Elisabeth Grace Foley

Historical Fiction Author

Summer Reading 2013

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So I’m finally settling down to do some summer reading. It seems to have taken longer than usual this year for me to get to this point, for a few different reasons. A couple of months ago I pillaged my original summer-reading list because I just got impatient and couldn’t wait till summer to read some of the books on it! In addition, summer itself has been a while in coming—the first part of June was so cold and rainy that we didn’t even get to use our swimming pool for the first time until last weekend.

But now summer is officially here, and I’ve got my traditional beginning-of-summer case of sunburn and a new summer reading list—because I never have any trouble making new lists. So these are the books I’m planning on reading, not in any particular order. As usual, it’s hodgepodge; I’ve got a little bit of everything on here:


The Longest Day by Cornelius Ryan
Arsenic and Old Lace by Joseph Kesselring
The Flight of the Falcon by Daphne du Maurier
The Gabriel Hounds by Mary Stewart
A Time to Stand by Walter Lord
The Art of the Epigraph: How Great Books Begin, edited by Rosemary Ahern
These Wonderful Rumours!: A Young Schoolteacher’s Wartime Diaries by May Smith
The Governess by Evelyn Hervey
Harlequin and Columbine by Booth Tarkington
Good Men and True, and Hit the Line Hard by Eugene Manlove Rhodes
The Treasure by Kathleen Thompson Norris
The Rider of Golden Bar by William Patterson White
A Room with a View by E.M. Forster
The Elements of Style by William Strunk and E.B. White
The Bellamy Trial by Frances Noyes Hart


In the meantime, I’ve decided to scale back posting on my blog to once a week for the summer months—posts will probably come on Mondays or Tuesdays. If you happen to follow me on Twitter, too, I’ll be supplementing that by posting some links to blog posts from previous years that could do with a second airing.

So what’s on your summer reading list? Have you read any of these books from mine?

(Updated later with links to eventual reviews.)

Fifteen Ways to Lose Your Love Interest (Or, the TV Western Writer’s Guide to Disposing of Female Guest Stars)

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If you’ve watched classic TV Westerns for any length of time, you’ve probably noticed something about the recurring characters of any given series: they can’t seem to make a romantic relationship stick. This phenomenon is sometimes referred to as the Curse of the Cartwrights, but it is by no means limited to that one unfortunate family. (Or perhaps the Virginian was just a distant cousin of theirs; I don’t know.)  If “the hero gets the girl” was a cliché of the Western film, serial television turned it on its head and took it to the opposite extreme—even the most heroic of heroes just couldn’t make it to the altar. The real-life Old West must have had its share of bachelors, surely, but they couldn’t possibly have been jilted, bereaved and left in the lurch as many times as the cowboys of the small screen.


But it wasn’t really the heroes’ fault, of course. The blame lies with screenwriters who seemed to be allergic to the notion of marriage for recurring characters. We all know the real reason for this, of course: they wanted the opportunity to write romance episodes as often as they liked, and a steady love interest—let alone a wife—would get in the way. This meant that they were forced to get quite creative in thinking up ways to get rid of their female guest stars once they’d gotten the requisite number of romantic scenes out of them. The following is a list of methods, ranging from the cliche to the highly original, for a love interest to make her exit. Lest you think I’m just romancing (pun intended), let me add here that most, if not all, are drawn from actual TV Western episodes that I’ve seen myself:

1. She transfers her affections to someone else.
2. She decides that the West isn’t for her and catches the first train back East.
3. She never forgives you for having to shoot her no-good father or brother.
4. She gets caught in the crossfire of the climactic gunfight.
5. She dies of a fatal illness.
6. She turns out to be married already, and her husband suddenly turns up.
7. She turns out to be part of the outlaw gang. (Variation 7b., a con artist.)
8. She reveals a secret about her past that makes you change your mind.
9. She is offered a lucrative position and decides to eschew marriage in favor of a career.
10. She is told she has talent and decides to eschew marriage in favor of becoming an actress, singer, artist, etc.
11. She decides she’d rather stay with the Indians who captured her.
12. She enters a convent.
13. You promise to “come back for her,” but inexplicably never do.
14. It turns out that she doesn’t actually exist.
15. She simply changes her mind.

Have I forgotten anything?

So far as I know, the only TV Westerns that included a married couple among the regular cast of characters were High Chaparral and the last few seasons of The Virginian, when the third owner of Shiloh Ranch was a married man. Does anyone know if there were any others?

Top Ten Tuesday: Top Ten Books Read in 2012

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Back in January, I did a post highlighting my top ten favorites of the books I’d read in 2011. This year, I’m doing it a bit earlier so as to coincide with Top Ten Tuesday—this week’s theme being (naturally!) Top Ten Books Read in 2012.

I think it says something about my reading habits that out of the 100-plus books I’ve read this year (excluding individual shorts and a manuscript I beta-read), only three of them were published in my lifetime—and those three were all nonfiction! Another interesting fact about my top ten is that, like last year, several of them (five, to be exact) were found for free or nearly-free on Kindle. On the other hand, four of the remaining five are out of print and I had to endure a long interlibrary-loan wait or resort to buying an antique copy to read them.

So here they are—not in the order of favorites, but just in the order I read them:

 

Hay-Wire by B.M. Bower
A good, unique Western concerning a troubled family, a ranch in debt and a hint of murder mystery. Read my review here.

 

 

Five Furies of Leaning Ladder by B.M. Bower

A particularly lively and action-filled Bower Western with an intricate plot, this one involving horse-thieving and five wild young sisters who may or may not be mixed up in it. Read my review here.

 

Calling Dr. Kildare by Max Brand

A bit different from my usual reading fare, this novel of a young doctor working in 1930s New York City stood out because of its powerful, evocative writing. Read my review here.

 

Old Rose and Silver by Myrtle Reed

A beautifully-written Edwardian-era romance, about a woman whose hopes of finding love later in life are imperilled by a rival in her younger cousin. Read my review here.

 

A Confederate Girl’s Diary by Sarah Morgan Dawson

Fascinating, entertaining, heartbreaking—a look at the Civil War through the diary of a Southern girl who lived through it and saw it firsthand. (I discovered after reading the free Kindle version that it was not, in fact, Sarah Morgan’s complete Civil War diaries, and I want to read the full version someday!)

 

Rose O’ the River by Kate Douglas Wiggin

A charming novella set in a Maine village, about a country girl whose dreams of city glamor affect the course of her romance with her true love. Read my review here.

 

Elsie: Adventures of an Arizona Schoolteacher 1913-1916 by Barbara Anne Waite

An engrossing, inspiring adventure in history drawn from the diaries and letters of the author’s grandmother, chronicling her years teaching school in rural Arizona in the early 20th century. Read my review here.

The Street of Seven Stars by Mary Roberts Rinehart
A Rinehart non-mystery, this beautiful novel about American students living in Vienna just before the Great War kept me up till midnight finishing it. One of these days I’m going to re-read it slowly and try to write a good review. Maybe during the holidays would be a good time, since it has some winter and Christmas scenes!
Clearing Weather by Cornelia Meigs

A fine historical adventure novel about a young shipbuilder who undertakes a risky venture to keep his family’s and his town’s fortunes alive in the early days of the young and struggling American republic.

 

Poor, Dear Margaret Kirby and Other Stories by Kathleen Norris

A wonderful short story collection from the early 1900s that explores various family relationships—romantic, touching and humorous. Read my review here.

Have you read any of these books? What were your favorite reads of 2012?