Abundance

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I would expect nothing but the best from Sena Jeter Naslund, and she brought it with Abundance!  I know you are all sick of hearing me say it, but to me it is about a beautifully written piece of work, and Abundance had that as well as a great story of Marie Antoinette.  I was hypnotized by her writing and I was addicted to the story to see what was going to happen to Marie (I mean besides visiting the guillotine and all).  French history is something I didn't know much about so I was also excited to learn some new things about the French Revolution and the royal family.

Abundance starts as Marie Antoinette leaves Austria as a girl of only 14 and enters into France to become the Dauphine and wife of the Dauphin, Louie-Auguste.  The story is told through the eyes of Antoinette and I think it was interesting to see how Naslund made her mature in her voice through out the story.  In the beginning she is self absorbed, and frivolous in her thoughts and speech but then as the story goes on and she grows older she matures and you hear it in the way Naslund writes.  The way Naslund tells the story, Marie Antoinette wanted nothing but good for the people of France, and tabloidish type pamphlets muddied her name and made her an enemy to the people.  The people of France needed someone to blame their condition on and so it was an obvious choice to blame the extreme hunger and poverty on the Queen that had everything.  Naslund created her Marie Antoinette walking a thin line between frivolity and responsibility to her country.  Even at the end, while she was preparing to die to appease the people of France, she loved her country and its people but she was also worried about how her plum colored silk slippers looked.

If you like historical fiction than this is a great book for you to read.  If you don't like historical fiction I feel like you would find this book interesting still, because it reminds me of chick-lit at its best (shopping, pretty things, romance, sex, girl friends, little dogs, etc).  If you are like me and will read a book because the writing is mesmerizing then this is a good book for you too!

Annoying word of Abundance:  Besmirched.  The only compliant I have of Abundance is that Naslund uses the word Besmirched extraordinarily too many times in this book.  I hate when an author repeats a word over and over and over again.  Midway through the book we understood loud and clear that Marie Antoinette didn't want her name, her friends names, her clothes, her reputations, her bedding, to be Besmirched.  Blah.

Book vs. Movie:  If you ever saw the 2006 movie Marie Antoinette with Kirsten Dunst you, saw the frivolous side of Abundance.  But if you were to truly make Abundance into a movie I think you would need to do it better than this Sophia Coppola version.  Marie Anoinette only showed one layer of the Queen that Naslund wrote about.  It would be interesting to dive into the other layers of the last Queen of France.

Abundance 
by Sena Jeter Naslund


If you liked this book please read: The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory

The Boleyn Inheritance

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So here is my promised review of the last installment of Philippa Gregory's King Henry VIII novels.  I think that I enjoyed The Boleyn Inheritance better than any of the other two books on King Henry's wives.  I thought that this book was just clever in how it depicted the repercussions of Anne Boleyn and how it effected all of the English Court, through the eyes of three women.  After Anne visited the chopping block, the King's life changed forever and there were few people in the country that weren't effected by the aftermath.  The King has now divorced his first wife, killed his second wife, and lost is third wife in childbirth.  He is lonely, ill, loosing his good looks, at odds with the Catholic Church, and at odds with his people, all these things make this part of his history very entertaining.

This book is written in the point of view of Anne of Cleves (Henry's 4th wife), Katherine Howard (Henry's 5th wife), and Jane Boleyn (George Boleyn's horrible crazy wife).  So when we open this book the king is mourning over the death of his beloved wife Jane Seymour.  He needs to find a new wife and Queen of England so he sends out his royal match makers to find him the perfect spouse.  He settles on Anne of Cleves, and when he meets her (and marries her) he realizes that this woman will just not do (surprise surprise) and he divorces her.  During this quick marriage he is occupying his time with a young somewhat slutty immature girl named Katherine Howard, cousin to the King's infamous wife Anne (and you know with that combo, this can't end well).  In the end there are accusations, treason, and heads rolling once again.

Like I said before, I really enjoyed this book.  I didn't want to go into too much detail about the plot because it would sound like a history lesson, but don't let that turn you off from reading this book.  Because out of all the families in history the Tudor's story most resembles a steamy soap opera.  King Henry and his wives invented the word drama I am sure.

Book vs. Movie: I don't know if I would watch a movie just based off this book.  And I don't think that a 2 hour movie could quite catch a glimpse of the entire reign of King Henry VIII; but, the Showtime series The Tudors is doing a VERY VERY good job.  And if you don't want to watch the show for the history then at least watch it for Jonathan Rhys Meyers... Yum...

The Boleyn Inheritance

by Philippa Gregory

If you liked this book read: The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory 

The Constant Princess

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So a few weeks ago I posted my review for The Other Boleyn Girl, and I promised in that review that I would post a review for the other King Henry books by Philippa Gregory.  I am here to partially fulfill that promise by reviewing The Constant Princess.  Whenever I read a novel by Philippa Gregory I really become lost in the history, I become much more educated by the time I am finished with one of her stories because I am always on Wikipedia looking up some diplomat or lady at Court, or prince, or princess I had never heard of before.  I feel like each of her books become a personal history lesson for me.  My husband (being a history major) is amused and maybe slightly irritated by my conversations beginning with "did you know..." about some person or event I am reading about in Gregory's books.  When I started reading The Constant Princess the only thing I really knew about Katherine of Aragon was that she was King Henry VIII first wife (and that she didn't have her head chopped off), but from there I couldn't tell you  much of anything else.

