On my way back from London in June I caught The Other Boleyn Girl
a movie I so thought I would hate. I ended up loving it and on an impulse bought one of the lady who wrote its other books The Constant Princess before a flight home from LA. I became obsessed with Catherine of Aragon and luckily I have a ton of Spanish history books already on my shelves so I can compare truth and historical fiction side by side. It's been fun! In one of my internet trolling moments I realized the NYC public library down the street has original manuscripts you can look at and now I can read Spanish written in the era of Ferdinand and Isabella and of the great and horrible colonizing empire that was Spain.
The other thing I can't stop re-reading is Julia Child's My Life In France which is her account of her life before and discovering her obsession with food. It totally changed my life and every time I'm bored with a current book, I just read a chapter and her voice in my head and true positive passion just makes me psyched. I've read some biographies too which are interesting. I thought it was hilarious today when I saw on yahoo news that she was outed as a spy. DUH!
8 comments:
hi Molly....is this the first historical fiction you've gotten into? I have read some of Gore Vidal's "Chronicles of Empire" (well, I read Burr, the first one) and some Charles Dickens (a favorite of mine) but that's about it...lately I've been watching 1930's Hollywood Period Pieces, like A Tale of Two Cities and Marie Antoinette and then I put some BBC stuff on hold at the library. As for history, I have to get back to the Darker Nations: A People's History of the Third World. I'm sure Spain will come up.....I also just re-watched Battle of Algiers, which just came out as a Criterion Collection with extra features...maybe I should review DVD booklets and CD liner notes? Do booklets count as books? Anyhow, I'll let you know if any Spanish history comes up in my studies.
Also, Julia Childs keeps coming up. I'll have to put that one on hold.
So many books, so little time. Happy Reading
Well I like Austen and all that but I guess I was thinking of this in terms of modern writing about history and particularly how I didn't want to like the other Boleyn girl movie because Natalie Portman is so annoying and so is Scarlett Johansonn, but I liked it! I liked the Elizabeth movies too!
I'm going to try to read some Gore Vidal, my dad has all of his books.
hi molly...what can i saw, your dad is cool! what i meant by mentioning charles dickens was that i had read historical fiction he wrote, you know, like tale of two cities, about the french revolution but written in the mid 19th century? oh i have to go to work now, bye! xo tv ps you me and kathi all read jane austen, i wonder if bill did? maybe we can write a jane austen influenced frumpies album? "frumpies of manners"
p.s. i like scarlett johanson! ha
Hi Molly. Woah, that's so bizarre that Julia Child was a spy!
mannerfrump?
"Frump and Frumpability"
Sharon-
I know it's weird right? In the biographies it always refers to her as being a clerk with the OSS, the precursor to the CIA. It's hard to imaging she did much mata hari style spying but I'm sure she had access to spy style information. That's why I was confused by this "revelation" because it seemed like it was sort of well known.
Well I guess we can wait and see what the movie starring Meryl Streep!
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