Addictive Reading - 'The Other Boleyn Girl'

I said yesterday that I didn't know whether I would manage to read Philippa Gregory's historical novel, The Other Boleyn Girl, in time for our reading group meeting on Monday.

But I can now confidently predict that I will finish it in time. In fact, there's a chance that I might even get it finished tonight. I've been glued to it today, small print or no small print. I've found it absolutely fascinating in a horrible sort of way, and it certainly makes me feel glad to an ordinary British woman living in the 21st century rather than a courtier at the time of King Henry VIII.

My son is now home from school for the summer holidays - nine and a half weeks - so I've also been taking advantage of that by getting him to do all the little jobs that I usually get stuck on, like transferring podcasts to my MP3 player. He's a real technical whizz kid. I have a new MP3 player which makes it much easier for me to listen to my favourite podcasts from Hay House Radio.

It's been a day when lots of newsletters have started arriving in my mail box too. I've already recommended a great website for writers, http://www.writing-world.com/, but I'll mention it again. The latest edition of their free newsletter is now out and has some very interesting articles in it as well as information about publications and competitions. I particularly liked the feature on 'How to Read "How to Write" Books'.

I won't spend long talking to you tonight as I'm on tenterhooks to find out what happens to the two Boleyn girls. I've a vague inking of what happens to one. (Let's just put it this way - I don't think she lives happily ever after!) But I'm dying to know what happens to her sister. I think I'm a Philippa Gregory convert.

Reading for Writing - 'The Other Boleyn Girl'

I've been having a very busy time recently with lots of things happening at once. It was the Gang of Five meeting at my house yesterday - a whole evening devoted to discussing writing of mine that I'd sent them to read.

My fellow writers managed to read three of my short stories - four, if you take into account that I'd sent them two versions of one of them - and they came up with some very useful comments and observations about them.

I think that I'll be able to make the changes to two of the stories very soon and get them sent off. However, the third one (the one with two versions) will take a bit more time to finalise as they liked different aspects of each of the versions. My challenge will be to work out how to combine the best of both of them as one is from the viewpoint of the younger sister and the other is from the viewpoint of the older girl.

So today I took a look at my diary and my 'to do' list and realised that to my alarm that I have another deadline looming. I'll really have to get my skates on if I'm to meet this one.

We've got another 'Reading for Writing' book group meeting in Holmfirth Library on Monday afternoon, but I hadn't even started reading the novel we're meant to be discussing. I eventually made a start on it this morning. It's called The Other Boleyn Girl and it's by the best-selling historical novelist, Philippa Gregory.

I think I'd been putting off reading this book for a couple of reasons. One is because it's a historical novel set in a period I know very little about - the court of Henry VIII. Having been brought up in Scotland, I had studied Mary, Queen of Scots and not really learnt anything about Henry.

Unlike some of my contemporaries who were brought up in England, I didn't grow up able to list all the wives of Henry VIII in order. I know he had a lot of them, but I'm not even sure which ones were divorced, which ones died and which were executed.

The other reason I haven't been keen to read this book is that it's a very big book to read - 529 pages of extremely small print. (I do wish publishers wouldn't use small print. Even if it does save paper and cut costs, it's very tiring to read for any length of time, even for someone like me who doesn't usually have to wear glasses for reading.)

Having said that, I've been pleasantly surprised so far. I'm finding the novel very entertaining and there's plenty of emotion, suspense, and intrigue to carry me along. The main characters are pretty interesting too. I do find it very odd though to find Henry VIII being described as an object of desire. For most of my life, I've thought of him as than the chap on the pictures with jowels and a huge belly from feasting on too many stuffed pheasants and boars' heads.

So I've got off to a good start. Will I be able to finish reading the book by Monday, though? Will I have any eyesight left after reading all that small print? Will I need to resort to using reading glasses or a magnifyer?

Watch this space to see if I have enough staying power to reach the end of the novel. Reading it is certainly an experience.