Finding books

I've been under the weather this week, and whenever I try to do too much, my body responds by forcing me back to bed. As a consequence, I got through quite a few library books.

I have a weakness for medieval mysteries. I have always been fascinated by the middle ages and by one figure in particular: Eleanor of Aquitaine. I read A Proud Taste for Scarlet and Miniver when I was 9 years old and that started my Eleanor fandom and my interest in medieval England.

Mysteries I like to get from the library, because rereading them is usually not enjoyable. Why buy a book you're only going to read once? And luckily, my library is chock full of mysteries--they seem to be very popular with readers in my area of town. The Houston Public Library also has an online hold function, where you can request a book over the Internet and it will be sent to your branch from other branches...I use this a lot.

So, about the whole medieval mystery thing. Historical mysteries are an interesting subset of the mystery genre. There are all these English and history professors out there, brimming with knowledge of a certain point in time, and dying to stuff everything they know into a book people will actually read. So they choose to write mysteries, because they know general audiences will never buy their scholarly texts.

I thought I'd mention a few of the characters I've been hanging out with recently...and then maybe see if a blog reader has suggestion for others.

Mistress of the Art of Death. I can't recommend this book, by Arianna Franklin, and its sequel, The Serpent's Tale highly enough. The lead character, Adelia, is a Salerno-educated doctor who specializes in forensics and pathology. She comes to England and then is forced to stay by King Henry. She also chooses single motherhood The books are extremely well-written and just fascinating. And imagine how I squee'd when Eleanor appears in the second book.

Dame Frevisse. I love Margaret Frazer's books. My favorite is Joliffe, an actor and spy with a theater troupe (set in early 1400). Her Dame Frevisse character (these books are set around the same time, as Frevisse and Joliffe occasionally interact) is a nun (there are lots of clergy in medieval mysteries, probably because these were some of the most educated folks around, who were able to travel).

Speaking of clergy, I like the Peter Tremayne series with its lead character Sister Fidelma. Sister Fidelma is sister to a King of Ireland, and a highly educated lawyer. She is also a married member of the clergy, married to a Saxon monk. These books are packed full of details about the Irish court system and the shifts that were occurring in cultural mores. Women at this point in Ireland (set in 664 AD) have many more rights than they will in just a few years. These books are sometimes thinly plotted, but I like the historical information so keep reading them. In fact, my hold request for Dancing with Demons was in, so I picked it up today.

I've also just read both Lord John books by Diana Gabaldon. Lord John Grey is a character in Diana Gabaldon's fantastically popular Outlander Series. These spin-off books are set in the 1750s (so not exactly medieval). Lord John is gay and there are some mild sex scenes, so if that sort of thing bothers you, these probably aren't the books for you. But, there's also a lot of truly fascinating information about what it would have been like to be gay in a time and a place where you could have been executed if the wrong people found out. And, like the Outlander books, they're good reads. They're also more character studies than true mysteries.

As are the Maisie Dobbs books by Jacqueline Winspear. These books, not medieval at all, are set in England between the wars. They are usually classified as mysteries, but they're more unravellings, with the focus on the characters and their histories. I just think they're beautifully written.

I've also recently read one of Edward Marston's Nicholas Bracewell books (also set in the Elizabethan theater), and read plenty of Brother Cadfael (more clergy, set in the 12th century). Today at the library, I checked out a book by Alys Clare, so we'll give her a try.

Finally, I found this great site, called Literature map, billing itself as the tourist map of literature. You can plug in an author, and see which other writers map closely to him or her. It's kind of fun to see what comes up, and it gives you some names of new authors to check out.