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The Queen's Fool

Tuesday nights are for band practice. We get a break about half-way through, and being a shy extrovert (someone who likes to be around people but doesn't want to interact with them) I usually take an activity. Well, I packed the book I'm reading and the sock I'm working on.
The band is predominantly Jewish. I don't know why, I don't think it's relevant, but often we plan concerts and rehearsals around whether there will be a decent turnout -- attendance is bad around passover, for example, because people need to clean their houses and wash a lot of dishes.

Anyway, I'm reading "The Queen's Fool" by Phillipa Gregory, which is about a young woman who is a Marrone - a Jew pretending to be a Christian - who has fled the Inquisition in Spain and come to the English court during the reign of Queen Mary, I think England's last Catholic queen. I ordered it on intra-library loan because I'd read what I thought was a prequel, "The Other Boleyn Girl", set in Henry VIII's court. After 398 pages of this one, I liked the first one better. (You don't have to have read one to enjoy the other, or read them in order. My sister read "Queen's Fool" first. I picked up "The Other Boleyn Girl" at my younger sister's house on a whim, and just started reading and got sucked in.)

I feel sort of guilty about my logic on the book choice thing. Anyway, I took it wanting to be asked questions about why I'm reading a book about a Jew, or taking an interest in the issues of Jews in the renaissance. But then I felt absurd, and never took it out.

Didn't take the sock out, either. I chatted with the boy for 20 minutes about his homework.

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