On Thursday, August 25th, Booking through Thursday asked:

Sometimes I feel like the only person I know who finds reading history fascinating. It’s so full of amazing-yet-true stories of people driven to the edge and how they reacted to it. I keep telling friends that a good history book (as opposed to some of those textbooks in school that are all lists and dates) does everything a good novel does–it grips you with real characters doing amazing things.

Am I REALLY the only person who feels this way? When is the last time you read a history book? Historical biography? You know, something that took place in the past but was REAL.

When I was fourteen, I read Nicholas and Alexandra several times, and loved it every time. Some of my go-to books are biographies, published journals, etc. Madeleine L’Engle’s Crosswicks quartet are a series of her jounals turned into books, that were contemporary (more or less) when originally published, though have become historical now.

I love biographies, but the most recent I’ve read, those of Hilary Clinton and Queen Noor, are more contemporary than not. I love memoirs, but most of those I’ve read recently, like Carlos Eire’s Waiting for Snow in Havana, and my birthday-book from my aunt this year, Under the Big Top: A Season with the Circus have also been fairly contemporary as they both take place in the 20th and 21st centuries.

I know I’ve read things that are truly historical, but nothing of that ilk is speaking to me just now.