Read-A-Thon update and mini challenges

My progress so far:

• Finished King and Goddess by Judith Tarr
• Finished The Twelfth Enchantment by David Liss
• Started To Die For by Sandra Byrd

MINI CHALLENGE #1:

Laura @ The Book Snob is hosting a mini challenge which asks us to find pictures/locations from the books we are reading (or images relating to the time period we're reading about):

 When I started the Read-A-Thon, I was on p. 256 of this book.

This is a picture of the tomb of Queen Hatshepsut.  The building of this tomb occurs in the novel.

The cover pictured is for the 2nd book I read for the challenge, The Twelfth Enchantment.  Below is a picture of Newstead Abbey which belonged to Lord Byron and which the heroine of the novel Lucy Derrick visits twice to look for a very important item that is pivotal in the novel.  They say the abbey is haunted :)

This is the cover for To Die For, my current read about Anne Boleyn and her best friend Meg Wyatt.

 

This is Hever Castle in Kent which was home to the Boleyn family.  The Wyatt family lived on a neighboring estate.

MINI CHALLENGE #2:



Michelle's Mini Challenge asks us to find a work of art that would be a good cover for the book we're reading or that describes the action in the book.  I found two for the Twelfth Enchantment.

This is the description of the book from Goodreads: Lucy Derrick is a young Regency woman of good breeding and poor finances: after the death of her father, she is forced to maintain a shabby dignity as an unwanted boarder with her unpleasant uncle, fending off marriage to the local mill owner, Mr. Olson. But her prospects of even that unwanted match are complicated by the appearance of a beautiful stricken man who appears on the family doorstep begging her not to marry Mr. Olson just as he collapses. This appearance seems to open the door to a series of increasingly strange occurrences surrounding Lucy. Soon it becomes clear that there is more at stake than her own happiness — and that she is caught between two forces, one ancient and one modern — and that the soul of her very country is at stake.

The first one is the painting The Magic Circle by John Williams Waterhouse (love him!).  This book features magic prominently and the painting reminded me of the numerous spells cast, talismans made, and especially of the final face off in the book between good and evil.

The second is a painting I ran across of Lord Byron who is the beautiful stricken man who arrives on the doorstep and is a main character in the book.

And that is all for me at the moment.  I am off to stick my nose back in To Die For.  Stay tuned for my wrap up post on Sunday night.