The White Queen (Booktober)

 

"Only fools wait when their enemies are coming, to see if they may prove to be friends."

 

 

I haven't been on a Philippa Gregory binge in a long, long time, but when I WAS, I always preferred her Plantagenet books to her Tudor ones. The White Queen was the first one of those I read, and I loved it. The story (probably highly fictionalized, so keep that in mind) of Edward of York and the commoner Elizabeth who managed to marry him and become Queen of England during the War of the Roses is probably one of the best known around. And the Queen is even more important because, through her daughter, she becomes grandmother to none other than Henry VIII. So have a look and see what court intrigue looked like in the 15th century!

 

 

 

1464. Cousin is at war with cousin, as the houses of York and Lancaster tear themselves apart, and Elizabeth Woodville, a young Lancastrian widow, armed only with her beauty and steely determination, seduces and marries the charismatic warrior king, Edward IV of York. Crowned Queen of England, surrounded by conflict, betrayal and murder, Elizabeth rises to the demands of her position, fighting tenaciously for her family's survival. Most of all she must defend her two sons, who become the central figures in a mystery that has confounded historians for centuries: the missing Princes in the Tower. 

(from book jacket)

 

xx

*image not mine

 

The Thorn Birds (Booktober)

The Bourbon Kings (Booktober)

Cop of the Year (Booktober)

Nefertiti (Booktober)

Timeline (Booktober)

The Murder at the Vicarage (Booktober)

Persuasion (Booktober)

The Longest Ride (Booktober)

Midnight Sun (Booktober)

Percy Jackson & the Olympians (Booktober)

The Chronicles of Narnia (Booktober)

Atlantis (Booktober)

Origin (Booktober)

Quo Vadis (Booktober)

Death on the Nile (Booktober)

The Little White Horse (Booktober)

The Sign of Four (Booktober)

Harry Potter #2 (Booktober)

Troublemaker (Booktober)

The Lord of the Rings (Booktober)

Tome Thursday: Bloodline

Hello everyone!

Oh.

My.

GOD.

Can you believe it? I FINISHED THIS BOOK!

I'm not exaggerating when I tell you this one had a similar fate as it's predecessor, aka sitting there on my shelf all abandoned and neglected with a bookmark stuck about halfway through. It's testimony to the fact that I really, really hate leaving things unfinished that I went back and chewed through the rest of the book.

Which, technically speaking, did all happen within two or so days in the end.

Once I sit down to something, there's no telling with what kind of vengeance I'll do it!

Of course if you'll recall, I just always seem to have this kind of problem with the series in general. And what series, do you ask?

Why, Wars of the Roses, of course. And the book is called Bloodline.

Tome Thursday: Conqueror

Hello everyone!

I apologise in advance if this particular blog post has some intermissions during which I spontaneously burst out singing 'You've Lost That Loving Feeling'.

Last night they aired Top Gun on television here, and while I can honestly say I'm not as big of a fan of that movie as some people (-cough-dad-cough-) I DO enjoy several scenes from that movie. Among them would have to be the bar scene, where Tom Cruise can't really sing to save his life, but you know; although the top would have to be 'You're gonna do WHAT?!?' because, come on.

I don't think anyone else can squeal as much!

But anyway.

Back to books tonight and I'm finally writing down my review of another Conn Iggulden masterpiece (though not, as yet, Bloodline. It's coming people, I promise). I went and finished Conqueror from his series about Genghis Khan and his legacy, and ordered my notes so that I actually see how they make sense now.

So, without further ado, I give you Conqueror. Or, in other words, Kublai Khan.

Tome Thursday: Elizabeth of York

Hello everyone!

Back to book reviews, and I've suddenly realized I don't have all that many from the seaside it looks like. What just happened?

I know for a fact that I had taken roughly about forty new titles with me on vacation, but that doesn't mean I managed to read them all, which, I'm pretty sure, will be a surprise to a lot of people who know me, because I'm always reading something. Usually more than one thing at a time.

And now it looks like I still have a mountain to climb!

Shocking, I know.

I blame it on The Lord of the Rings, because I always take it with me on summer vacation and end up usually reading it over the spen of a week, just to keep it flowing and also to keep my mind sane (no dreaming about Rangers or Elves, if I'm careful).

But one of the books I did manage to read was Alison Weir's Elizabeth of York.

Tome Thursday: Trinity

Hello everyone!

So lo and behold! I've finally taken my own advice and I'm now going to be chewing through the books that I've sort of begun reading and/or haven't finished yet, because I want to have a semi-clean slate before I head to the seaside for my vacation. Or, that's the plan at least, who knows if it's going to go the way I want it to haha? Probably not, but one can always hope!

The very first on my VERY long reading list was Trinity, by author Conn Iggulden, because that poor thing has been sitting there for a while about halfway done, and I couldn't bring myself to read it for some reason or other. Maybe it had to do with the fact that, this book in particular, seems to show that Iggulden is pro-Lancastrian and I'm prety much pro-York when it comes to taking sides in the War of the Roses, or the Cousins' War as it was also called. Or maybe that's just my feeling and I didn't quite get the memo right, but I'm fairly sure his commentary in the author's note section of the book point towards the whole Lancaster thing more than York.

Tome Thursday: Stormbird

Hello everyone!

So I almost forgot about this blog tonight, mainly because I've had my head all over the place. I need to get a big board and hang it on the wall beside my desk so I can pin important stuff there or write what needs to be done in really big letters haha! Or maybe I need to find a gadget for my computer desktop so I can make post-it notes on it ... then again, actual post-its might work even better if I put them down in bright colours, right?

Back to the blog, since I digress, before Christmas I went to the capital to meet up with my cousins and take my sister home for the holidays, but I had some time to kill before our meeting and, as is usually the case when I'm in Ljubljana, I ended up at the bookshop (and by this, I mean the biggest bookshop in the city, obviously). I wasn't planning on taking anything home with me, seeing as I didn't want to drag along a ton of books.

BUT.

I saw two books by Conn Iggulden from his new 'Wars of the Roses' series, and I just had to have them.