On The Shelf – Page 7 – Number One London

On The Shelf – Discovering New Authors – Part Two

Victoria, here, continuing the Gentle Reads section of our book recommendations. Angela Thirkell is a delight. But then, you already knew I thought so, didn’t you? As a card-carrying member of The Angela Thirkell Society, I really love her books. The Barsetshire novels are wonderful — witty and liberally dosed with snippets of biting social satire – please try them! But she also wrote some other works — one I particularly enjoyed was A Tribute to Harriette — The Surprising Career of Harriette Wilson published in 1936 in England as The Fortunes of Harriette. This, perhaps not totally gentle and thus ineligible for this particular blog, is the story of the famous Regency Courtesan. But back to Thirkell’s Barsetshire novels, here’s the blurb for Wild Strawberries taken from the Thirkell Society website, where you can also find synopsis of all the books in the series: “Action in Thirkells third Barsetshire novel centers around the extended family of the Leslies of Rushwater House. Lady Emily reigns behind a self-generated thicket of confusion and turmoil. There is no event so settled that Lady Emily cannot throw it into chaos at the last moment. Mr. Leslie has been known to take off on a cruise to the “Northern capitals of Europe” when it all becomes too much for him. Their daughter Agnes, a matriarch-in-waiting, has already produced three children despite a husband who seems to be perennially abroad on some unspecified activity. The French tenants and Mr. Holt, the consummate social leech, are skillfully and humorously dealt with as is the household struggle for control between Housekeeper and Nannie. Even the small children, James, Emmy, and Clarissa are fully defined and serve to reveal the character of the adults as they interact with them. As usual we have the ” young man with crush on older woman”, one match completed, and others set up for the future.”

I will add three more of my old faves for this gentle blog: Mazo de la Roche, Rosamund Pilcher, and Mary Stewart. I won’t write here — but soon — about Georgette Heyer. I could add lots more — both my mother and my grandmother had excellent noses for historical fiction: think Victoria Holt aka Jean Plaidy and several other pen names, whose real name was Eleanor Hibbert; Frances Parkinson Keyes; Kathleen Winsor; Catherine Cookson, Frank Yerby and many more. You can google these names for lists of their novels and more details.

Mazo de la Roche (1879-1961), born in Canada, wrote a continuing family saga about the Whiteoak family at Jalna, an estate in Ontario, through many generations. Jalna, her third novel, published in 1927, brought her fame, best-sellerdom, and fortune. The last of the series, Centenary at Jalna, came out in 1958. A film was made of Jalna in 1935 and the CBC presented a series on the books, sometimes known as the Whiteoak Chronicles, in 1958. Sadly, these books have not been reissued since the 1970’s and are now long overdue for a revival.

Mazo de la Roche

The fictional Whiteoaks family originated in England, made a fortune in India, and came to Canada to establish the North American version of a country estate. The series was not written in chronological order, but can be read that way for ease of keeping the various branches of the Whiteoaks from tangling. My grandmother treasured these books and they were among my earliest grown-up reads, carefully and secretly eased from her bookshelves and spirited away to be read outside of the view of any adult. Not that the writing was particularly shocking, but some of the themes — affairs, homosexuality, incest, e.g. — were not for childish eyes (at least back then!).

Rosamund Pilcher’s most famous book is probably The Shell Seekers published in 1988. Born in 1924 in Cornwall, she had written many romances as Jane Fraser for Millls and Boon. She served in the British navy in WWII before marrying and turning to fiction. Many of her stories have been made into films and tv series, bringing enojyment to viewers all over the world; according to various websites, she is particularly popular in Germany. The Shell Seekers was a worldwide bestseller, the reminiscences of Penelope Keeling, daughter of a famous artist. In the movie version (1989), she was played by Angela Lansbury and in the tv version (2006) by Vanessa Redgrave. That should give you some idea of the quality of the story and the character. I think I will go to the library next week and take it out again. Definitely worth a re-reading.

