Macaroni and Cheese Books
Over on Twitter, the delightful Aisha Saeed asks the question, “What small joy will you savor today?” every day, and I love looking at people’s replies (and love Aisha for asking it!) Sometimes I have an answer, sometimes I don’t because Such Is The Hellscape, but TODAY!! I had one!! And since I want this newsletter to be about Sharing Joy, Mostly, I thought I’d post it!
So I feel like everyone has their preferred Comfort Genre of Reading. I read alllll over the place, and like all kinds of different books for different reasons, but my #1 Comfort Genre, my Macaroni and Cheese Books if you will, is Medieval Fiction. I loooooove nothing more than a big-ass book set in, like, 13th Century Wales where everyone is wearing furs and there are fires and people sprinkle herbs in the rushes and there are big dogs and SWORDS and CASTLES and people PLOTTING over giant mugs of MEAD, oh god, just thinking about it!! Delights me!! So much so that last time I was in Scotland (*tries not to cry*), I signed my family up for falconry lessons. Seriously. Look how happy I was!
I think part of the reason these books are my go-to Macaroni and Cheese Books is that A) they’re very escapist- even when TERRIBLE things happen in them, there’s enough of a remove, and B) I have no interest in writing them. I mean, I may try my hand at a medieval romance one day (CAN THOSE PLEASE BECOME A HUGE THING AGAIN???), but these kinds of epic, meaty historical books are solely for the reading side of my brain, not the writing. The longer I work as a writer, the more important those kinds of stories become to me.
And one of my faaaaavorite writers of These Kinds of Books is Elizabeth Chadwick. She’s been writing for ages now, and I have slooooowly crept through her backlist over the past 5 years. I’m constantly keeping at least one book in reserve for when I really need it (this is also why I’ve never read Sarah Waters’ AFFINITY. I always need ONE SARAH WATERS BOOK to break open in case of emergency!)
Her more recent books have been takes on real people, and I’m gonna be honest with you, that is not COMPLETELY my jam, mostly because I know how those stories go, but they’re still great, and if that’s YOUR jam, you can’t go wrong with THE SUMMER QUEEN, imo. HOWEVER, I’ve always liked her books about lesser-known Real People or Fictional People Around Real People the most, THE FALCONS OF MONTABARD being my fave (I mean…the title. How could it not be. Go look at those falconry pics again.)
Some of her stuff doesn’t make it to the US, so I keep an eye out on her website for new UK releases that I can order, and today, I realized I hadn’t been over there in awhile, AND!!!
She has a BRAND NEW BOOK OUT! That JUST came out last week!! And it’s a PREQUEL to one of her earlier books that I ADORED. AND LOOK AT IT!!
Oh, man, I’m so happy!! I ordered it I M M E D I A T E L Y, and seriously felt real joy. I cannot wait for it to get here, and it was such a small but unexpectedly lovely boost this morning. I wish all of you a similar moment today!
Xoxoxoxo,
R