I found a new author from watching a movie!

We rented a few movies over the March Break. My choice was The Other Boleyn Girl. I like historical fiction, especially the Tudor period. I particularly enjoy when the historical fiction is closely related to the known facts.

Typically I won't watch the movie until I've read the book first, but I didn't know that this movie was based on a novel by Philippa Gregory until my friend's 14 year old daughter told me so. She has enthusiastically read many of Gregory's novels. I had heard of the author but thought she was more in the romantic fiction genre, similar to say, Catherine Coulter. Its not that I don't read books from this genre, I do, but am picky with these.

So, I watched the movie the other evening, and it was very well done, beautiful cinematography, period costumes and settings, well acted. But was it true to the events of the time? I was intrigued and thought I'd check out the author's website. The best part of this site is that for every one of her novels she writes a page of background history surrounding the novel and also some professional research to support her findings. Gregory discloses how she attempts to fill in the gaps that history didn't record or has been unable to reach consensus on to tell the story in a first person narrative. This site alone is very interesting, I spent a long time immersed in reading the history of her characters.

So, my summer reading list expands again! I'm not sure which one to start with - I'm going to go through the novels and piece them together in a chronological timeline. I don't want to read about Queen Elizabeth I before Mary Tudor or their dad, King Henry VIII etc. If you are a Philippa Gregory fan and know which one comes first historically, please let me know.

(I'm sorry to report that I did indeed give up on The Historian. I gave it, for me, a valiant effort, almost 200 pages and finally pronounced it dead. I'm sorry the author spent 10 years researching and writing this book; I felt like I aged 10 years reading the first 200 pages. Just not that into it.)