Book 63: The Ringed Castle by Dorothy Dunnett

Once again I can't actually write anything about this book that isn't in some way a spoiler, so under the cut it all goes!

Book 62: Secrets of a Summer Night by Lisa Kleypas

The setup for this romance novel set in Victorian England is pretty standard: a beautiful woman from a good family watches her marriage prospects disappear after her father dies and their wealth vanishes. Annabelle is a very likable protagonist, especially since she makes friends with three other women who also can't catch a husband, and their friendship is delightful. The four of them make a pact to work together during Annabelle's last season to make an advantageous match and help her snag the peer she's always wanted. If she doesn't, she will be forced to become a rich man's mistress, something that has already happened to her mother, who would do anything to save her daughter from that same indignity.

Annabelle finds the right sort of peer to trap into marriage, but she's draw to Simon, the son of a butcher who's made a fortune in the financial markets. Will her attraction to this gorgeous specimen of a man overrule her desire for a better social standing? I think it shall.

I found this book very readable, but it's not exactly my kind of romance novel; I spent a lot of it just feeling very frustrated with how dumb the class system was, given that Simon's wealth would secure Annabelle's future and the future of her mother and younger brother as well. He was also supposed to be unsuitable by virtue of being a scoundrel, but he wasn't particularly convincing in that role, and it was impossible to imagine that he was ever going to seriously try to sell Annabelle on being his mistress rather than just proposing to her. I really liked the dynamic between Simon and Annabelle, but I never really believed in the social constraints keeping them apart.

Grade: B

Book 61: Shakespeare: The World as Stage by Bill Bryson

This is a biography of Shakespeare that was written as part of a collection of short biographies of historical figures--it is just under two hundred pages long. It might seem odd that such a short work about the most famous playwright in the world could be satisfying or even remotely complete, but of course what we don't know about Shakespeare's life far outweighs what we actually do.

As a result, this book is as much a history of the time period Shakespeare lived during, the methods various historians have used to discover and verify what we do know about Shakespeare the man (and the methods many frauds used), and the history of theatres in Elizabethan and Jacobean England. Bill Bryson is a writer ideally suited to this kind of work; he brings the same wit and clarity and beautiful turn of phrase ("Faced with a wealth of text but a poverty of context": I don't know if I've ever read a better summation of what we know and don't know about Shakespeare) to Shakespeare that he's brought to travel and science in his other books. This manages to be a book that would be incredibly readable and informative for someone who doesn't know much about Shakespeare while also being immensely satisfying for someone with a deeper knowledge of his background and works.

This was just one of those books that I enjoyed reading so much, from beginning to end, and it's another one of those books that I've owned for so long I don't even remember when or how I acquired it. I'm so glad I finally got around to reading it now as a result of this challenge. Also, it was pretty interesting to read it while in the middle of reading the Lymond Chronicles, since those are set about ten or twenty years before Shakespeare was born. Having a lot of unexpected feelings about the 16th Century right now.

Grade: A