Sucked in by a book

So instead of stitching, cleaning, packing, shipping, preparing etc. Yesterday I was sucked in by a book. The Queen's Fool by Philippa Gregory. I came home fully prepared to cook, clean, and do all the things that I need to do in the next 5 days, and instead I read straight from 5pm till 1am. This is not abnormal for me, just abnormal for me lately. I used to read straight through large volumes when I was in jr high and high school, it was a struggle for me to put down stephen king so I could do homework. I kept track of all the books I read and usually averaged about 30-35 a year. I get sucked into books in a way which is not possible with TV or movies, and so I knew I had to swear off the novels while I was in Graduate school or my thesis would of never gotten done. Now that the grading is done and the final I am giving is copied and ready for judgement day tomorrow, I guess I just gave in to the reading monster.

Anyway, the Queens Fool was not the best book ever but it was pretty darn good. A bit more far reaching than most historical novels, this has a fully contrived character that we follow in the tudor court of (mostly) Queen Mary. I have loved the whole Tudor story and Elizabethian england since I was a young girl. I love to read historical novels of the time. I mentioned to my advisor this summer that I loved these types of book and she lent me two, The Virgin Queen by Maureen Peters, a facinating version of the relationship between Elizabeth and Thomas Seymour, and The Last Boleyn by Karen Peters which I had mistaken for The Other Boleyn Girl by Philippa Gregory both are about Mary Boleyn, sister to Anne, mistress to the king. I will be interested to see how The Other Boleyn Girl compares to The Last Boleyn which overall whas written a bit better than the Queen's Fool, but then again maybe I just like my character exploration to stick closer to the known facts of history.