Everything you want to know about Mary Stewart and her wonderful novels can be found here. She has written many, including the Merlin books, a wonderful re-telling of the King Arthur saga in five volumes. She is also well known for her romantic suspense novels, some once known as neo-gothic or woman-in-jeopardy. Lots of suspense and a happy ending, the perfect gentle result even if the action can be bone-chilling from time to time. Born in 1916, Mary Stewart was awarded an honorary doctorate in 2009 from her alma mater Durham University, where she also taught before her marriage to Sir Frederick Stewart in 1945. Perhaps the most gentle of her books is Rose Cottage, 1997. But I think my favorite, aside from the Merlin books, is Touch Not the Cat, from 1976. Here’s the marketing blurb: “Bryony Ashley knows that her family’s grand estate is both hell and paradise — once elegant and beautiful, yet mired in debt and shrouded in shadow. Devastated by her father’s sudden strange death abroad, she is nonetheless relieved to learn the responsibility of running Ashley Court has fallen to a cousin. Still, her father’s final, dire warning about a terrible family curse haunts her days and her dreams.”

Part Three Coming Soon!

On The Shelf – Discovering New Authors – Part One

Occasionally, life treats us to rare gifts: a perfect summer’s day, a hug when you’re needing it most, an excellent pinot noir. If you’re like me, perhaps one of life’s greatest treats is the discovery of a new author. I’m always looking for them and recently I found a blog called My Porch, which I’ve added to the “Amusing Blogs” section found in the righthand sidebar of this blog. Written by a young man named Thomas who lives in Washington, D.C., it is a testament to his reading stamina, which beats my own with a very big stick. I enjoy his `voice’ and his book reviews, but My Porch also boasts a long list of links to yet more book sites, many with a British bent. One can troll them for hours. Which one did until, finally, it dawned on me that Victoria and I might do a post on favorite authors, with healthy backlists, that could then be our gift to you. So here goes. One disclaimer before we continue – you won’t find any romantic fiction here, not because we don’t read it but because many of its authors are friends and once one begins naming friends one inevitably leaves someone out and then one finds oneself in the soup, so to speak. So. . . here are a few of my favorites, in no particular order, beginning with a category of books I term gentle reads. Victoria’s picks in the same category will follow in Part Two. We sincerely hope you find a new author or two amongst them.

Rebecca Shaw has written two cozy village series, the Barleybridge novels and the Turnham Malpas books. The Barleybridge series consists of three titles that deal with the lives and clients in a rural veterinary clinic. More prolific, the Turnham Malpas books, which number 15 titles, are set in a small village and opens with The New Rector. Here’s the blurb: When Peter Harris arrives in Turnham Malpas as the new rector, he finds the village people welcoming but set in their ways. Yet despite his own weaknesses and the sadness of his childless wife, he comforts and advises his new parishioners, growing more and more involved with the rural way of life. Then the whole village is rocked by a spiteful trick that goes terribly wrong, and a gruesome murder that points to a killer in its midst. Now, more than ever, Peter’s pastoral role is crucial – and yet he is wrestling with his own private hell that may still wreck his own life. Don’t be turned off by the fact that the central character, at least in this title, is a member of the clergy. Shaw’s books are rather like an adult version of the Miss Read books, more on which later. Peter’s arrival in the village sets the stage for our introduction to a cast of quirky and mostly

loveable characters who reappear in succeeding novels. Most storylines do not deal with the church, but do include forays into middle aged love, greed, scandals, char women, shop owners, the gentry, the downtrodden and a few chuckles. Here’s the blurb for another title in the series, Village Matters: Times are changing in Turnham Malpas …Brash Craddock Fitch up at the Big House seems determined to make his mark on the village – and the village is determined to put him in his place. Sir Ralph is having trouble adjusting to his more modest status and timid Muriel to her exalted one while a change of fortune surprises Jimmy Glover too. It’s all Jimbo Charter-Plackett, fount of all gossip, can do to keep up. But these concerns are eclipsed by tragedy when Flick, Jimbo’s daughter, is knocked down by the unpopular barman Alan. And before the shock of the accident has passed, a bitter dispute springs up that could affect the entire village … Enough drama and 21st century situations happen in each title to keep them from being overtly quaint, while Shaw’s characters and the dilemmas they find themselves in are firmly rooted in village life. You’ll find her website here.