A lot of what I know (pre reading) about the life of King Henry VIII and his wives, I had learned from the Showtime Series The Tudors (you must tune into this show if you would like to see a very sexy version of the reign of King Henry VIII, though I would imagine that his reign was even spicier than the TV show depicts).  In this TV show they show Kathrine of Aragon as an older lady with a VERY strong Catholic faith that never stopped loving Henry until the day she died.  In The Constant Princess you get to know Katherine as a strong willed little girl that grew up on the battlefields of Spain, as a young woman married to Aurthur prince of Wales, and finally as a cunning woman who becomes the Queen of England and tries to hold onto her position.

Out of all the books by Gregory I think that The Constant Princess has been my least favorite.  Her writing style drew me in as always but it took me A L-O-N-G time to read this book.  The characters didn't really capture my attention.  I loved to hate Henry in the other books but in this one he was so young he just annoyed me.  And I really enjoyed the love story between Katherine and Aurthur but after he died I wasn't too into the rest of the book.  I would say absolutely read this book if you want to get the real story of the whole King Henry mess   reign, it will only educate you or inspire you to learn more about this great time in history.

The Constant Princess 

by Philippa Gregory
ISBN:0743272498


If you liked this book then read: The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory

The Other Boleyn Girl

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The Other Boleyn Girl (TOBG) is one of my absolutely favorite books of all times.  After reading this book by Philippa Gregory I went through a little period of obsession with King Henry VIII and his time of power.  I devoured every morsel I could find on this brute and everything I read just made my obsession more acute.  I mean his reign was the stuff of Fairy Tales, medieval castles, knights, princesses, jousting, extreme riches and even more extreme poverty, the whims of a pampered prince and then of a selfish king.  Everything I read about King Henry and his six wives was not only history but a novel to me!  I read The Other Boleyn Girl and the other King Henry books by Philippa Gregory in very quick succession and I plan on blogging about all of them but right now I am just going to focus on TOBG.

If you have watched The Tudors on Showtime or have ever studied the reign of King Henry VIII then you know the general idea of the story/history.  This book focuses on Henry's relationship with the infamous Anne Boleyn, starting with her families obsession to gain power in Court and ending (no spoilers here hopefully) at the chopping block.  Philippa Gregory takes historical fact and fills in the shady bits with fiction; on her website she says "By and large the fiction fills in the gaps of the known historical record and brings it to life".  So the fiction part is what makes the story so interesting, spicy, and new.  In TOBG you are hearing the tale of Anne through the eyes of her sister Mary.  Mary is little known in history but she is said to have born one or two of Henry's bastard children (a son no less), and she was quite in love with Henry for a short time until his eyes drifted to her sister Anne.  Then Mary has to play a key roll in Anne's climb to be the Queen of England and then to keep her there while Henry's ever roaming eyes wander to a multitude of other ladies at Court.

Gregory's writing is amazing.  This lady has a way with words (this is why she is my most favorite author), everything that Gregory writes is a true work of art.  I almost always recommend one of her works to anyone that asks me for a good read.

Book vs. Movie: I do have to say though that TOBG movie was quite disappointing (as are most books turned movie).  It was fun to see the beautiful clothes and riches but the screen play fell extremely short of the actual book.

The Other Boleyn Girl 

By Philippa Gregory
ISBN: 0-7432-2744-1 

If you enjoyed this book, please read:  The Wideacre Trilogy by Philippa Gregory

Golden Lilies

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One thing I am super passionate about is learning. I want to know about everything. I am known in my family to have a little nugget of information about whatever topic happens to be in discussion. So, when a story has me scurrying to Wikapedia or the library to research a new topic, that story gets a gold star in my book. Snow Flower and the Secret Fan was one of those stories that made me get out my trusty notebook and dive into some research about the women in 16th century China. I was immersed in a strange world of foot binding (they call their bound feet Golden Lilies), embroidery, secret languages, and homemaking. I was stunned at the things I was learning as I finished chapter after chapter of this book.

In this story you will meet a young girl named Snow Flower and her friend Lily. These girls were paired up by a match maker as special friends (loatong - translating to "old sames") during their "foot binding years" and the story follows their lives as female soul mates from children through their marriages and finally until death separates them. Because the two girls live in neighboring villages they can only see each other a few times a year but they correspond to each other by writing in a secret language called Nu Shu that is only known to women. Snow Flower and Lily write their little notes on the back of a fan that they send back and forth to each other during their times apart. Eventually, as girl friends often do, they have a tiff and they realize during their period of giving eachother the "silent treatment" how much they truly mean to one another.

My mother-in-law recommended this book to me after she read it for her book club. Since then she has decided that Snow Flower and the Secret Fan is her favorite book and I can certainly see why. If you want a beautifully written heartwarming story you are going to get it with this one. And while it isn't in my top faves I very much appreciate this book and would highly recommend it to anyone that wants to curl up with a good book.

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan
by Lisa See


If you liked this book also read: The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory