SPOTLIGHT: Infidel
- 2 days ago
- 3 min read
My mantra has become: SO MANY BOOKS, SO LITTLE TIME!
I have read nine so far this year, with a goal of at least twenty or more. One particular research book on papyrology has taken me about nine months to read. It has yielded an enormous amount of information for my current project, but it's very dry reading. Reading and comprehending is so important, and sadly, more and more children in our society don't read much outside of school. Many of them don't read enough IN school.
I just did some looking online, and the results I found shocked me. In the United States, in the year 1900, significant improvement had taken place in literacy learning in the past several decades. That year, 89-90% of Americans had learned how to read. Then I looked at the year 2025's statistics for the U.S. Get this, friends: literacy learning has declined to around 79% with a whopping 54% of adults reading at or below 6th grade level. The data even went on to state that around 50% of the American populace has trouble reading prescription labels. This is frightening. We have regressed.
And so I challenge you to pick up a book to read this week. And next week. And the week after that. Reading and writing used to be something that made people proud. So let's be proud readers again. (And some of us will be writers, too.)
I'd like to welcome Nicola Harris to Brook's Journal this week. She has written a thrilling novel on the ever-fascinating Catherine of Aragon. Be sure to scroll down and read this week's Spotlight on her novel, INFIDEL. And if you're a Tudor history fan, this might be your jam. Scroll down a little bit more, and you'll find the buy-link.
With statistics as they are, I strongly encourage you to find a book. Maybe Nicola's this week! And do what?
READ ON, EVERYBODY!!!
ALL ABOUT THE BOOK
Born in the glittering courts of Castile and Aragon and forged in the shadow of war, Catalina de Aragón grows up surrounded by queens, rebels, and explorers. She is her mother’s last daughter, the final jewel of a dynasty built on conquest and faith, and the one child Isabella of Castile cannot bear to lose.
But destiny has already claimed Catalina.
Promised to Prince Arthur of England since childhood, she is raised to bind kingdoms, soothe old wounds, and carry the hopes of an empire across the sea. Yet, Spain fractures under rebellion, grief, and the ruthless zeal of its own rulers.
From the burning streets of Granada to the storm‑lashed Bay of Biscay, Catalina and her sisters must navigate a treacherous path shaped by ambition, betrayal, and the dangerous love of men who fear the power of queens. She learns to read cyphers, to read hearts, and to stand unbroken even as her childhood is stripped from her piece by piece.
And when she finally sails for England armed with her mother’s lessons, her father’s steel, and the ghosts of the Alhambra at her back, Catalina steps into her fate not as a girl, but as a force.
A princess.
A survivor.
A daughter of Aragon.
Infidel is the story of a young woman raised for greatness and destined to reshape the fate of nations. This is Catalina, as she has never been seen before. She is fierce, vulnerable, and unforgettable.
A sweeping, intimate portrait of sisterhood, survival, and the making of a dynasty, Infidel reveals the hidden lives of a woman whose courage shaped the Tudor world.
ALL ABOUT NICOLA
I’ve always been a writer, but it was only when illness forced me to stop everything that I finally had the time to write a novel. After decades of misdiagnosis, I learned I was born with a serious genetic condition, not rare, but profoundly misunderstood. The clues were there from birth, and suddenly, a lifetime of struggle made sense.
Writing became my lifeline: a way to step beyond my pain, to shape my experience into a story, and to find meaning where there had once been only endurance.
I have a lifelong love of children, Counselling, and Psychotherapy Theory and history.
CONNECT WITH NICOLA
BUY THE BOOK!!!
***This book is available on Kindle Unlimited!***
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