What I'm reading this morning

Actually, I have a stack of TBR stuff and it's so hard to choose which one to pick up. But over breakfast this morning I was reading Louise Berridge's fabulous Crimean War novel Into The Valley Of Death. I like military fiction,but the only Crimean War book I have read before, one of the Flashman novels, was from the viewpoint of an officer, and one who would probably sneer at these men for caring.

The research the author has done for this is breathtaking.

And as someone who lives in an area where the streets are named for battles and characters of the Crimean War - a suburb called Balaclava, streets called Alma, Crimea, Raglan,Sebastopol, Cardigan, Inkerman, etc. - it feels strange reading the familiar names in their original context. There will be a review here and hopefully on January Magazine when I finish.

Last night I downloaded Gillian Polack's new novel Ms Cellophane. If you can't afford it in the shops but have an ereader it's just under $5. Gillian is a historian who lives in Canberra. She knows her Middle Ages back to front and tells a great yarn. She arranged several historical banquets for the Conflux conventions and has written a book about that too.

I'm looking forward to this particular book, though. I've read her fiction before and loved it.