Friday Finds—June 24, 2011

The Paris Wife, Paula McLain Sunfire Romances

Friday Finds—June 24, 2011

I found a lot of interesting books this week! My department chair recommended Jennifer Donnelly's The Tea Rose, which happens to be the first in a trilogy—the other two books are The Winter Rose and The Wild Rose. I can't wait to read these books.

Amazon sent me a mailer recommending some historical fiction that looks interesting. The Samurai's Garden by Gail Tsukiyama has over four stars on Goodreads after thousands of ratings. That looks promising, even if some of my Goodreads friends didn't care for it. A reviewer said of The Lotus Eaters by Tatiana Soli that if you've never read a book about the Vietnam War, this is a good one to start with. Sounds good to me. Alan Brennert's Moloka'i is about the leper colony in Hawaii and also has a high rating on Goodreads.

I can't decide if The Yellow House by Patricia Falvey us up my alley or not. It's set in Northern Ireland during the Revolutionary period, and I would like to read more about that time, but it also features a main character torn between an Irish political activist working to help Ireland achieve independence from Britain and the black sheep son of a wealthy Quaker family that owns the mill where she works. It reminds me a bit of the scenario presented in all those teen historical romances published by Sunfire in the 1980′s. The girl almost always chose the guy who was more rebellious and dangerous. The only exception I can think of is in the novel Danielle (Sunfire, No 4). I quit reading the novels after a while because they were too predictable—even if I did learn a lot about history from them. In fact, I probably have them to thank for my love for historical fiction. I need to write a Life in Books post about those novels soon. I am suddenly overcome by a wave of nostalgia.

After reading The Paris Wife by Paula McLain (review), I sought out A Moveable Feast and discovered a newly restored edition published in 2009. I am interested to read it after reading the story of the Paris years from Hadley's point of view.

Browsing around on Goodreads for books set in Paris, I found Paris: The Secret History by Andrew Hussey. It's not about Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. It's more about the prostitutes, street urchins, opium addicts, and artists. Looks really good.