It's been a while, hasn't it?
The last blog post was celebrating the royal wedding back in May (Christ, has it been that long? Side note: is anyone else still not sick of Harry and Meghan?? Because I am so, totally, not) and since then it's been rather busy. Between work, uni, holiday planning (which ended up a two week jaunt through eastern Europe) and dissertation writing, I don't think I've had time to even consider writing anything that wasn't about either Edward II or Richard II. My life has, literally, revolved around two guys that died seven hundred years ago for the best part of eight months.
But as of last Friday, my masters dissertation is complete, bound, and submitted. I now have the rather difficult task of writing a PhD proposal, and making it as watertight as possible so that it can give me the best possible chance I've got of securing a research grant. (Second side note: today was spent reading the most interesting book chapters about kingship and masculinity. Let's just summarise by saying toxic masculinity was totally present in the middle ages). And I guess this leads me rather nicely onto what has replaced the huge void left after my dissertation was done. Not a PhD proposal (though by rights it really should've - and I should have been doing a hell of a lot more work than I have been doing), but rather a book series. After the premiere of the A Discovery of Witches series on Sky a few weeks ago, I fell completely and utterly in love. Two weeks after the first episode, I bought the first book. The Friday I submitted my dissertation, I collected it from Waterstones and went home to devour it. Fast forward seven days, and I had completed the entire series.
I was up reading every night till after 1am. Every spare second I had - like rushing my makeup before work so that I could grab 10 minutes and squeeze in one more chapter - was spent with one of these three books in my hands. And that's not all. When I'd gotten to the third and final book, I had a longing to start again from the beginning. So I did, reading book one and book three alongside each other. I finished book three on Sunday and began book two again. I finished it today and immediately picked up book three again. That's each book, read twice, within the space of ten days. Now I'm a fast reader when it comes to fiction. Devouring a book in two days is not unusual or uncommon for me - what is is how much these books have dominated my life for the past week.
The plot revolves around a witch, Diana, who discovers a manuscript in Oxford's Bodleian library. She meets a charming vampire, they fall in love etc etc. It's all very Twilight-esque (which phase I had in 2009 for about two years). And a lot of it is very similar to Twilight - a friend of mine even described the series as Twilight but with a badass witch. But it's not, it's more than that. Or it is for me at least. Because, you see, Diana Bishop has everything I could possibly want.
Not the vampires and the witches and the demons, but the rather mundane parts of her existence that other readers will be bored to tears by. She's a historian - and tell me, how many times do you come across a historian heroine? She spends her time poring over old manuscripts in Oxford. She gets to make a living off of the deeds of dead guys. She gets to live in Oxford. She gets the respect of her academic peers, and her talent for remembering little tidbits of information is dazzling. I love her to pieces, because I see myself in her so much, and maybe that's why this series is one of the few to really grip me since the dreaded Twilight phase back when I was thirteen. There's one scene where Diana is terrified to crack open the spine of a manuscript, looking around for a cradle to put it in. She's the embodiment of a history geek, and maybe that's why she speaks to my soul.
I haven't felt like this about a book series for a very long time, and it feels like every phase of my life can be punctuated with vampire books. In high school it was Twilight. In college it was the Vampire Diaries and other, smaller vampire series (Vampire Academy was one). It looks like this phase will be my A Discovery of Witches phase, and I'm completely okay with that. If I can channel even the smallest bit of Diana Bishop in my ordinary life, I'll be happy.
(P.s, the series is four episodes in, is completely incredible, and I am 100% in love with Matthew Goode. That is all).
So yeah. That's what's new here. If you haven't read A Discovery of Witches I heartily recommend it. It will consume you - but, of course, in that good way that brilliant books often do, and with the abundance of witches, vampires and demons, it makes perfect October reading.
(P.p.s This is, I suppose, an attempt at dusting off my blog and fiction writing skills and trying to get back into it after a long period off. At this point the only thing I know how to write is academic essays and it's going to take a while getting back into writing historical fiction. I need to beat into submission the part of my brain that wants to footnote and obsessively cite everything; I need to be okay with making things up every now and then, and after so long of sticking to solid, hard facts that can be backed up with several sources and a dozen historians, I'm finding it trickier than usual. Fingers crossed it resolves itself soon.)
ns 108.162.216.35da2
and then Add to home screen.