Monday, February 06, 2006

Slow but Steady

Rather slow on the reading front at the moment--I'm still going through the Jean Plaidy. This is a reissue in one volume of three books about Katharine of Aragon that were originally published separately, and I've finished books 1 and 2. I think putting them all together works much better than having them separate, especially for book 2, which ended rather abruptly, not so much because the action (the birth of Henry Fitzroy) was particularly dramatic but because the author had reached her allotted word count. Anyway, I've enjoyed it so far. Plaidy's writing style can be pedestrian, but this is far better than some of her other novels I've read, and the length of these books allowed her to delve more into character and motivation than she usually does.

I've got Marrying Mozart to start on next, and I also remembered that I have a book about William Marshall by L. Christian Balling called Champion that I never got around to reading. It looks as if it'd be fun to read. On the nonfiction front, I've been debating whether to buy Michael Hicks' new book on Anne Neville. No kind soul has posted a review of it on Amazon yet. Hicks can be awfully dry, though, so I may just sit tight and hope the university library orders a copy.