Mod post: theme suggestions

[damned_colonial]

Please suggest themes you'd like to see covered here! Cut and paste the following into a comment:

ETA: please put your theme in the subject of your comment!

Theme:
Are you prepared to run it? Yes/No
Suggested books, if you have them already:


What does it mean to run the theme?

1. At least one month in advance, you'll let everyone know about the theme and your suggested reading for it. You need to suggest at least 3 works of fiction.
2. On the first of the month, you will post a welcome/introduction/kickoff for the theme.
3. Throughout the month, you'll take an active part in discussion of the theme.

You do not have to be an expert on the theme to run it. You just need to have an interest in it.

Comments

Re: WW1 in general

[naraht]

We should probably do WW1 in general, too.

That's kind of a big topic, isn't it?

Re: Cold War America

[gloss]

See, I'd assumed that you'd claimed this topic, so when I realized you hadn't, I thought I'd nab it -- unless you want it.

I have Johnson's book next on my to-read list. WHEE.

I'm not sure about Kavalier & Clay, though I'm rereading it this summer, so I'll check. There's also James Ellroy's The Big Nowhere, but his depiction of gays leaves *a lot* to be desired. *thinks*

[naraht]

I think the theme would need to be narrowed down a great deal. It's a little bit like picking "America" as a theme.

Re: Women At War, WWI

[damned_colonial]

"Not so quiet..." by Helen Zenna Smith seems to be a classic re: women in ww1

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Not-so-Quiet/Helen-Zenna-Smith/e/9780935312829

This story offers a rare, funny, bitter, feminist look at war from women actively engaged in it. Published in London in 1930, Not So Quiet...(on the Western Front) is a novel in autobiographical guise that describes a group of British women ambulance drivers on the French front lines during World War 1. As Voluntary Aid Detachment workers, the women pay for the privilege of driving the wounded through shell fire in the freezing cold, on no sleep and an inedible diet, under the watchful eye of their punishing commandant, nicknamed Mrs. Bitch.

Re: Cold War America

[naraht]

I certainly haven't claimed it, although am happy to help out with suggestions. I've actually written two fanfics about homosexuality in Cold War America, so I suppose it's sort of an interest of mine. I did a bunch of reading for them which was how I found the Johnson book...

I adore Kavalier and Clay but I may be working too hard to fit it in here. :)

Re: WW1 in general

[damned_colonial]

Excellent, I've noted you down!

Re: Cold War America

[damned_colonial]

You know, I think under the circumstances that could be OK. As long as we don't make too much of a habit of it, perhaps space out the 20th century themes so it's not too frequent.

Re: Cold War America

[gloss]

As long as we don't make too much of a habit of it, perhaps space out the 20th century themes so it's not too frequent.
...and for a second I thought you were referring to adding homosexuality, not the lack of free editions. I need dinner, obviously.

Re: Cold War America

[damned_colonial]

Re: Ellroy, that's *awesome* though, because we want conflicting perspectives.

I read Kavalier and Clay quite recently and I don't think it's really enough about homosexuality to put in the top 3, though it would make a good item on the "additional reading" list.

[damned_colonial]

I would love to do Asian history, but I think we need to break it down by period. So, like, "China 1600-1800" or "The Boxer Rebellion" or "Communist China".

Re: WW1 in general

[damned_colonial]

Well, no more than eg. the US Civil War or the French Revolution, IMHO.

Re: Cold War America

[damned_colonial]

*snort* ... I'm in favour of homosexuality ALL THE TIME to be honest.

Re: Cold War America

[gloss]

We're on the same page, then! :D

Re: WW1 in general

[naraht]

Fair enough. I suppose it was the contrast to "British women on the home front in WWI" that caught my attention...

Re: Women At War, WWI

[damned_colonial]

Lyn Andrews, Angels of Mercy, about two pretty young British women, twins, who join the Voluntary Aid Detachment and go to work at the front

Antonia Arslan, Skylark Farm, about a family trying to survive during the 1915 Armenian genocide

Emma Blair, Forget-Me-Not, historical romance about an actress and a journalist who becomes a pilot in the RAF

Margaret Dickinson, Suffragette Girl (2009), about a suffragette who signs up to serve as a nurse when the First World War begins.

Helen Dunmore, Zennor in Darkness, a novel about D.H. Lawrence and his German-born wife and their Cornish neighbors’ suspicion of them during the war years

Robert Edric, In Desolate Heaven, about a woman in 1919 Switzerland who meets two ex-officers who served in World War I and are trying to escape their memories

Audrey Howard, Whispers On The Water, historical romance about a young British woman in love with a man whose spirit is broken in the Great War

Audrey Howard, As The Night Ends, historical romance about a British suffragette in love with a surgeon and separated from him, first by a quarrel and then by war

Audrey Howard, All The Dear Faces, historical romance about two young women, one from a large Irish family and the other from an aristocratic family in Liverpool during the years before and during the First World War

Ami McKay, The Birth House, about a young midwife in Nova Scotia during the war years

Deborah Moggach, In the Dark, about the war's effect on the lives of ordinary Londoners

