Three Books

Up here in frigid Toronto, it was an absolutely beeee-yutiful day. The Guy went canoeing with his best buddy and I did the following:

-wrote six pages

-finished reading The Book Thief by Marcus Zusak (it was supposed to be brilliant, but I thought it was meh)

-came up with three books because Megan tagged me.

The challenge is to think of three of your favourite books that other people might not be familiar with. Here are mine:




Patricia O'Brien: The Glory Cloak - Historical fiction, a story woven with Louisa May Alcott and Clara Barton as characters. I'm not as well-versed in Civil War history as I could be, and this book felt like a living history lesson - just pulled me right in. The descriptions of Andersonville and the conditions in a Civil War hospital are still with me to this day. By the way, a much-lauded and better-known companion piece to this one is Geraldine Brooks' award winning March, which is also amazing.




Alan Moorehead: The White Nile - The first history book I ever read about nineteenth-century African exploration, and it got me completely hooked. All the stories are here: Burton, Speke, Baker, Gordon, Stanley. Burton fighting with Speke, Burton fighting with everybody, Speke dying mysteriously, Stanley finding Livingstone, the whole deal, told larger than life, which is the way these men lived. I am eternally fascinated with explorers and this is the book that started it.




Valerie Martin: Mary Reilly - Historical novel told from the perspective of Dr. Jekyll's lower-class maid. Creepy and imaginative, but there are two reasons I like it so much: One is that Mary's voice is so completely convincing as a lower-class servant of the time, and the other is that it puts a female lens on what is, as it stands, a male story. This is one of those books that makes me say, "Damn, I wish I came up with that."

Thanks for the tag, Megan - that was a fun one.

Off for a walk,
Abby