nan Hawthorne

Nan's books

The Boleyn Wife

by Brandy Purdy

This is a fun book. It's unintentionally irreverent and that's what I like about it. It plays with the historical figures in a provocative and controversial way that I found refreshing. If you are a prude or an idol-worshiper skip this o...

The Winter King

by Bernard Cornwell

The Last Kingdom

by Bernard Cornwell

Enemy of God

by Bernard Cornwell

Excalibur

by Bernard Cornwell

Foxe Tail, by Haley Walsh, a Skyler Foxe Mystery

Foxe Tail

Haley Walsh

Yeah, I know, it's not historical... but I'm multidimensional, like most everyone else.  Well, three dimensional.. I like historical novels, end of the world novels, and M/M novels.  This fits one of those dimensions, OK?

Skyler Fox is a new English teacher at James Polk High in a small town way out off LA.  He went to that school too, so it means all the more to him to be part of the faculty.  He fears being outed as a gay man mainly because he wants to keep his job, and though legally they couldn't fire him for that, they certainly could lay him off.  So when a gorgeous new biology teacher starts at Polk, he has to struggle to hide his attraction.  Things heat up in other ways, however, and rather than proving to be a distraction, Skyler starts wondering if there are connections between the biology teacher and the dastardly goings-on.

The mystery starts with the murder of the principal's son behind a gay dance club.  Skyler and his police detective friend Sydney think the club must be mixed up somehow with the murder, so they pursue that angle of investigation.  Sydney is annoyed at Sky for getting too involved with the case, bur it seems boys will be boys and in spite of threats on his life, Sky persists.  He becomes invollved with helping a student get onto the football team, hoping it will help his behavior problems.  It is then that Skyler begins to suspect the football faculty of being up to no good and possibly even connected to the murder.

Skyler is quite likable, has the sort of bachelor life we most of us envy but know better than to think really exists, but sometimes you just want to slap him.  He can be obtuse about dangers at times, and makes some questionable judgment calls, like taking his former Latin lover with him to the princiipal's house.  Other characters fill out the cast, Skyler's detective and other friends, the other teachers, and a few peripheral characters, including a big handsome guy with piercings "down there" that Sky brings home for the books only actual sex scene.

The initial mystery  did not catch this reader's imagination, but when the jocks at Polk High bring in their own sinister subplot, I got really into it.  The book is what the author called "a story arc" so I was caught unawares when the initial mystery was solved but much was left dangling.  Interesting literary idea, but I tend to think it risks someone losing interest before the next part of the arc is published.  Fortunately for me it's coming out next month.

One aspect of this novel that struck me was how difficult it is for Skyler to have to listen to anti-gay comments from fellow teachers.  he wants to argue but he is too caught up in hiding his own lifestyle.  that is just one of the injustices someone like Skyler must cope with, having to accept behavior that hurts but nonetheless having his very fears proved by the behavior.  I know from experience if he does come out, with something sort of similar being a person with a disability, that the situation would shift from "we get to say who we hate" to "we have to walk on egg shells around him".  Walsh brings all this out clearly and sensitively.

How Few Remain, by Harry Turtledove

How Few Remain
Harry Turtledove

What if: the confederacy won the Civil War before the Emancipation Proclamation, before Lincoln and John Wilkes Booth had their fatal encounter, and before the war and its aftermath changed the lives of any number of the prominent people of the time? Whose life, and therefore biography, would be affected and how? Well, Lincoln's of course. An unpopular president who lost the war and left the country only half of its former self, who can't get elected dog catcher. What about George Custer? Would he still have a Little Big Horn in his future? And what if Samuel Clemens stayed a newspaperman in the West?



Add to this list of the movers and shakers of their time such names as Stonewall Jackson, Jeb Stuart, Frederic Douglass, Teddy Roosevelt, Geronimo and even General "Chinese Gordon, and you have a speculative free-for-all. One result is you learn a bit about people like Lincoln whose socialist leanings were eclipsed by the war and his assassination.

The basic plot is that the Confederate States of America have just purchased the Mexican states of Chihuahua and Sonora from a peso strapped Emperor Maximilian, an acquisition which will allow the CSA to build a railroad all the way to the Pacific coast. The USA still smarting twenty or so years after the 1863 defeat by the CSA declares war and starts attacking. Ordered by CSA President Longstreet to hold onto territory but not cross into the US, Stonewall Jackson faces an inept US force at the Ohio River. Jeb Stuart is sent to establish CSA control of the new territories and spends some time harassing New Mexico Territory with the help of the Apaches. Frederic Douglass is hawkish for the war as the only means he sees likely to free CSA slaves. Lincoln, traveling the west to rabble rouse among labor, gets stuck in Utah when the Mormons decide to secede. Sam Clemens lives in San Francisco with his wife and two kids and writes editorials about how stupid the war is and how even stupider US President William Blaine is for starting it. perhaps most engaging is a 22-year old Theodore Roosevelt, a rancher in Montana who creates the "Unauthorized Volunteers", a civilian army and proves himself bully when it comes to leading them.

Turtledove tells one bully story, too, and had a lot of fun with speculating who would remain prominent and what course their lives would take if the "war of secession" had turned out differently. You will be thoroughly entertained by this book. I actually listened to the audio version of this novel, unabridged of course, so I had extra cause to enjoy it. The reader was terrific, putting in accents and personality.

It's more than a little fun to see which historical celebrity will show up next.  it was a little embarrassing to be in on the marital sex scenes for Clemens, though not so much with Roosevelt and Custer.. I wonder why that was?

OK, I have one gripe. If you went by this novel women have no involvement in the making of history outside of wives who nag their famous husbands or the occasional whore who makes Teddy Roosevelt smile. C'mon, Harry, you could have thrown in an Emma Goldman when Lincoln joins the socialists or an Elizabeth Cady Stanton chiding Douglass for taking too many chances by travelling to the front. Maybe it's not your thing, but if history is, then all of history should be, in my humble opinion.