What can one say about Maeve Binchy except “read her?” Binchy is a master at characterization and story telling and each new title is, indeed, a long anticipated treat. Speaking of which, her latest, Minding Frankie, is due out on March 1. Here’s the blurb: Maeve Binchy is back with a tale of joy, heartbreak and hope, about a motherless girl collectively raised by a close-knit Dublin community. When Noel learns that his terminally ill former flame is pregnant with his child, he agrees to take guardianship of the baby girl once she’s born. But as a single father battling demons of his own, Noel can’t do it alone.

Fortunately, he has a competent, caring network of friends, family and neighbors: Lisa, his unlucky-in-love classmate, who moves in with him to help him care for little Frankie around the clock; his American cousin, Emily, always there with a pep talk; the newly retired Dr. Hat, with more time on his hands than he knows what to do with; Dr. Declan and Fiona and their baby son, Frankie’s first friend; and many eager babysitters, including old friends Signora and Aidan and Frankie’s doting grandparents, Josie and Charles. But not everyone is pleased with the unconventional arrangement, especially a nosy social worker, Moira, who is convinced that Frankie would be better off in a foster home. Now it’s up to Noel to persuade her that everyone in town has something special to offer when it comes to minding Frankie. I’ve already pre-ordered this title on my Nook.

Author Marion Chesney is now busy churning out tiles in both the Agatha Raisin and Hamish MacBeth series. If you’ve never read them, by all means do. You’ll find all the titles, and everything you need to know about them, on her website. Both are a series of cozy village mysteries, one set in the Cotswolds, the other in the Highlands of Scotland. Recurring characters and subplots, the standard cozy mystery fare, are both to be found. What isn’t to be found, from one who has read them all, is anyth
ing new. After about the 15th book in each series, one gets to feel that they are simply reading the same book over and over again. And Hamish and Agatha’s character flaws seriously begin to grind on one’s nerves. Still, if you haven’t read them before, you’re in for a treat. What I really wish is that M.C. Beaton would give these books a rest and go back to what she does (did) best and that’s writing Regency comedies as Marion Chesney. Yes, technically her books can be considered Regency romances, but I loved them for their plot lines and humour. And they were written in various series, so that you could settle in with a particular family and get to know all the members. These included the House for the Seasons, Travelling Matchmaker and Poor Relation series. You’ll find a complete bibliography here. Marion, I know you’re raking in the cash with Agatha and Hamish, but please consider returning to the 19th century.

Beverley Nichols was the sort of man once euphamistically known as a “perennial bachelor.” He was also a writer who managed to write between bouts of gardening, house renovations, visits from instrusive neighbors and caring for cats. Many of his books are about gardening and/or cats, neither subject known for its excitement value. There are no car chases, sexual adventures or titillation of any sort, but what these books do contain is Nichols’s voice, which is at times fond, ironic, exasperated, plaintive or just plain pleased with itself. His first gardening book, Down the Garden Path, was illustrated — as were many of his books — by Rex Whistler. It was a bestseller running to 32 editions and has been in print almost continuously since 1932. It was also the first of his trilogy about Allways, his Tudor thatched cottage in Glatton, Cambridgeshire. A later trilogy written between 1951 and 1956 documents his travails renovating Merry Hall (Meadowstream), a Georgian manor house in Agates Lane, Ashtead, Surrey, where Nichols lived from 1946 to 1956. These books often feature his gifted but laconic gardener “Oldfield”. Nichols’s final trilogy is referred to as “The Sudbrook Trilogy” (1963–1969) and concerns his late 18th-century attached cottage at Ham, (near Richmond), Surrey. Sometimes Nichols waxes poetical about his endeavors – “To dig one’s own spade into one’s own earth! Has life anything better to offer than this?” At other times, he’s just plain funny – “I was brought up surrounded by junk. It was no fault of my mother’s, who had an exquisite, natural taste; it was merely a question of money. We had a large house, a quantity of hideous inherited furniture, and an abundance of positively frightening pictures. We had to put up with them.” Here’s a link to his website, where you’ll find more excerpts from his books and you’ll find blurbs and more about Nichols’s titles here.

