itt WOLF HALL the book by hilary mantel and the upcoming hbo/bbc miniseries based on the same

Am reading A Place of Greater Safety, the schtick is v v similar. Still great.

this is a cool way to learn abt history

I held onto this book for about a year from the library but couldn't get past the first page -- not that I outright hated it or anything, more just, "Hm, well, maybe later." Then someone just recalled it from me so...maybe later.

I'm actually reading APoGS with a book on the french revolution in the other hand, to clarify as i go. It's not essential but it's a pretty big sweep of history, helps to have a bit of background knowledge. Don't think that was so much of a problem with Wolf Hall, sure I occasionally forgot who was who in the vast cast but the main plot was pretty specific & localised.

wikipedia.org

yeah yeah. i wanted more detail. fewer electrons.

ok bring up the bodies is in my possession

gotta finish this

i'm waiting for the new one to go into paperback

lagxxn tell me how it is

i wish theyd just put all books in paperback, hardcover is stupid

^^^^

ya i cant recall the last time i bought a hardcover but i could not wait

hardcovers are awesome yr both dummies

but they r so giant and expensive

impossible to read on the train

impossible to read because the words are so hard

hardcovers are great except when you move house twice in a month

Hardcovers are great for architecture, art, and history books. P much useless for contemporary fiction though.

that p much makes no sense

i like reading them on the train! paperbacks are too flimsy or perhaps i am just careless and rough but i like the reassuring weight of a hardcover novel in my bag as well, they are less fun to take on planes tho, too big.

i think 'bringing up the bodies' was really good but i always like the parts in stories where the hero has everything going p smoothly and is coming out on top and you can feel the sympathetic flush of success the defining sequence of the book i think is cromwell at home over christmas endlessly cajoling, directing, scheming, joking moving all these people into place with tireless good humor ceding his dead daughters wings to some other little girl, waiting

man i can't wait

the dialogue is just amazing in the first one. all his conversations with his sweet, dim (but not too dim) son are so funny and awkward

hardcovers of popular books very cheap thru' Amazon 2nd hand, got almost pristine Wolf Hall recently for <£3, will maybe read it come holiday.

that p much makes no sense

Why not? I like hardcover books when they have lots of gorgeous pictures to look at and are typically formatted larger, I don't think they are necessary for most fiction. But thats just my personal preference. FWIW, 98% of the fiction I read it in eBook format anyway.

gross

i think 'bringing up the bodies' was really good but i always like the parts in stories where the hero has everything going p smoothly and is coming out on top and you can feel the sympathetic flush of success

― Lamp, Tuesday, July 24, 2012 11:10 AM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol when more and gardiner where simultaneously marginalized i was so happy for him

i had a few physical correspondences that i couldn't shake

cromwell: al swearingen
anne: sasha grey
henry: tim tebow (older)

lmao oh no

yeah i know

ahhhhhhh hahahahaha

new one seem to be written in a somewhat simpler lighter mode, maybe to reflect cromwells ascension, or maybe by accident, or maybe im imagining it, anyway im gonna miss this guy when there are no more books left

my only complaint is it wasnt nearly as long as wolf hall

well maybe and the third one doesnt exist yet

i need a new book for traveling this weekend, is this it? is the writing really great?

yes

well maybe and the third one doesnt exist yet

haha when i finished 'bringing up the bodies' i immediately read the wikipedia summaries of any character i vaguely cared about

hah I have purposely not spolierized myself which is p lol for a historical novel

ok i'm about 1/4 through this and i'm all in.

damn I really want to read this now

mantel profile http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/10/15/121015fa_fact_macfarquhar?currentPage=all

Remarkable profile. Unusually bold style for the New Yorker.

and another booker prize

I'm actually reading APoGS with a book on the french revolution in the other hand, to clarify as i go.
― Jesu swept (ledge), Wednesday, June 6, 2012 4:10 PM (4 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

doing the same w/wolf hall & wikipedia

this book is brilliant

paperback of sequel not due till april 2013 wtf /gettingaheadofmyself

i've had this on my 'list:read/sublist:probably won't read' for a while but based on the enthusiasm here i'm gonna bump it up.

is it historical fiction like the da vinci code or like the holocaust?

its a prequel to the davinci code

Oh FINE, I'll read this. (Also bumping to top of list based mostly on max's enthusiasm if I'm being completely honest.) Usually I don't like historical fiction because it always ends badly, because no one ever writes about all the nameless people of history who DIDN'T make terrible personal choices and therefore didn't make a bad end in a dark alley (or a tower courtyard). But OKAY, JEEZ.

can i read Bring Up The Bodies without reading Wolf Hall first?

