The Tudor Fair Blog
Richard Hakluyt: England’s first Travel Writer
I’m working on a new Renaissance English History Podcast about trade and exploration (because of course the two were linked – without the possibility of new trading markets, there could be no exploration of new lands). It’s impossible to read much about any of the early English explorations without stumbling…
Queen or Pope – Catholics in Elizabethan England
Caitlin Moran talks in her book, How to be a Woman, about the idea that often when we discover a particular book, we are suddenly introduced to all its friends, and so join this society that we hadn’t even known existed before. So if you, for example, start reading Dorothy…
The Week in Books
Normally I post on Thursday’s about the books I’ve finished. And I’ve had a ton of time to read while I’ve been away from my daughter and home responsibilities while traveling for my shoulder tests. I read two hours a day, at least. So you’d think I’d have all kinds…
The Week in Books: Shakelton and the Endurance
The fascinating story of Ernest Shakelton and his crew who were trapped in the Antarctic for three years is told in Endurance: Shakelton’s Incredible Journey. Shakelton wanted to be the first person to discover the South Pole. Another explorer took that honor from him, and so he decided to do…
The Week in Books: Caitlin Moran tells me How to Be a Woman
First off, I had an article in The Digital Reader yesterday about NYPL and their Library Simplified project. If you’re at all into libraries, ebooks, and innovation, they are a good group to be watching. So, this week in books. I just finished Caitlin Moran’s How to Be a Woman, which I…
Writing about Reading: Heather’s (self) Publishing Journey so far…
Normally in these Writing about Reading segments I talk about industry specific eBook topics. And on that note, I did buy my ticket to the Frankfurt Book Fair in October today. Nearly 300,000 people and five days of book industry madness. I’m excited! But beyond that, I want to talk about…
The Week in Books (and I’m back!)
Ok, so I didn’t drop off the face of the planet before now. Those of you who follow my personal blog as well will know that I broke my shoulder in Chicago at the end of January. I had a nasty surgery with another fracture during surgery when my bone…
The Week in Books: After Birth
I recently finished After Birth by Eliza Albert, a book that struck me because it was described as being honest about the period after a baby is born, which is always portrayed as being this beautiful joyous angelic time, but in reality is anything but. For a lot of women…
The Week in Books: The boring and the totally awesome
In my seemingly never-ending quest to get rid of all my physical books before we move (and buy an ebook of ones worth keeping, but getting rid of the physical book either way) I’ve been going through the stack of books that I’ve kept around which look interesting. One of…
The Week in Books: England before William, the hilarious and the boring
This past week I’ve been reading two books, one of which, by the previously-blogged-about-and-Monty-Python-esque Howard of Warwick was a murder mystery set in a monastery near Lincoln, and the other, a fairly scholarly book about King Oswald and Britain around the time of Bede, was mind-numbingly boring, though based on…
The Week in Books: The Amazing and the Downright Awful
It seems that my love affair with most chick lit is coming to a sad and ugly end. Maybe it’s because I’m not 28 and single any longer, but it just doesn’t appeal to me. Most of what I read that passes for contemporary romance is ridiculously unrealistic, trite, sappy,…
The Week in Books: Island of the Lost
Another fantastic Oyster find, I devoured Island of the Lost: Shipwrecked at the End of the World by Joan Druett this past week. It’s a true story about two simultaneous shipwrecks on Auckland Island in the 1860’s (though they never met each other, being on opposite ends with a mountain range in…