Current Reading Material

Here are some books that are on my night stand.

I stacked them up for the picture and the one I am currently reading is in the middle!  So I will start out telling you about the one on top.

This is the second book by Jeannette Walls.  Her first was her memoir called "Glass Castles".  This one she is calling a true-life novel.  It is the story of her grandmother's life, but she couldn't verify some of the details and she ended up filling in the gaps, as it were, so it is a "novel".  What a fascinating life she led!  Really interesting.  It's a page-turner, that's for sure.

How nice.  I left the El Cheapo sticker over the author's name.  Oscar Hijuelos is so talented.  He is famous for his Mambo Kings book you may have already read.  As you might guess, this book is set in Cuba.  You might also be able to tell from the hairstyles on the cover that it is set mostly in the 1920's and 30's.  So far it is a really good read.  I reserve the right to revise my ratings till I see what kind of ending we get!

This one that is at the bottom of the stack, was similarly at the bottom of the stack the last time I showed you my nightstand book stacks.  This is because it is 625 pages.  I need to clear my calendar to get into a book this big and really give myself some time to absorb it.  I may have mentioned that this author, Margaret George, wrote "The Memoirs of Cleopatra" that I read about 10 or 12 years ago.  Now that book was so amazing!  So when I saw this one on the shelf at Goodwill (as you might notice from the sticker) I snatched it up.  And on the back cover of this one it notes that she also did similar books on Henry VIII and Mary, Queen of Scots.  I guarantee I will be haunting Goodwill to see if either or both of these show up.  

There is something really compelling about these historical novels.  Years of research go into them to get all the details accurate, but the author has the freedom to inject their own character into that setting.  A really good example of this is "Texas Women" by Janice Woods Windle.  She wrote about the women in her family during the time of the Texas Independence and of course she filled in with some family stories that can not be verified, but most surely could have happened!

Your turn.  What are you reading?  Or planning to read and can recommend?