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

[florence_craye]

Theme: The Wars of the Roses and/or Richard III specifically

Are you prepared to run it? No

Suggested books, if you have them already:

Daughter of Time, Josephine Tey (does that count, as it's not really set in that time)
Richard III, Shakespeare
The Sunne in Splendour, Sharon Kay Penman

Wars of the Roses in fiction (last updated in 2004, this is an archive.org cache)
An excellent R3 list is here, although it includes fiction during other medieval British rulers' reigns as well.

I am sure others have read more fiction set in this era, but this is a start from what I am familiar with as mainly a reader of non-fiction.

[damned_colonial]

snakeling has volunteered to run this.

[florence_craye]

awesome! My fiction knowledge is pretty bare bones.

Also, thanks for starting this comm. I love the idea and hope to get some good reading out of it!

[al_zorra]

I'm currently listening to the audio version of A Rose for the Crown by Anne Easter Smith (2006). (War of the Roses; Kate Haute, mistress to Richard, Duke of Gloucester (House of York)

For non-fiction there's a splendid book, Malory: the life and times of King Arthur's chronicler a biography of Sir. Thomas Malory, by Christina Hardyment (2005) with marvelous illos.

This isn't available online though, though you can get it from amazon, maybe. It's a Bit publication and I don't believe any U.S. publisher picked it up. We have it in the NYPL holdings though.

Love, C.

[epershand]

A personal favorite of mine is the historical fantasy The Dragon Waiting, by John M. Ford. It's got some fantastical elements, but the politics and personalities are spot on.

Ford's also got a delightful War of the Roses poem, where a series of Elizabethan and Jacobean playwrights play each of the kings.