Tonight Lauren Willig is reading from her debut novel The Secret History of the Pink Carnation at the Harvard Bookstore in Cambridge. According to an article in the Cambridge Chronicle, Willig prowled the used books section of the store for years, searching for historical novels from the 1940s and 50s. The Secret History of the Pink Carnation is a historical novel (in a sense)about a historical novelist writing a historical novel. The novelist is a contemporary Harvard grad student in history doing dissertation research in London--that's what grabs me. The fact that she's trying to make a historical novel out of her dissertation is another. I love novels about academics set in London. Actually anything set in London will do. Alison Lurie wrote a couple, including Foreign Affair, which I loved so much I made everyone in my book group read it (great discussion book). Don't pass up the chance to curl up with that one, if you've missed it thus far.