Sunday, December 27, 2009

Booking Through Thursday (on Sunday)

This weeks Booking Through Thursday question is:
Given the choice, which do you prefer? Real history? Or historical fiction? (Assume, for the purposes of this discussion that they are equally well-written and engaging.)

My preference would be for the "real" history but with good historical fiction right behind. To be truly engaging, a either genre has to go beyond the dry facts and suck me into the story.

These recent reads are both excellent: Kate Summerscale's Suspicions of Mr. Whicher: Murder and the Undoing of a Great Victorian Detective (history), and Hillary Mantel's Wolf Hall (historical fiction). The former taught me a lot about what the early years of detection were like and made me want to re-read Poe and Conan Doyle, and the latter made me want to read "real" histories of Henry VIII's court.

Books that make me want to read more books - just what I need!

No comments:

Post a Comment