Thursday, November 05, 2009

A Guest Post, and Some Nifty Books

Having finished reading my page proofs, I'm returning to blogdom to let you know that I have a guest post up on Holly Tucker's excellent Wonders and Marvels site. It's about the wooden town Edward III built to house his troops during the long siege of Calais. Stop by--there's plenty on that site to look at!

Speaking of Calais, I picked up a nice haul of new books at the library the other day, including Susan Rose's Calais: An English Town in France, 1347-1558, Arthur Tudor, Prince of Wales: Life, Death and Commemoration, edited by Steven Gunn and Linda Monckton, Catherine Parr by Susan James, and The Calais Garrison: War and Military Service in England, 1436-1558 by David Grummit. (Three of them were so new that the poor desk clerk had to paste a due-date slip inside--it's always nice reading a virgin library book.) I tend to dip into nonfiction and read the sections that interest me more than reading cover to cover, especially when I'm doing research, so I can't do a review as such, but I can say that all are well dipping-in-able.

One book I probably will be reading front to back is Seymour Phillips' upcoming Edward II (though the man could have had the decency to publish it when I was researching The Traitor's Wife instead of waiting). And my husband has been advised in no uncertain terms that I want Christopher Wilkins' biography of Edward Woodville for my birthday. It has its "look inside" feature activated at Amazon UK, so take a peek-I certainly have been!

6 comments:

Jenny Girl said...

I have never had a virgin library book. Check you out. Enjoy your reads.

Debbi said...

I have writing/reasearch question for you.

When you read a book, particularly one from the library that you must give back eventually, how do you retain and organize what you learned from the book?

PS - I am currently reading the The Traitor's Wife and enjoying it very much. Next Chapter -- October 1326! Yikes!

Susan Higginbotham said...

Jenny, virgin library books still have that nice new book smell! They should make that into a perfume. I'd buy it.

Debbi, I usually just photocopy the relevant pages from a book that I borrow. With my last book, I put my photocopies into subject folders (e.g., one for Elizabeth Woodville, one for the Staffords, etc.). It's not very efficient, but it's an improvement over having everything in one big stack of papers like I did for The Traitor's Wife! I'm not organized enough to take detailed research notes, I'm afraid.

trish wilson said...

Does your collection of books about Calais,Calesia,Caleys, Calays include The Chronicle of Calais?

Kathryn Warner said...

Oooh, what a great haul of library books! Enjoy!

I'm also counting the days until the Edward II biog comes out, but then you'd probably already guessed that. :-)

trish wilson said...

Sorry Sue

I got googled before I could finish - I just wanted to say that in case of TCOC you don't need to beg borrow or buy just google and up she rises.

Another historical gem particularly in the matter of Anne of Cleves.