Let’s Talk Bookish is a bookish meme created by Rukky @ Eternity Books and hosted by Aria @Book Nook Bits. Each Friday bloggers write posts discussing a bookish topic. You can see the topic schedule here.
January 13: Problematic Inspiration (Ikwords @ Words on Key)
Prompts: Can inspiration for a book be problematic? What inspiration would you consider to be problematic? Should an author be canceled because of a perhaps controversial inspiration for their book? In other words, is any kind of inspiration “bad”?
Honestly, I don’t really pay attention to inspiration for books. The only time I come across that information is if it’s included at the end of the book. I can’t remember any in particular that I’ve read that stood out to me as “bad” inspiration.
I’m going to take this post in another direction and talk about my favorite book inspirations, which are usually found in historical fiction. I LOVE reading books about people, places, and events that are inspired by real life history. For me, it makes learning about history and cultures so much fun. I always look forward to reading the acknowledgements or notes at the end of these books to learn more about the history and sources that the author used. Here are some interesting historical fiction books that I’ve read:
Book Review: Valentine by Elizabeth Wetmore
Valentine by Elizabeth Wetmore Rating: 3/5 What It’s About: Mercy is hard in a place like this . . . It’s February 1976, and Odessa, Texas, stands on the cusp of the next great oil boom. While the town’s men embrace the coming prosperity, its women intimately know and fear the violence that always seems…
Mini Book Reviews – Mexican Gothic, Opium and Absinthe
Hello, friends! I hope you are staying warm as winter draws near! Here are a couple of books that I have finished recently. Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia Rating: 3/5 Mexican Gothic was a fun book to read. Just like in the title, this book is filled with gothic novel vibes and is set in…
Oil and Marble by Stephanie Storey
Oil and Marble by Stephanie Storey Rating: 5/5 What It’s About: Michelangelo is a virtual unknown when he returns to Florence and wins the commission to carve what will become one of the most famous sculptures of all time: David. Even though his impoverished family shuns him for being an artist, he is desperate to…
Where the Lost Wander by Amy Harmon
Rating: 4/5 What It’s About: The Overland Trail, 1853: Naomi May never expected to be widowed at twenty. Eager to leave her grief behind, she sets off with her family for a life out West. On the trail, she forms an instant connection with John Lowry, a half-Pawnee man straddling two worlds and a stranger…
Indian Horse by Richard Wagamese
Rating: 5/5 What It’s About: Saul Indian Horse has hit bottom. His last binge almost killed him, and now he’s a reluctant resident in a treatment centre for alcoholics, surrounded by people he’s sure will never understand him. But Saul wants peace, and he grudgingly comes to see that he’ll find it only through telling…
The Exiles by Christina Baker Kline
Rating: 4/5 What It’s About: Seduced by her employer’s son, Evangeline, a naïve young governess in early nineteenth-century London, is discharged when her pregnancy is discovered and sent to the notorious Newgate Prison. After months in the fetid, overcrowded jail, she learns she is sentenced to “the land beyond the seas,” Van Diemen’s Land, a…
The Mercies by Kiran Millwood Hargrave
Rating: 4/5 What It’s About: Finnmark, Norway, 1617. Twenty-year-old Maren Bergensdatter stands on the craggy coast, watching the sea break into a sudden and reckless storm. Forty fishermen, including her brother and father, are drowned and left broken on the rocks below. With the menfolk wiped out, the women of the tiny Northern town of…
No Quiet Water by Shirley Miller Kamada
Rating: 3/5 What It’s About: After the U.S. declares war on Japan in 1941, all persons of Japanese descent in the Western U.S. come under suspicion. Curfews are imposed, bank accounts frozen, and FBI agents search homes randomly. Despite the fact that two generations of the Miyota family are American citizens, Fumio and his parents…
Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
Rating: 3/5 What It’s About: The Jazz Age is in full swing, but Casiopea Tun is too busy cleaning the floors of her wealthy grandfather’s house to listen to any fast tunes. Nevertheless, she dreams of a life far from her dusty small town in southern Mexico. A life she can call her own. Yet…