Barbara Pym is known for her novels that include village vignettes and snaps of social satire. In a book review, The Times said: “In Jane and Prudence, one character ironically compares herself to Austen’s matchmaking heroine Emma Woodhouse – and turns out to be no better at finding a husband for her protégée than Emma was. This is Jane Cleveland, a vicar’s wife, now in her forties, who hopes to see her best friend Prudence Bates – a sophisticated bachelor girl with a tendency to fall for unsuitable men – happily settled like herself. So she invites her to the village where her husband Nicholas is vicar, and introduces her to Fabian Driver, a handsome and eligible widower. But Prudence has an unlikely rival for Fabian’s affections in mousy-looking Jessie Morrow, a lady’s companion determined to escape her role as a spinster.” For an article on Pym’s writing, click here. You’ll find the site for the U.S. Pym Society here. There’s also a (hard to find) Barbara Pym Cookbook, featuring recipes mentioned throughout her books.

Born in 1913, Dora Jesse Saint began writing under the name Miss Read in 1955 and has charmed us ever since with her books set in both the fictional Fairacre and Thrush Green. The blurb for the first Thrush Green, titled the same, runs – “It’s the May Day holiday, and a fair has come to the village of Thrush Green. The residents of Thrush Green all have their own views about the fair. For young Paul, just recovered from an illness, it is a joy to be allowed out to play at the fair; for Ruth, who returned to the soothing tranquillity of Thrush Green nursing a broken heart, the fair is a welcome distraction from her own problems. And for Dr Lovell, the fair brings an unexpected new patient. Then there is Mrs Curdle, the long-standing matriarch of the fair. For her, this year’s visit to Thrush Green awakens mixed feelings, and a difficulty she doesn’t want to face… Full of Miss Read’s inimitable charm and humour, Thrush Green is a wonderful introduction to this bestselling series.” While written in the 1950’s, 60’s and 70’s, Miss Read’s books read as though they hark back an even earlier time when life was simpler and time ticked by more slowly. The crisis encountered by the villagers in Thrush Green are more personal than global and are often solved by their being shared. Still, Miss Read uses insight to draw simple but richly felt characters with whom we instantly identify and for whom we care immensely. As we do for those characters who live in Fairacre “. . . a village of cottages, a church and the school – and at the heart of the school, its head mistress, Miss Read. Through her discerning eye, we meet the villagers of Fairacre and see their trials and tribulations, from the irascible school cleaner Mrs Pringle, to the young school children, with their scraped knees, hopeful faces and inevitable mischief. Miss Read takes us through the school year, beginning with the Christmas term, when the bitterly cold weather challenges the school’s ancient heating system, right through to the hot summer day when school is over for another year. Full of Miss Read’s unique, acerbic wit, and wry observations.” These are books to savor and to read, and re-read, whenever the world we currently
live in seems a bit too complicated for our liking. Miss Read retired from writing in 1996 and was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire in 1998. As far as I can make out, she is still alive. Hurrah! Why, I wonder, is there no Miss Read Society? You can find a complete bibliography of her books here.

There is an Angela Thirkell Society and you can find them here. In fact, our very own Victoria is a card carrying member and did a post on the Society that you’ll find here. Barsetshire is a fictional county created by Anthony Trollope, which is featured in the series of novels known as the “Chronicles of Barsetshire” and where the county town and cathedral town is Barchester. Trollope’s books have been made into various mini-series, namely The Way We Live Now and The Pallisers. I’ve just downloaded the first book in the Barsetshire series, The Warden, and will then move on to The Barsetshire Chronicles, also made into a mini-series. Barsetshire was also used as the setting for a series of 29 novels by Angela Thirkell, written from 1930 to 1961. Thirkell’s stories blend social satire with romance. In Part Two, Victoria will tell you about Thirkell’s books – and more.