Michelle Paver, The Serpent’s Tooth, about a woman living with a tragic secret and her search for emotional peace during World War I

Piers Paul Read, Alice in Exile, about a free-thinking daughter of a radical publisher, rejected by her aristocratic lover when she becomes pregnant, who accepts a position as governess to a Russian family during the years of World War I and the Russian Revolution

Jody Shields, The Crimson Portrait, about doctors and nurses caring for men whose faces were destroyed in the war

Richard Skinner, The Red Dancer: The Life and Times of Mata Hari, about the Dutch woman who reinvented herself as an exotic dancer in Paris and was believed to be a spy for the Germans during World War I

Wilbur Smith, The Burning Shore, about a Frenchwoman’s struggles during World War I and her effort to make a new life for herself in South Africa

Thomas J. Fleming, Over There, a woman who is a feminist and former pacifist works goes to France to work as a nurse on the front lines

Nicole Helget, The Turtle Catcher (2009), about the only daughter in a German immigrant family growing up in rural Minnesota during World War I with the secret knowledge that her body is not like that of other girls.

Frances Itani, Deafening, about a deaf Canadian girl, from her childhood through her romance with a man who enlists to fight in the war

Michael Lowenthal, Charity Girl (2007), about a young Boston woman imprisoned for having a “social disease” during the war.

... all taken from http://www.historicalnovels.info/World-War-I.html ... I suspect that site may end up being a core resource for this community!

Re: Colonial-era Africa

[damned_colonial]

Got recs for the detective series?

French Revolution

[damned_colonial]

Theme: French Revolution
Prepared to run it: would prefer someone else volunteered!
Books:

A Tale of Two Cities
Scarlet Pimpernel

... not sure what else, but see http://www.historicalnovels.info/Eighteenth-Century.html#18Cont for ideas.

Jim Crow era

[damned_colonial]

Theme: Jim Crow era in the US
Prepared to run it: no

I don't have any book suggestions, but I think it would be an interesting period to cover.

Re: Gold Rushes

[damned_colonial]

California Gold Rush book list here: http://www.historicalnovels.info/Old-West-Novels.html#CalGold

A good suggestion is Isabel Allende's "Daughter of Fortune" about a Chilean woman in the Californian gold rush. Bret Harte's "The Luck of Roaring Camp" would be a good Gutenbergable one.

An Australian classic, and Gutenbergable: Rolf Boldrewood, Robbery Under Arms: A Story of Life and Adventure in the Bush and in the Goldfields of Australia (1882), about a man who joined a gang of bushrangers and preyed on miners during the gold rush of the 1850s.

Another Australian perspective: Nerida Newton, The Lambing Flat, about a young Chinese immigrant caught up in the nineteenth century Australian gold rush and a young woman on a Queensland cattle station who come to care for each other after he loses his father in the Lambing Flat riots

Re: US Civil War

[lookingland]

that would be an obvious choice for the online "free" work.

: D

Re: Plagues and pandemics

[epershand]

If non-fiction counts: John M. Barry, The Great Influenza

[epershand]

That would be really cool. Some further suggestions:

Ellen Klages, The Green Glass Sea and White Sands, Red Menace

In addition to Cryptonomicon, Stevenson's related epic trilogy of hugeness (The Baroque Cycle) has some really great stuff covering the English Enlightenment scientists.

Peloponnesian War

[siljamus]

Theme: Peloponnesian War
Are you prepared to run it? No, sorry

Suggested books, if you have them already:
Steven Pressfield: "Tides of War" (2000)
Mary Renault: "The Last of the Wine" (1956)
Aristophanes: "The Birds" (414 BC) English translations by Eugene O'Neill, jr. or by Ian Johnston. (I was thinking that we could make an exception here and include a play, seeing as we have an actual piece of fiction written at the time, which deals with the theme. "The Birds" is also hilariously funny and a short read. Or maybe Lysistrate which is more directly about the war.)

Non-fictional reading could include Thucydides "History of the Peloponnesian War" at Gutenberg or at Project Perseus.

[vaznetti]

I'd suggest as well This Thing of Darkness, by Harry Thompson, which is about the voyages of the Beagle, and has lots of interesting material about the development of geology and biology, as well as the relatioship between science and colonialism in the 19th century.

Caribbean & New Orleans

[al_zorra]

I was thinking last night that Haiti, with focus upon the Revolution, would be the best place to start. That could be The Theme.

But I'm wondering if we could do a separate Theme of New Orleans? Much historical fiction has been located there. Very much, and is still being written, including historic period genre mysteries and fantasies.

Theme: New Orleans

Fiction:

One of the Benjamin January novels by Barbara Hambly (post Haitian Revolution, pre-Civil War New Orleans, 1830's & 1840's)
Old Creole Days - George Washington Cable
The Feast of All Saints - Anne Rice (1840's New Orleans; detailed description of novel here. This not a vampire or mummy or Jesus novel -- it's also a television mini series, though it was shot in Canada, and French Canada really does not stand in effectively for New Orleans, particularly if you know both places as well as this view does.)

What do you think?

Love, c.


Love, C.