More Books

I've finished His Majesty's Dragon and I'm on the second book in the series. What a rousing good time. It does make me wish that Ace could actually talk to me in English instead of just looking at me with those warm brown eyes and knickering when I coo over him.

Between re-reading the Harry Potter books and starting the Dragon, I read Barbara Hambly's Patriot Hearts, an historic novel that weaves the stories of Dolly Madison, Abagail Adams, Martha Washington, and Sally Hemings quite nicely. Barbara, whom I have known for almost twenty years, wrote an excellent novel about Mary Todd Lincoln called The Emancipator's Wife and has a mystery series of seven books set in antebellum New Orleans about a black physician. The first of these is A Free Man of Color and I can't understand why someone hasn't picked up an option to film it. I also enjoyed her book about vampires called Those Who Hunt the Night and her fantasy set against early Hollywood called Bride of the Rat God.

There was a small world aspect to Patriot Hearts--when I looked at her source material, the name of someone with whom I grew up appeared. He's one of the editors of James Madison's papers at the University of Virginia and those papers apparently include Dolly's letters. So there was Dr. David Mattern's name. I haven't seen him since a high school reunion a number of years ago, but there was a time when I expected we would be two-thirds of an "It's Academic" team when we were seniors in high school. Unfortunately, our history teacher refused to support our entry when the show switched to a Sunday shooting schedule. Wasn't that silly?

Looking at this post, it indicates I've read nine books in the past month (ten if I count Harry Potter 7 for both times I read it), which, according to an article I read this week, puts me well out of the norm for this country. How sad that so many people read five or fewer books a year.