The teachers in my department gave me an unexpected gift card to Barnes & Noble today in honor of my 25 years teaching in Parsippany. I was flattered, both at the gift and at the sentiments they wrote on the card accompanying the gift.

Having received the gift, I decided to break my temporary ban on book-buying -- a ban forced upon me by my having bought too many books in the first half of 2004 so that I have fallen even farther behind in my reading than usual -- and buy a novel tonight. While usually I buy f&sf in these circumstances, tonight I was in the mood for a historical novel. So I browsed the bookstore with my list of Recommended Historical Fiction books:

Banks, Russell Cloudsplitter
Bradshaw, Gillian Render Unto Caesar
Cornwall, Bernard Stonehenge
Dalby, Liza The Tale of Murasaki
Davies, Robertson The Deptford Trilogy
Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan The White Company
Dumas, Alexander The Count of Monte Cristo
Dumas, Alexander The Three Musketeers
Dunnett, Dorothy King Hereafter
Eco, Umberto The Name of the Rose
Graves, Robert I, Claudius
Harris, Robert Pompeii
Holland, Cecilia Soul Thief
Hugo, Victor Les Miserables
Melville, Herman Moby Dick
Min, Anchee Empress Orchid
Penman, Sharon Kay The Sunne in Splendor
Sabatini, Rafael Captain Blood
Scott, Sir Walter Ivanhoe
Shaw, Patricia On Emerald Downs
Shellabargar, Samuel Prince of Foxes
Shellabargar, Samuel Captain From Castile
Turteltaub, H.N. Justinian
Turteltaub, H.N. The Wine-Dark Sea
Zafon, Carlos Ruiz The Shadow of the Wind

until I found Bernard Cornwall's Stonehenge, so I bought it.

Now I'm really excited for the end of school in exactly one week when I can start reading this book and the other recent purchases sitting anxiously on my shelf!