The Daily Life of Sweetpea[s]

I love P.D. James! She is great. I don't know many people who read her, so I find it quite fun that you are doing so. Yea for P.D. James!

Also, I love Stephen Lawhead, especially the series beginning with Taliesin. I have not read the book you mention, but I have a gift certificate to Border's and I just might spend it on that.

Right now I am reading Flying Colours by C.S. Forester. It is book number 8 (I think) in the Horatio Hornblower series. The books and the A&E series about Horatio are simply fantastic and I highly recommend all of them.
 

hey, kells--yea!! I also read "Death in holy orders" by James over christmas. have you read Dorothy Sayer's mysteries? they are fabulous. I read some the arthurian series by Lawhead, but honestly I burned out after the first three....I liked them alot, though. I haven't gotten into "Patrick" far enough to know how good it is.....I've heard "Byzantium" is good by Lawhead, too.

Are the Horation books mysteries?
 

i'm slowly trudging through "The Time Traveler's Wife" right now. it's good, but feeling kind of long at this point.

some books i'm considering reading next: "Reading Lolita in Tehran" by Azar Nafisi and "Saving Fish From Drowning" by Amy Tan.

i'm open to suggestions, though.
 

Sweetpea,
the Horatio Hornblower books are actually historical fiction based on the early 1800's during the Napoleonic Wars. Forester read several real British naval captains' logs and used real exploits from the wars to frame his stories. However, instead of spreading the exploits around as they actually were during the wars, he attributes them to one fictional character, Horatio Hornblower. You get to follow his career from when he is a 17 year old midshipman (the lowest of the commissioned officers) to when he is an admiral towards the end of his life. I believe there are 11 novels in the series. The strange thing is that Forester did not write them in chronological order. The first book he wrote was "Beat to Quarters" which is about halfway through the series according to Hornblower's chronological life. It can be somewhat disconcerting to read them in the order of Hornblower's life because Forester changes up some of the details. Even so, they make great reading.

Also, I think that one of the most fun series by Lawhead is the Dragon King series. It is only three books long and a tiny bit more on the light side compared with the Pendragon Cycle (which was originally 5 books, but may have up to 6 now...the ones you burned out on).

Speaking of the Pendragon Cycle, I must say that I loved that the magic Merlin was able to do was attributed to the work of the Holy Spirit through him. Definitely a different angle on Merlin's powers.

Byzantium is good, but it can tend to feel a bit long. I read it the first time when I was spending the summer in Ukraine...fitting since some of the story takes place in Kiev and on that side of the world. The summer felt like an epic journey to me, and reading Byzantium at that time was a good pairing. However, having read it again recently, I can say that I definitely had moments where I was thinking, "yeah, yeah, yeah...blah, blah, blah....let's get on with it."

I have not read Dorothy Sayer's mysteries, but that sounds like something worth looking into. Do you have a recommendation of a good starting point with her?
 

Kellsey--those books sound good!

I would read the Dorothy Sayers books in order...I didn't and regretted it later. There really is a climax of story and character development in "Gaudy Night." So don't start with that one! I think the first one is called "Strong Poison." Harriet Vane and Peter Wimsey are just really rich characters. You may know this, but Sayers was one of the first women to graduate from Oxford (or was it Cambridge?) and she was on the periphery of the Inklings--friends with Lewis and Tolkien. Many consider her mysteries to be the best of the genre.
 

SweetestPea,
I love that you and Mr. Pea are reading Voyage together. That is my favorite of the Chronicles, as I think you know. It is such a beautiful tale.