I’ve been getting into star charts and astrology, tarot cards and the like the past couple of months. What you believe in or want to take from that sort of thing is personal. I enjoy it and in some ways it helps me concentrate.
So I thought I would look at the different signs, as the year goes, and do book recommendations based on the traits of the sign. Capricorn runs from December 22-Jan 19th so I’m a little late but not to bad!
Capricorn traits include being; charming, graceful, unwaveringly practical, hardworking and ambitious. Amongst other things they show love by material comfort and not grand affection, make and keep friends in high places and have extroverted partners.
FYI I use the Elle Daily Horoscopes and that’s where I took most of the information for this series. Now onto the books!
Lady Worsley was all those traits and ambitious in ways a woman of her time could be- marriage. Her divorce was maybe the first celebrity divorce reported on in the newspapers of the time. All in all it was a fun read about an interesting woman.
The story of the relationship between Ernest Hemingway and Martha Gelhorn. I did notice that while coming up with recommendations for some reason I found a lot of books with characters who meet the personality traits but the relationships were not good ones or did not end in happily ever after. Still I hadn’t known a lot about Gelhorn and it’s a good historical fiction read.
The lead character in Heartless is ambitious and hard-working. She just wants to open a bakery! She’s practical enough to make a business plan. Unfortunately for her she’s attracted interest from the King who wants to marry her and her parents just want her to be Queen.
I always say that opinions are split on this one so beware but I thought this was a great origin story for the Queen of Hearts from Alice in Wonderland.
A Cinderella retelling with a fantastic lead who just wants to invent, build and make her own way in the world. (And seriously one of my all time favorite book covers!) This is a lovely fairy tale whose ending is more on the sweet than the bitter of the above books.
Its another fairy tale retelling with (mainly) practical people and another strong emphasis on female friendship which I loved. Agnieszka isn’t graceful but she fulfills the other traits and as a reader, I found her charming.
Also even though this was supposed to be a book recommendation thing I can’t help but add a television show:
The West Wing was one of my favorite shows back in the day and it does fulfill the whole unwaveringly practical, hard-working and ambitious. There was no over the top love things (that I remember- save CJ’s silly body guard story perhaps.) I admit I stopped watching near the end but the first like 1-5 seasons… classics no matter what your star sign 🙂