I’ve been super busy this summer so just getting around to posting my summer reading list—on the eve of August! For those of you that have followed the blog for a while, this list might be a bit surprising as there is quite a bit of fiction on it (and rather unserious fiction at that). Usually I’m a pretty serious reader, but I’ve written two books in five years and I am really tired; I need to lighten up. I’ve got another list of books I’m reading for the next semester, but this is my bedside stack right now. As always, I would love your recommendations: I’ve got a whole month of summer left.
Let’s start with some “light” history: two books written for general audiences in this semiquincentennial year.
Both books were easy, interesting reads. Beverly Gage is a professor of modern American history at Yale, and This Land is Your Land is an account of her road trips to heritage sites across the US. Now, this is exactly what I do with much of my free time, so I have a natural interest in this book. I was hoping Gage would make it to Salem, but none of her road trips were in New England. As a resident of Connecticut, maybe she thought she would be biased? Pilgrimages to New England are nothing new, but she visits well-trodden sites in New York, Pennsylvania, and Virginia. My attention to her insights definitely waned when she visited a place I had been to before, and increased when she was describing someplace new to me. So I went pretty quickly for about a third of the book and then slowed down when she got to Texas, where she found it impossible to buy a t-shirt (at first). Early on in the book, in her Philadelphia chapter, Gage asserts that she will be exploring both sites and memories of sites, and this is the through line of her book. Brooke Barbier wrote my favorite biography of my favorite founding father, John Hancock, and you must know I like my cocktails, so Cocked and Boozy is another book in which I had a natural interest, and it did not disappoint!
After I finished This Land is Your Land, I picked up Alice Loxton’s Eleanor. A 200-Mile Walk in Search of England’s Lost Queen and couldn’t put it down! Alice Loxton is very, very good. I thought I might be starting a summer of reading about history travel but nothing could top Loxton so my trend ended with her. Joseph Luzzi’s Botticelli’s Secret is trade history too, but I’m going to assign it for my Renaissance and Reform course as it’s very readable (so the students will actually read it) and it hits the major historiographical note of the “discovery” of the Renaissance. And I have bought Lucy Worsley’s latest book, but not read it yet. Frankly, I’m more of a fan of her broadcasting than her writing, but this latest one promises to be a bit more tied to her curatorial career so I’m looking forward to reading it.
I’m interested in all forms of print, and am trying to be more precise when identifying them, so I bought Holly Black’s Story of Printmaking, which looks really good. I’m not sure if it’s going to be a read-through or reference text, but it is certainly comprehensive! This Little World is a new Tudor-Stuart textbook, so it probably should be on my more academic booklist, but I’m also trying to figure out if it’s readable enough to be useful for courses, or just for reference.
And on to fiction!
Three very different examples of historical fiction. Murder Most Foul is an amusing mystery, a romp really, written by a screenwriter (which shows). After Christopher Marlowe is murdered, his rival William Shakespeare is a suspect and seeks to clear his name by teaming up with Marlowe’s sister Ann (his former lover) to expose the true murderer. Their alliance and progress give Shakespeare much material. The Beheading Game is all about Anne Boleyn’s quest for revenge, which proceeds after she wakes up in a makeshift coffin following her execution and sews her head back on. Somehow it works. Someone recommended Matthew Kneale to me, so I picked up his most recent book, Pilgrims, as well as an earlier book, much celebrated, entitled English Passengers. I devoured Murder Most Foul and Beheading in a matter of hours; I think these two Kneale books are going to take me a bit longer.
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