Chris Nickson is the author of the highly-acclaimed Richard Nottingham series and is also a well-known music journalist. Born and raised in Leeds, he lived in the USA for thirty years and now makes his home in England.Nickson's latest Richard Nottingham mystery is Free from all Danger.
Recently I asked the author about what he was reading. Nickson's reply:
My reading tends to take on two dimensions: downstairs – evening reading – and upstairs – what I read in bed (the perfect way to wind down before sleep). The downstairs reading is actually a pair ofVisit Chris Nickson's website.complementary social history books, Ruth Goodman’s How to be a Tudor and Ian Mortimer’s The Time Traveller’s Guide to Elizabethan England. It’s a period I don’t know, beyond some basics, and I wanted to learn more, partly for my own curiosity, but also because I have a faint idea for a book bobbing around set in the time. Most of my novels are set in Leeds, which was still a small place then, but I can extrapolate the way many people would have lived and worked and dressed; to get a feel for what their lives might have been like. Inevitably, the two books converge at times, but even there, with difference in detail, there’s plenty to discover.
The fact that both are well, and wittily, written, doesn’t hurt either.
Whether my novel will ever emerge or not, time will tell. But even if it doesn’t, learning for its own sake is no bad thing. And my upstairs reading also goes back in time: Apothecary Melchior and the Mystery of St. Olaf’s Church by Indrek Hargla, set in Tallinn, Estonia, in 1409. As a music journalist, I’ve been covering quite a bit of excellent Estonian music lately. This opens a window on the country’s history.
My Book, The Movie: The Constant Lovers.
The Page 69 Test: The Constant Lovers.
The Page 69 Test: The Iron Water.
--Marshal Zeringue
Posts