Part Two Coming Soon!

The Story Behind True Soldier Gentlemen by the Author, Guest Blogger Dr. Adrian Goldsworthy

Writing historical novels is a long cherished dream. I love history, and if the Romans have always had a special place in my heart, I find plenty of other periods almost as fascinating. For all that widespread interest, the Napoleonic and Regency has long been a particular obsession.

It probably began as a boy, watching the film Waterloo on television, and then when Bernard Cornwell’s Sharpe’s Eagle – the first of the series – was released. I devoured this and all its successors, along with C.S. Forester and his many imitators, as well as Patrick O’Brian who gave such a unique take on the genre. The fiction quickly led me to the real history of those times, and especially the wealth of letters and memoirs left by the men and women of those years of Regency in England and Revolution and Empire in France. So many of the real events and characters were stranger and more dramatic than anything a novelist would dare to invent, and there is so much human detail of everyday life during peacetime and on campaign. It was such a remarkable age, gaudy and inspiring, filled with larger the life characters and epic moments.

There is a lot of naval fiction out there, and new series seem to begin almost every year. Oddly, in spite – or perhaps because of – the success of Sharpe in books and on TV, there are very few adventure stories about Wellington’s men. Allan Mallinson’s series about the Light Dragoon Matthew Hervey begins in 1814, and apart from a few flashbacks, deals mainly with the world after Waterloo. Cornwell has on the whole moved on to other periods.

Dr. Adrian Goldsworthy

I wanted to go back to the world of the redcoats, and True Soldier Gentlemen is the result. The big events and the major figures are all real. My main characters are invented, but I wanted them to act and speak in ways in keeping with the period, so that they could have existed. For most people, Regency England is inseparably linked with Austen’s novels and their frequent dramatisation on the large and small screens. The aim was to capture something of their feel. (Reading them at school had anyway always made me wonder what her various military and naval characters got up to as the war with France raged off-stage. Austen can seem desperately slow-paced to a boy, and I did not really take a delight in her work until I returned to the books as an adult).

Army officers were in many ways the male counterparts of Austen’s heroines. The majority of army officers were not rich or well connected, and their claim to genteel status resting on precarious grounds. Few could afford to purchase promotion, and they had little control over postings. A man’s career might stagnate in Britain, or be ended abruptly by disease if the battalion was sent to the West Indies, which consumed units at quite staggering rates. War service brought more opportunities for advancement at the risk of death and dreadful injury – and indeed increased chance of succumbing to disease. All the time a man’s conduct was regulated by strict rules. No gentleman could strike another, unless in a formal duel. (Richard Sharpe is a wonderful creation, but no one could have got away with behaving like that. Knowing that has never made me take any less delight in the stories, and I wish I could write half as well as Cornwell).

Like wider Regency Society, most army officers drank heavily and many gambled freely. There were plenty of opportunities to disgrace themselves and be forced to resign. There were also constant frustrations as better connected or wealthier men advanced their careers far faster than was possible for most. Officers who chose to marry, or who had to assist their parents and siblings struggled even harder to cope, but many somehow managed to do this.

I could not resist including Wickham in the story. At the end of Pride and Prejudice Austen has Darcy buy him a commission in the regular army and help his future career, and this gave me the opportunity. Using the excuse that she is vague about the date, I decided to accept the view that ‘the Peace’ she mentions was the short-lived Peace of Amiens. Wickham is not really interesting enough to be the centre of the stories in the style of George MacDonald Fraser’s marvellous Flashman novels. Instead he is there, charming and untrustworthy, doing his best to seduce pretty women and avoid paying his debts, while other characters do most of the work. Yet his connection to Darcy will allow him to rise, as long as his misbehaviour does not become too blatant. He also helps to add to the humour of the story. Over-serious adventure stories tend to be tiresome. Apart from that, all the soldiers I have known or read about always laugh a lot, and the aim was to capture something of that spirit.

