Saturday, January 13, 2007

Surfin' With Plaidy

Ouch! It's been too long since I last posted. I have been reading a Plaidy novel, The Queen's Favourites, though, so I'll soon be reporting on that. It's the story of the reign of Queen Anne and of her rival favorites, Sarah Churchill and Abigail Hill. So far it's quite good.

In the meantime, here's a link to Tanzanite's review of The Vow on the Heron, which is about Edward III and his family. I agree with her that it's nice to read about Edward III's family, particularly the female members, who often get overlooked by historical novelists.

Are you on MySpace? If so, check out Julie's newly formed Jean Plaidy Addicts group.

Doing a little more surfing tonight, I noticed this link entitled, Who Writes Like Jean Plaidy?, courtesy of the Clackmannanshire Council. (Where, I said to myself, is Clackmannashire?) Seeing Dorothy Dunnett on the list reminded me that I really need to be a good girl and check her out one of these days, but it's hard with all the Plaidys on my shelf calling out my name.

Here's a quiz by gemini chick entitled, So You Think You Know Jean Plaidy? I didn't do very well at all, I'm mortified to report. But at least I know now that I'm unlikely to run out of material for this blog any time soon!

Editor Rachel Kahan has some fine things to say about Jean Plaidy in this article on the Irene Goodman Literary Agency site.

Borders has posted some discussion questions about The Rose Without a Thorn, one of Plaidy's novels about Katherine Howard, here.

And finally, here's a very attractive website by Lynne M. Kennedy for the Sachem Public Library entitled The England of Jean Plaidy. This not only lists Plaidy's novels but describes them briefly--a great help. Be sure to check out the link for additional historical fiction as well.

8 comments:

Daphne said...

Interesting links! I only scored 50% on the quiz.

Anonymous said...

You did better than I did, Daphne. I scored only 40%.

Susan Higginbotham said...

40% too! Bummer.

Sherhazade said...

So much good information.

Hey, I scored 60%! :)

Kathryn Warner said...

40% for me too!

Sarah Johnson said...

I got a 90% :) I'm not willing to concede, though - their answer to #2 is wrong, at least according to the US market. (Confirmed afterward by checking one of the volumes.)

Susan Higginbotham said...

Sarah's our Plaidy champ! Now what was the right answer to question 2?

Sarah Johnson said...

There are 15. They're missing Uneasy Lies the Head, which technically is about the Tudors but it's part of the series. I had to list all of 'em in my book (and I've written articles on Plaidy) so that probably explains it.