Sunday at Borders - Monday Edition 2

OK, so late with this again, but it's a long weekend, and I know nobody's reading this anyway, so who could be complaining? So, new and reviewed this week ...

Historical Fiction

• Another Green World, by Richard Grant, reviewed by Ross King in the Washington Post. I read the description with dread: do we really need yet another World War II novel? But the description -- more Pynchon than Wouk, according to King -- has me excited.
  
• Imperium, by Richard Harris, reviewed by Tom Holland in the Guardian. Holland doesn't seem to like Harris much, which makes it all the more surprising that he loves Imperium. Me, I think it will make for good reading till HBO hits us with the next season of Rome.
  

History

• First Lady of the Confederacy: Varina Davis's Civil War, by Joan E. Cashin, reviewed by Jonathan Yardley in the Washington Post. Another Civil War history, albeit from the perspective of Jefferson Davis's wife. Sadly, Yardley doesn't seem to identify any way in which this offers something new and different.
  
• Orson Welles: Hello Americans, by Simon Callow, reviewed by Gary Giddins in the New York Times. I'm a sucker for this from the beginning, since it's Simon Callow. The fact that it covers the period in which Welles made, among other things, The Stranger and Lady from Shanghai pretty much sells it.
• Writers, Readers and Reputations: Literary Life in Britain, 1870-1918, by Phillip Waller, reviewed by Dinah Birch in the Times Literary Supplement. At 1,181 pages, I'm not sure this is one I really need to get; 1,176, sure, but this is just a few too many. Seriously, if I were planning on delving into lesser-known Victorian authors, I think I'd start here.
  
• An Aristocratic Affair, by Janet Gleeson, reviewd by Sarah Bakewell in the Independent. Harriet Spencer was apparently the Paris Hilton of her day, except here, we get the consequences, in all their schadenfreudenish glory. Yes, "schadenfreudenish" is a word, you should see how many points it gets in Scrabble.
  
• Love and Louis XIV, by Antonia Fraser, reviewed by Tom Dewe Matthews in the Independent. Apparently, Fraser is trying too hard to make her histories read like novels. Of course, if you're just focusing on who he slept with, there may not be a whole lot of historical arguments you're inclined to make.
  
• Private Battles, by Simon Garfield, and Invasion, 1940, by Derek Robinson, both reviewed by Robert McCrum in the Guardian. More books on the Battle of Britain, which is one topic I never mind seeing more of. Makes gift-buying for some folks easier.
  
• Daughter of the Desert: The Remarkable Life of Gertrude Bell, by Georgina Howell, reviewed by Rachel Aspden in the Guardian. Debutante or Oriental Secretary in Baghdad, what is a wealthy heiress to choose? See, now, that's a hook.