Thanks for the advice on viewing the dvd first. I’m going to save both for sometime this summer. Anyone or anything that gives Mr. Darcy some serious competition requires some special time devoted. 
Well, based on the recommendations here, I just ordered my wife – whose idea of a perfect evening is to curl up with her well-worn copy of Pride and Prejudice for the umpteenth time (and enjoys the Firth/Darcy DVD set almost as much as the novel itself) – both the book and the DVD set of North and South for Mother’s Day.
epistrophy, I predict a very, very happy Mother’s Day in your house.
The BBC does so many of these adaptations beautifully: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall is another one I’d recommend as a book/DVD set.
And my older two kids just gave me the DVD of the BBC’s Little Dorrit (recently shown on PBS) for my birthday. Hooray!
I loved The Help and American Wife. Just read Honolulu by Alan Brennert. I highly recommend it and his first book Molokai.
Decided to search to see if a thread such as this existed on CC (had to figure it did!) and am so amply rewarded. Thanks all.
I recently read Karleen Koen’s “Dark Angels” the prequel to her books “Through a Glass, Darkly” and “Now Face to Face.”
Koen works for an academic press and is a lifelong scholar of women’s history, so although the books look like bodice rippers, they are actually beautifully told, well researched pieces of historical fiction where, come to think of it, no bodices are ripped and very little sex of any kind is had.
“Dark Angels” is set in Restoration England and covers the poisoning plots of the French court, the inability of the Stuart dynasty to produce a legitimate male heir, the continuing chasm between Catholic and Protestant in the English ruling classes, repressed homosexuality, and the place of women in this society. Plus, she’s created a truly fantastic, complex heroine. I ate this book up on a recent trip, and ended up rereading the two sequels.
Here’s one that covers Tudor England, Bess of Hardwick, Empire Builder by Mary S. Lovell. It is so well researched to the detail and so well written, for me a page turner. I have learned so much. Find out the real reason the Brits are so well known for boiling their food! Also, January 1st was not the New Year in Tudor England. Have you heard of Lady’s Day, March 25?
I just finished Sarah’s Key by Tatiana De Rosnay. It was a very moving dual story about an American journalist living in France who is assigned to research and write a story for her magazine about the anniversay of the roundup and deportation (to death) of the French jews during WW2 and, a little jewish girl who locked her little brother into a hidden compartment in her home when the french police came to get them (not realizing that she would not be coming back to let him out in a few hours). Very moving and very well told fictional story based on actual events.
I’ve got to tell you all that I’ve sent the link to this thread to patron’s at my library who are looking for book suggestions. My problem is that I can easily recommend books that I’ve read but if they don’t like those type of books, I’m not much help. With so many different readers on this thread though and the comments about why you like the book, this is really helpful! Thanks all!
The novel Netherland, which was mentioned here a little while back (and which I enjoyed a great deal myself, especially at a sentence-by-sentence level [meaning that some paragraphs are so beautifully written I felt like committing them to memory]), is apparently getting a real sales boost from the news that President Obama has been reading it. Maybe Obama will do for Joseph O’Neill’s career what Clinton (Bill, that is) did for Walter Mosley’s.
(And, no, this is not an invitation to turn this into yet another dopey political thread.)
“Some Thoughts on the Lost Art of Reading Aloud”
<a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/16/opinion/16sat4.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=reading%20aloud&st=cse[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/16/opinion/16sat4.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=reading%20aloud&st=cse</a>
“The Help” by Kathryn Stockett. Best book of the year by far. A must read.
Just read “The Girls From Ames” in two days and loved it. Great non-fiction about women’s friendships, this was a book I just didn’t want to end.
P.S. to post #790
In addition to being a fine novelist, Joseph O’Neill is a fine critic as well:
[Touched</a> by Evil - The Atlantic (June 2009)](<a href=“http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200906/flannery-o-connor]Touched”>Touched by Evil - The Atlantic)
Thanks for another great recommendation, Epistrophy. My son just studied Flannery O Connor in his senior HS English class (in France) & the book may be a nice gift to the teacher, who also wrote his college admissions recommendations in English.
Other suggestion have been useful : I’ve already found “The Lost” in a Parisian library, just came out . Not to mention the Japanese Death poems , which meant a lot to former member Latetoschool, but the rest of us were reading them too & were very touched. My son , who is studying Japanese as a hobby , has highjacked them because they editor also supplies the Japanese characters along with the poem.
concernedforeign:
Glad to hear that you’ve found some of these recommendations useful.
As for *The Lost<a href=“the%20book%20that%20started%20this%20thread”>/i</a>, if you weren’t already aware of this, it received a major literary prize in France:
[EJP</a> | News | France | US writer Daniel Mendelsohn receives French literary prize](<a href=“http://www.ejpress.org/article/21672]EJP”>http://www.ejpress.org/article/21672)
Based on Mary13’s recommendation…and those who chimed in agreement, I bought North & South (BBC version on DVD) and sat down last night at 9:30pm to start it… and finished the entire thing around 1:30am… I did enjoy it very much… though it was slow and sad for the most part… it rang very true and serves as a wonderful piece to flesh out the 1850’s… I must say that Richard Armitage has a wonderfully deep voice… and I loved the woman who played his mother… she was perfectly cast… I could not stop so I just watched all 4 episodes…
thank you for suggesting this…
Epistrophy,
I just read your note early this week about the Lost. It’s called ‘Les Disparus’ in French & did win a few awards . I decided to find the author’s website & looked at coming appearances: what a coincidence, he was visiting Paris last night & reading in an English bookstore/caf
concernedforeign:
If you’re interested, some French interviews of Daniel Mendelsohn are available on youtube (just do a search for “Daniel Mendelsohn Lost”). (The fact that he speaks French well [unlike most American writers] may be one reason why he appears to be such a popular figure there.)
My apologies if this has already come up (I did a search and couldn’t see it): The White Tiger, by Aravind Adiga. Amazing narration from a cunning, sarcastic, morally bent yet often funny and appealing protagonist, and a riveting look at India today.
Having seen Slumdog Millionaire helped me visualize this one better than I might have otherwise. But it’s a great novel even without that boost.