I love it when the stars align and something I needed but wasn’t aware of falls into my lap. It’s December, and I’m trying to finish reading books that I’ve let fall by the wayside during the year.  I always read several books at a time, and inevitably one or two get abandoned for the new, shiny book that’s just come out, or forgotten when I go on a zombie jag, or just put aside for later because I’m too busy writing/editing/doin’ other stuff. One forgotten book this year is Lancaster Against York by Trevor Royle.  I started reading it last spring, loved it, then set it aside to read in one big gulp later.  But later didn’t come (till now), and I’ve forgotten where I was or what Richard or Henry was in the ascendant.  Oh dear. And now that I remember, it’s a dense, detailed book, and I almost need a better primer to get me going, or to follow up the book I’m reading so it won’t all just spill through the sieve that is my brain. The reason I started reading the book was because all I know of this period is from Shakespeare and The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey.  Great works…but my history is still shaky.

So I opened up one of my favorite book review blogs this morning,  S. Krishna’s Books, and discovered Swapna’s review of The Wars of the Roses by Alison Weir.  Book kismet! I’ve looked at that title before and was a little turned off by the comments about the writer being anti-Richard III.  (I have a Yorkist bias myself…not that I really know what I’m talking about.) But the review was enough to sway me to put it on my reading list for next year.