Gormenghast, slaves & Indians
I've been reading Gormenghast on and off. It is a difficult book for me to get into, as was Titus Groan, though that one really built to some dramatic stuff.
In the meantime I'm reading American Uprising (research for a WIP). It's about the German Coast slave revolt of 1811 (in Louisiana, yeah, it's got a German Coast). I'm a bit exasperated at the "he would have..." qualifier tagged onto all the author's speculation. Frankly, the author has very few facts about this ill-documented event, so he rounded it out with rather clumsily-worded speculation. Ends up like a pedantic history that wants to be grand legend, but is neither fish nor fowl. The subject matter deserved better.
For contrast I'm also reading Crazy Horse by Mari Sandoz. No f***in' qualifiers for Ms. Sandoz! It's a biography written like a novel. A lot of her work was original research with elderly kin of Crazy Horse. She may not have been the most foot-note driven historian, but by God she could tell a story and make you care!