I have had a delicious week of reading - it seems to be feast or famine, as some of you have mentioned how you are not finding any interesting reads lately. I've been there too.
I mentioned in "mystery" that i just finished my first JUdge Knott book, Southern Discomfort, by Margaret Maron and loved it. I've just started The Diary of Mattie Spenser, my first Sandra Dallas book, sounds very interesting - a fictional woman's diary from late 1860's as she starts married life on the plains of Colorado. Seems authenitic and humorous.
I mentioned in "non-fiction" that I also just finished Will's War, a fictionalized account of Janice Windle's German-American grandfather's trial for treason during WWI in Texas. She wrote True Women based on her women ancestor's lives in Texas during the Mexican WAr and the infancy of the state of Texas. Dana Delaney starred in a tv movie.
This story is very well written and a great look at how German-Americans were persecuted. Some of it is almost too eerily close to today's headlines:
".....Arthur recognized Rudolph Tschoepe. Until recent weeks he had been a highly respected member of the State Legislature. He had come to American from Germany w/ his parents when he was 4 yrs old. Now, half a century later, he was ousted from the Legislature because he couldn not prove he was an American citizen. Yet, no man Arthur knew was more loyal to American than Rep. Tschoepe. The faceless enemy was on the march. "
Other German-Americans had much more serious actions taken against them, including torching of their houses and businesses and being assaulted and sometimes killed.
The closing argument by the defensive atty for Will Bergfeld, the protagonist and Windle's grandfather, is one of the most compelling statements about protecting the right of free speech and association, etc. that i have ever read in literature. Since Windle had 1000,s of pages of trial transcript, my perception is that it was exactly as William Atwell, the defense atty, stated it at the time. He, later, had a distinguished career as a U.S. District Judge in Dallas and wrote in his autobiography that "In many respects, this was one of the most remarkable trials ever held in America."
I tho't the book was well-written, compelling, and gave us an important piece of Amer'n history that is often overlooked.
I'm also reading Alison Weir's Eleanor of Acqutaine. She is a fascinating historical charcter for me and has been since Katherine Hepburn portrayed her in Lion in Winter. The description Weir gives of Henry II is physically closer to the portrayals I've seen and read of Henry VIII than of tall, slender, fair Peter O'Toole. Altho O'Toole did get the constant moving, fidgity, never-sitting, hyper-activity thing right..........
Enough! I'm having a good reading week, as you can see.......jean
