2005-09-12

Fashion?

Historical Novels may be becoming fashion... Um, maybe it's time to finish something and send it to publishers!

I am talking about the HN collection the most important newspaper in Spain, El País (www.elpais.es), is releasing... Some books by Gisbert Haefs, Patrick O'Brian, Umberto Eco (damn, I already have them all), and many others... 46 books in total, released Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays (1st one, Bear Cave Clan (guessed English title), by Jean M. Auel, was free with the Monday (to-day) newspaper, unknown price tag for the rest, I estimate around 4 euros)...

This adds up to the collections published by several History monthly magazines... If not fashion, in Spain, HN is trendy...

Jay!

2 comments:

Wynn Bexton said...

I recommend you read anyof Steven Pressfield's historical novels. Especially "Gates of Fire". He's my current all-time favorite, though I still reread Mary Renault as often as possible.

Excalibor said...

Thanks! I've read Gates of Fire and I really enjoyed it! I also liked the way it was told, it's an interesting narrative technique. It was, however, too much "Spartans are cool, the rest suck"-like for my tastes...

I appreciate the good values of Spartan culture, but I do the same about other cultures of Hellenic cities, and contemporary civilizations... :-)

As for my all-time favorite, I really enjoy Valerio Maximo Manfredi, but I think the winner is Gisbert Haefs, hands down. I enjoyed his Hannibal so much... His Alexander novel(s) and his Troy have had to wait because, when I got them, I was saturated on those topics from other sources (Troy because my Mykeanean novel in NaNoWriMo, and the movie, the Alexanders because my what-if, a biography, and the movie again... I prefer to wait and read them when my mind is fresh... :-) However I enjoyed thouroughly his later Hamilcar's Garden and Marcus Aurelius's First Death... Not comparable to Hannibal but really enjoyable and well written (actually I started to read Lucian of Samosata and Apuleyus because of his, which is yet another debt to him!).

Anyway, I have a good candidate to the Pantheon, because I have gotten Gore Vidal's Julian the Apostate, and I have read really good things about him. We'll see... :-)

laters!