Current reading

I just finished reading Star Garden, by Nancy Turner. It is third in her series that began with These is my Words. These is my Words was a wonderful book. It is a fictional diary set in the Arizona territory written by Sarah Prine and based on the life of the author's great grandmother. Turner did such a good job of capturing an accurate diary, while keeping it interesting and novel like. It is one of my all time favorite books. The next two, Sarah's Quilt and Star Garden, are also quite good, but not as good as the first one. In the first she starts as a young girl, and grows through adulthood and the writing reflects that, going from ungrammatical and misspelled up through well written. Sarah's Quilt and Star Garden are written in the first person from Sarah's perspective, but don't really read like a diary, in my opinion. I suspect from the ending of this last one that there will be another after that.

The book I read before Star Garden was the Journal of Dora Damage by Belinda Starling. I couldn't wait because it combined several of my favorite themes: historical fiction, London, and bookbinding. The beginning of the book was very good and she captured the time period very well. It is the story of Dora Damage, who grows the daughter of a bookbinder and a governess, but is not allowed to do any real bookbinding work, except for the parts that involve sewing, which was woman's work. When her husband becomes crippled by arthritis and can no longer work, she discovers just how destitute her family is. In desperation she goes to find any bookbinding work she can find to keep the shop going and ends up binding pornographic literature. She becomes more and more embroiled in the evil schemes of her benefactors. I would like to read more books by this author, but this was her first and she died around the time the book was finished. You can read more about it here: http://www.latimes.com/features/books/la-et-book6oct06,1,4476103.story