Episode 098 - Historical Fiction

Book Club for Masochists: a Readers’ Advisory Podcast

This episode we’re talking about Historical Fiction! We discuss how far in the past something has to be before it counts as historical fiction, whether reading fiction is supposed to be enjoyable, anachronisms and inaccuracies (both purposeful and accidental), and historical pandemics. Plus: Someone’s power goes out half way through the recording!

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In this episode

Anna Ferri | Meghan Whyte | Matthew Murray | RJ Edwards

Things We Read

• The Shape of the Ruins by Juan Gabriel Vásquez
• • Review in The Guardian
• Stage Dreams by Melanie Gillman
• An Extraordinary Union by Alyssa Cole
• Cut to the Quick by Kate Ross
• Tom Thomson, esquisses du printemps by Sandrine Revel
• Pale Horse, Pale Rider by Katherine Anne Porter
• A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe
• Lavinia by Ursula K. Le Guin
• • Lavinia (Wikipedia)
• Tidelands by Philippa Gregory

Other Media We Mention

• Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein
• Fire in the Streets by Kekla Magoon
• After Tupac and D Foster by Jacqueline Woodson
• Yes, Roya by C. Spike Trotman and Emilee Denich
• Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
• The Alice Network by Kate Quinn
• The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole (Wikipedia)
• Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O'Dell
• The Sky Is Falling by Kit Pearson
• The Midwife's Apprentice by Karen Cushman
• The Sharpe Series by Bernard Cornwell
• Master and Commander by Patrick O'Brian
• Call of Cthulhu (role-playing game) (Wikipedia)
• Sally Heathcote: Suffragette by Mary M. Talbot, Bryan Talbot, and Kate Charlesworth
• The Witches of New York by Ami McKay
• HHhH by Laurent Binet
• Foucault's Pendulum by Umberto Eco
• Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon
• Quackery: A Brief History of the Worst Ways to Cure Everything by Lydia Kang and Nate Pedersen

Links, Articles, and Things

• Why people are turning to pandemic fiction to help process the Covid-19 crisis
• Crash Course in Historical Fiction (Webinar)
• • Webinar Slides
• Plagues, Witches, and War: The Worlds of Historical Fiction (Coursera course)
• Historical Novel Society - Defining the Genre
• COVID-19 Myths, Debunked (comics!) by Whit Taylor and Allyson Shwed
• Why historians should write fiction

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Join us again on Tuesday, April 21st when we’ll let you know about Other Media We’ve Been Enjoying!

Then on Tuesday, May 5th it’s our 100th episode and we’ll be discussing the non-fiction genre of Libraries and Information!