The real heroes of the stories will be a group of young men without influence. One of them, Williams, serves in my fictional 106th Regiment as a Gentleman Volunteer. This was a peculiar status, where a man lived with the officers, but served in the ranks, wearing the uniform and doing the duty of an ordinary soldier. They hoped to be commissioned when disease or battle created vacancies. At the height of the Peninsula War, about one in twenty of Wellington’s officers were commissioned in this way. This is the sort of strange status that is fun to explore, and not really that well known about these days.

True Soldier Gentlemen has always been intended as the start of a series, and I hope readers will have patience with a book that takes a while to introduce a large cast of characters. The idea is to take them through the years up to Waterloo. Although I have plenty of ideas, and a fair notion of where they will go, I am not yet sure what will happen to them all. I have also tried to give something of the sedate feel of Austen’s world, so that the peace and formality of England contrasts all the more with the extreme savagery of the Peninsula War.

It is an adventure, hopefully an enjoyable yarn, and has no pretensions whatsoever to being literature. Ultimately, it is the sort of novel I enjoy reading.

Today is the official release date for True Soldier Gentlemen in the UK and at present there no US edition planned. You can order
here through Amazon UK. The sequel, Beat the Drums Slowly, is due out in August of this year.
You can visit the author’s website here.

On The Shelf – NOOK Color Kicks Off Our Author Recommendations

I was once out shopping with a friend when I spotted a killer pair of Ralph Lauren sunglasses. When I told her that I really liked them, but that at the same time I already had many pair of sunglasses and didn’t need yet another, she sniffed and pronounced, “My dear, it’s not a matter of need. It’s a matter of want. Buy them.”

While I’ve lived by her words many times over the years, I must admit that I dragged my feet when e-readers first came out. Why buy something that’s the size of a book, that you can hold in your hand and read like a book when you could just read a book? And why pay for a book, when you could get it free at the local public library?

Then, Barnes and Noble came out with the NOOK color, an Android tablet fronted by a 7-inch color touchscreen with 8GB of internal memory and a microSD card slot for cards up to 32GB. It functions as both an e-reader and a web browser. All for $249.00 – much cheaper than an iPad or notebook. Curious, I went on the Barnes and Noble website in order to invesigate and found that it offered lots of capability. The NOOK sounded like a good deal. It sounded like something I didn’t absolutely need, but certainly wanted. And what do you know – Greg took it upon himself to surprise me with one for Xmas. Here are a look at the features:

1. You can download books into the NOOK in seconds. Using the NOOK to read a book is so easy, you don’t even need the instructions. Just tap on a book cover and it opens. A swipe at the corner of the screen turns the page, just like a “real” book. When you’re done reading, turn the NOOK off and when you turn it on again, it remembers what page you were on and opens to it. Downloaded books are stored on your “shelves,” which you can customize. My NOOK shelves are named tbr and done. Yes, tbr, as in to be read. No more tottering piles of tomes by the side of my bed. Still a pile, true, since every book ever written is not offered as a NOOK download as yet and since some books, especially non-fiction titles, were simply not meant to be read in any other format than that of a good, old fashioned hard-bound book. I plan on using my NOOK for fiction only. But that may change.

2. The NOOK has built-in wifi that allows you to browse the web. The only thing that’s a tad difficult to do is to click on individual results, as the screen is pretty small. There’s a plus (+) and minus (-) icon that comes up fairly intuitively in the lower righthand corner of the screen that allows you to magnify the screen when you’re performing a function that requires data entry. And you can call it up any other time you need it. Having web capability in an e-reader is a plus – you can shop for more book titles, check your email, Google to your hearts’ content, etc. It’s handy, especially when on the road.

3. NOOK’s built-in MP3 player lets you listen to audio books. Boy, did I get excited over this one! I cannot wait to do this – I can “read” and do needlework at the same time – oh, joy! But now we open another can of worms – can I download any audiobook? And a cursory browse on the web shows that I may be able to download e-books, including audio books, from my public library. Technology begets further technology and now I’ll have to spend time investigating these options, but it’s nice to know they’re available.

