Further Reading [ Edited ]

[Bill_T]

More from Sena Jeter Naslund

Four Spirits
Birmingham, Alabama, in the 1960's, is 20-year-old Stella Silver's whole world. An idealistic, white college student, Stella was orphaned at an early age and raised by her genteel, mannered aunts. Nothing in her young life has prepared her for the summer of 1963, when her hometown becomes the center of the growing civil rights struggle. She first witnesses the events of the freedom movement from a safe distance but, along with her friend Cat Cartwright, is soon drawn into the mounting conflagration. Stella's and Cat's lives are forever altered by their new friendships with other committed freedom fighters.

Ahab's Wife
The National Bestseller Ahab's Wife is a breathtaking, magnificent, and uplifting story of one woman's spiritual journey, informed by the spirit of the great American novel Moby Dick, but taking it beyond tragedy to redemptive triumph. Ahab's Wife is a beautifully written novel filled with humanity and wisdom, rich in historical detail, authentic, and evocative. Melville's spirit informs every page of Naslund's tour de force.

The Disobedience of Water
Evoking passion and heartbreak, intelligence and unapologetic humanity, these eight beautifully crafted stories explore the boundary conditions between the self and others. Although social realities -- racial and ethnic tensions, sexual harassment, and abuse -- make up their background, these are really love stories in which people discover and forgive one another. A daughter finds her father's kindness extends beyond her and their family; a wife discovers and forgives the affair between her husband and best friend; and, in the title story which takes the form of a letter to an almost-lover, the narrator winds through swirling eddies of memory and language to relate her present and past lives and the loves that have informed them.

Sherlock in Love
How did Sherlock Homes come into possession of a true Stardivarius? Who was the one true love of the great detective's life? And what shattering disappointment left the detective with feelings of overwhelming melancholy? As Holme's great friend, Dr. Watson, sets out to answer these questions and recount the thrilling "lost" adventure of Holmes's attempt to rescue the love of his life from a mad King Ludwig of Bavaria, his own life is threatened by a figure in a familiar Inverness coat and deerstalker cap. Sherlock in Love is at once a rewarding entertainment and a remarkable homage to the greatest sleuth in literature.

Additional Recommended Reading

Marie Antoinette: The Journey
Antonia Fraser
This authoritative revisionist biography of the maligned and misrepresented Queen of France debunks the idea that Marie Antoinette ever said, "Let them eat cake." Scrupulous in its presentation of evidence concerning such topics as Antoinette's sexual relationship to her husband and her attachment to Count Axel von Fersen of Sweden, Fraser also explores Antoinette's relationship to her mother, to her women friends, and to her children, while providing the needed political and social context. This sympathetic ground-breaking biography is an acknowledged major source for both Naslund's novel Abundance and Sofia Coppola's film Marie Antoinette.

Marie Antoinette: The Portrait of an Average Woman
Stefan Zweig
This highly influential biography, translated from German into English in the 1930s, contributed to the image of Marie Antoinette as feather-brained, self-centered, and materialistic. Nonetheless, Zweig admires the courage with which she met her fate at the guillotine and briefly rose above her second-rate nature as an "average woman."

Message Edited by LitEditor on 08-15-2007 12:09 PM

[viva2]

Thank you for the reading list.

I have already ordered three books, two of which were from the Annotated Book List at the back of our book, pages 18 to 22 in the P.S. section.

This book has me so excited about MA and her life that I have to delve into some of the primary sources from which Sena has drawn some of the letters and insights regarding MA. They add greatly to the verisimilitude of the story line.

What fun! I'm afraid that I am reading this book to the exclusion of many other things I should be doing. This book is a delight. I have not read the Brief Timeline of Events, as I do not want to spoil the progression of the story.

[Tiffany129]

This is how I felt after reading my first MA biography - now I am a full-blown MA addict! I collect books about MA, mostly from used bookstores where I have found some great first editions as well as hard to find books that are now out of print.

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viva2 wrote:
Thank you for the reading list.

I have already ordered three books, two of which were from the Annotated Book List at the back of our book, pages 18 to 22 in the P.S. section.

This book has me so excited about MA and her life that I have to delve into some of the primary sources from which Sena has drawn some of the letters and insights regarding MA. They add greatly to the verisimilitude of the story line.

What fun! I'm afraid that I am reading this book to the exclusion of many other things I should be doing. This book is a delight. I have not read the Brief Timeline of Events, as I do not want to spoil the progression of the story.

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