The Tudor Book Challenge

This challenge is being hosted by Michelle from Benedictionary. From January 1-December 31, 2010, participants are asked to read books about or inspired by the Tudor era of the English Monarchy.

I liked that the rules were flexible in that I can select my reading format which is most likely going to be mainly from my Sony e-reader. The selections can also overlap with other challenges that I have joined and can be fiction or non fiction texts.

I have finally collected all of Philippa Gregory's texts and have blogged in the past about how the movie The Other Boleyn Girl actually led me to the author. I wanted to read her novels in their historical order, and now I'm finally ready. The Literate Housewife has posted some great suggestions of books that can be read alongside Gregory's books that pertain to the specific people and time periods of which she writes. Another great resource is the Tudor Books Resource as listed on Benedictionary.

I am entering this challenge as a commoner which is a 5 book commitment. I hope to read the following books:

1. The Constant Princess

2. The Other Boleyn Girl

3. The Boleyn Inheritance

4. The Queen's Fool

5. The Virgin's Lover

6. The Other Queen

I have to admit that I have not yet seen the TV series, The Tudors. Many of my friends have raved about it to me. I think that what I'll do is rent a season at a time - but not until the summer - and this will give me time to read the books first.

26 Books and other Challenges

Well my course is finished (Peter's last, he's on to his thesis- keep sending me book suggestions) and the Christmas Holidays are fast approaching. I've finally had some time to think about my personal reading and the commitment I intend to make to this in 2010.

As many of you know (Ok, I use the term "many" very broadly here) I have blogged about my intent to complete a "26 Books" challenge over the course of the year. I have hundreds of books just waiting TBR all stored securely in my ereader. But how to pick 26?

I subscribe via RSS feeds to several book blogs through my Google Reader. I can read multiple book reviews and add to my reading wishlist. Through one of my favourites Book Addiction I heard about the "What's in a Name? 3 " challenge. I thought that it might be fun to incorporate a few mini challenges into my bigger one and make connections with other book lovers and bloggers.

What's in a Name? Challenge

Between Jan 1-Dec 31 2010 I need to read one book for each of the following categories:
My selections are in brackets.


1. A book with a food in the title (Chocolat by Joanne Harris)

2. A book with a body of water in the title (Death on the Nile by Agatha Christie)

3. A book with a title in the title (The Constant Princess by Philippa Gregory - I may even try and make this one work with a series challenge)

4. A book with a plant in the title (The Forgotten Garden by Kate Morton)

5. A book with a place name in the title ((My Life in France by Julia Child)

6. A book with a music term in the title (I'm still thinking about this one)

The books do not have to be read in any particular order, do not have to be selected ahead of time, and this challenge is ok to be imbedded or overlap with others.

I'm not sure where I'll start but it has already been fun selecting books for these categories. I hope for a few January "snow days" to kick start my initiative!

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.)