4. You can subscribe to magazines and each issue is automatically delivered to your NOOK each month. Or you can buy single issues. Have yet to try this . . . . as with non-fiction books, I think reading magazines in this format may take some getting used to.

5. The NOOK’s LendMe function means that books can be shared once with a friend who also has a NOOK at no cost, for up to 14 days. From the B and N website: “NOOKcolor makes it easy to borrow books from friends for up to 14 days. Just pull up your list of contacts, then browse a friend’s NOOKcolor library to choose the book you want to borrow. Within seconds, NOOKcolor will send an email to your friend with a request to borrow that book. Once they give the ok, the book will appear right on your NOOKcolor in seconds ready for you to download and enjoy.” This sounds pretty exciting, until you realize that the number of lendable books is fairly limited. While I have current titles on my tbr shelf (Ruth Rendell’s Portobello), and have even pre-ordered titles, (such as Maeve Binchey’s Minding Frankie, due out on March 1), only two of the titles on my shelf have a LendMe icon – The Black Moth by Georgette Heyer (my cost – .99) and Barchester Towers by Trollope (my cost – $1.99). LendMe might not be as fabulous as I first thought. Even Austen’s Pride and Prejudice isn’t lendable.

6. The NOOK is supposed to last 8 hours on a charge. The more you use the web, the more power you use up. Even when used just for reading, I find a single charge lasts around 6 hours.

As an e-reader the NOOK color is fabulous. How did I get by without it? True, I’m now spending money on books that I would have gotten free from the library, but then again, I’m not 187th on the list for new releases. Even so, I’m sure I’ll still be borrowing books from the library, the old fashioned way, but the NOOK is a useful tool and a wonderful addition to my bookshelves.

Understandably, the appearance of my NOOK has prompted much book browsing for me of late, in addition to reflections about favorite authors whose work I haven’t read in a while. And Victoria has a Kindle, which she uses often. She and I met at a Barnes and Noble store here in Florida recently and&nbsp
;spent some time discussing favorite authors, old and new, and we’ve decided to bring you our author recommendations in forthcoming On The Shelf posts, beginning on January 31st. It is our fondest hope that you’ll find a few new favorites amongst them, too.

On the Shelf: Remarkable Creatures

Victoria here. I picked up the latest Tracy Chevalier novel with a bit of trepidation. Again she was working in my period. I liked her earlier works until it came to Burning Bright, a novel about poet William Blake–which didn’t work for me.

However, I truly enjoyed Remarkable Creatures, a story set in Lyme, and based on the life of Mary Anning, the woman who discovered many interesting fossils and played a role in the developing science of biology as well as in the roots of the theories of Darwin. Elizabeth Philpot, a collector of fossils, and Mary became friends and colleagues. Neither female could break out of the restrictions placed on women in those days, nor could they totally overcome class differences in their situations.

The novel is set in the pre-Darwin period of the early 19th century. However, fossils were well known and raised many questions for those trying to reconcile the fact that some living things had become extinct, a concept which clashed with conventional Christian interpretations of the creation of the world as told in Exodus.

Mary Annning and Elizabeth Philpot were real people and their heritage is honored today in their home town of Lyme Regis on the southern coast of England in Dorset. The local museum in Lyme is known as the Philpot Museum and contains more about the lives of local fossil hunters and how they contributed to the development of the knowledge of evolution.

Right, part of the fossil beaches near Lyme. Popular today with fossil hunters, the beach gives up new finds frequently. Some make their living by guiding hunters to potential sites.

Lyme Regis is also the setting for several well known scenes in other novels. Jane Austen set her famous stair-jumping silliness on the Cobb at Lyme in Persuasion. John Fowles in The French Lieutenant’s Woman used Lyme as a dramatic background.

Tracy Chevalier’s most famous novel is probably The Girl with the Pearl Earring which brought her great fame and was made into a film starring Colin Firth as the artist Vermeer and Scarlett Johansson. Other novels included The Virgin Blue, Falling Angels, The Lady and the Unicorn, and Burning Bright. Happy reading!