Christmas in July?--My Amazon Wish List

My birthday is not coming up soon, and it's a long way off till Christmas. But, nevertheless, my Amazon Wish List is still stuffed to the gills. And yes, *sigh* most of the items on the list are on the expensive side. If they were cheaper, I would have bought them already.


If you ignore the cookie press, the serving platters, and the white tablecloth, what you see on my Wish List are books--books that I'd like to research my various writing projects. Some of them are for my current WIP, Flower of the Desert: Book II of the Chronicles of Tancred.


The book that's been on there the longest is Jerusalem Delivered, a sixteenth century Italian epic that tells a very romanticized version of the First Crusade. Tancred plays a good-sized role in the epic, along with Clorinda and Erminia, two Muslim princesses who form a love triangle with our doughty hero. I've been able to access a free Kindle version of this book, but the translation of that one leaves something to be desired, and it's not as easy to flip through as an actual paper copy.


Another book needed for researching Flower of the Desert is The History of the Seljuq Turks. This is a translation of a twelfth century Turkish historian that chronicles the reigns of all the Seljuk sultans. I currently have this book out on interlibrary loan, but it's due back in a week and I'm far from finished with it. It would be a hassle to go down the library to renew it, but it may be easier than scraping together $190 to purchase the book.


The next book on the list is more for curiosity's sake than for research. The First Crusade: The Call from the East is a new book by historian Peter Frankopan. From what I've heard, Frankopan argues that Emperor Alexios had a far greater role in the First Crusade than is traditionally acknowledged. Although it's too late to change anything in Road from the West, I'm interested to see how Frankopan portrays Alexios and his appeal to the West for help.

It's hard to stay focused on one period of history when there are so many interesting eras to be studied. One person who has always piqued my interest is James Stewart, the Earl of Moray, half-brother of Mary, Queen of Scots. James turned Protestant under the tutelage of John Knox, but because of his illegitimate birth was unable to claim the crown of Scotland. There's not much information on the man, but this book, James Stewart, Earl of Moray: A Political Study of the Reformation in Scotland, looks like a good--albeit expensive--source for more study.


The book that first introduced me to the Earl of Moray was James I: The Fool as King, by Otto Scott. The Earl of Moray, who became the regent of Scotland after Mary's imprisonment, plays an important part in the early life of James I. The copy I read as a teenager is still sitting on my mother's bookshelf. I'd like to have my own--especially if I write a novel about the Earl of Moray, as I plan to in the far off future.

What books do you have on your Amazon Wish List? Are you waiting for someone to buy them for you for a birthday or for Christmas, or is your Wish List more of a shopping list of books you'll eventually buy for yourself? 

When Sources Just Fall into Your Lap

Last night I was working on Flower of the Desert and writing a descriptive passage of the Crusaders first sighting Jerusalem. My sources were Benjamin of Tudela (a Jew traveling in the 12th century) and some maps of old Jerusalem that I had found on the Internet. Trouble is: the maps were all proving contradictory, and although Benjamin of Tudela had an adequate description of the city, I was having trouble visualizing it enough to make my reader visualize it.

This morning when I was perusing Facebook, I discovered that History Today has a new article up by John France titled "The Capture of Jerusalem." How could I pass that up? I clicked over to the article and about halfway through it found this:

In attacking Jerusalem the crusaders faced a formidable task. The city is set upon a steep spur dividing the Kidron valley, which falls away southwards towards the Dead Sea. To the east the Valley of Josaphat cuts an enormous gash between the city and the Mount of Olives, while to the West the Valley of Hinnon provides a similar if less dramatic protection. Apart from a level stretch of some 250-300 metres around the Zion Gate, the land before the southern wall falls sharply to the Kidron valley: it was here that the Count of Toulouse chose to mount his attack, but he faced a deep ditch between the wall and his camp. The most vulnerable aspect of the city is the northern wall, about a kilometre long, which is built well below the brow of the hill; here the rest of the army gathered. The whole city was surrounded by a wall, three stories high, studded with projecting towers; the relative vulnerability of the northern wall was protected by an outer wall and beyond it a ditch extending from the citadel, called the 'Tower of David' by Jaffa Gate on the west side, to the platform over the Valley of Josaphat at the north-east corner.

I love it when sources just fall into your lap. I guess I'll be rewriting that passage tonight, with a little help from John France and "The Capture of Jerusalem."

Siege and Capture of Jerusalem (1099)

In Praise of the Interlibrary Loan

Bishop Asser, in his ninth century Life of Alfred, tells a story about Alfred the Great that illustrates the king's lifelong love of learning and also the precious nature of books in that period:

On a certain day, therefore, his mother was showing him and his brother a book of Saxon poetry, which she held in her hand, and said, "Whichever of you shall the soonest learn this volume shall have it for his own." Stimulated by these words, or rather by the Divine inspiration, and allured by the beautifully illuminated letter at the beginning of the volume, he spoke before all his brothers, who, though his seniors in age, were not so in grace, and answered, "Will you really give that book to one of us, that is to say, to him who can first understand and repeat it to you?" At this his mother smiled with satisfaction, and confirmed what she had before said. Upon which the boy took the book out of her hand, and went to his master to read it, and in due time brought it to his mother and recited it.

In ninth century England a book, hand-copied and beautifully illuminated, was a significant prize to obtain. In our modern era, with the invention of the printing press and now the e-book, it is usually not necessary to go to such lengths as Alfred did to acquire a title we need. Or is it?

As I began my research for Road from the West: A Novel of the First Crusade (my current novel-in-the-works), I found myself becoming more and more intrigued by the character of Tancred, a young Norman knight from Southern Italy. Before I could put a stop to it, he had weaseled his way into becoming the protagonist of my novel. At that point I knew that I needed more individual information on him than summary sources of the Crusade could provide.

I discovered that although there are no modern biographies of Tancred, Robert Lawrence Nicholson had written a dissertation on him at the University of Chicago in 1940. Tancred: a study of his career and work in their relation to the first crusade and the establishment of the Latin states in Syria and Palestine--isn't the name just too scintillating? Where could I find a copy of such wonderfulness? Nowhere in Oregon it seemed and nowhere online for under $300.

I contacted the University of Chicago Library to ask if I could borrow the aforementioned title. The librarian courteously explained that the only way to do so was to go through the interlibrary loan system at my local library. I had never used this system before (frankly, if the library doesn't have a book and I want it badly enough, I just go ahead and purchase it on Amazon), but now it seemed like the only option. I went to the reference desk at the Oregon City library, and the rest was history. Two weeks later I had a copy of a seemingly unobtainable book in my hands with very little exertion and no expense on my part.

Thanks to Benjamin Franklin for establishing the first library in America, and thanks to the Internet for connecting library collections around the country. Nowadays, finding a book, even one as rare as Nicholson's dissertation, is as easy as asking a librarian.