Seconding Diarmaid MacCulloch's The Reformation, I just started it yesterday to complement Wolf Hall. It’s thorough but isn’t impenetrable, and clearly explained some of the theological differences that I couldn’t grasp from reading Wikipedia alone.

This page also recommends London and the Reformation: "This book tells the story of the Reformation in London. It covers a longer period than the 1530s, but gives a good sense of what was happening on the ground and the intense divisions in society that the Reformation provoked. You can read about the high politics of the period in the other four books. This book will give you a sense of how decisions at the top played out on the street." I haven’t read it, though, so can’t vouch for it.

Some good In Our Time episodes, as you can imagine

The Diet of Worms
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0038x8z

Calvinism
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00qvqpz

The Siege of Munster
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00nkqrv

The Dissolution of the Monasteries
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b009jtq1

St Bartholomew's Day Massacre
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p005493t

The Covenanters
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000g3f6

The Book of Common Prayer
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b03ct4n4

George Fox and the Quakers
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01f67y4

ooh nice one - thanks for these!!

the diet of worms is the best-named thing which is actually something utterly different

unlike the erfurst latrine disaster, which is exactly what it sounds like :|

Diet of Worms (name-wise) still v funny to me

lol jinx

mm DEE YET of VERMS yeah look no one is going to call it that

also this programme from Beyond Belief on Luther - https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b086nzhk

Thanks, all. I checked MacCulloch's All Things Made New: Writings on the Reformation out of the library.

that Beyond Belief convo was good, thx for that!

The Schama 'History of Britain' series comes with the usual Schama caveats but the Reformation episode is good: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0074l1q

Diarmid MacCulloch's BBC series on the history of Christianity was good. The Reformation episode is here:
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x76hxnf

enjoying the In Our Time convos

i always am amused by how he doesn’t let guests waffle on when they clearly want to and then they try to poke in w extra waffling & he cuts them off or talks over them (feel sorry for them sometimes lol)

y'know i have a ton of Melvyn Bragg grudges but In Our Time is usually pretty great

the podcast is nice because you get that extra 5 minutes at the end where the producer asks if anyone wants any tea and the guests get to circle back to their foreshortened waffleage

that diarmid macculloch series is really good, it's true Chinaski!

that sounds like the sweet antithesis of when i have to watch camera people wank on about hiding up a tree at the end of modern nature docs

have i done Bragg = Ken Barlow yet on ilx

anyways Ken Barlow is a satirical portrait of Melvyn, for better and worse

i subscribed to In Our Time a few years back, but deleted it & this is a solid reminder to get back in

also i enjoy the occasional background cough on mic, or best is the ~audible sigh~ from a guest waiting to speak

those studios have "cough buttons" on the table in front of the guests, who can push them whenever they need to cut their mic if their feel a cough coming on, but not everyone remembers to do it. academics often aren't the nimblest broadcasters

and yeah even if they do use the button, it is picked up in the background - just not as loud

i find it enjoyable

to bring it back to Wolf Hall

i know this may sound a little naive & perhaps even daft but it had never occurred to me until reading these books that common folk hadn’t had access to the scriptures to read for themselves until Luther & all these reformists & be-heathening happened.

*also ironic that I didn’t know any of the protestant reformation history since i grew up Church Of England lol. all i ever knew was “Henry wanted to divorce his wife so he made a church” (which is also true)

anyway

My dad was a Lutheran though he never went to church, and my mom was a Catholic who dragged me and my brother through the whole thing (first communion, confirmation, serving as altar boys, etc.). One day I asked Dad what the difference between Catholic church and Lutheran church was and he told me that in Lutheran church the Lord's Prayer went like this... blah blah blah... and there were only about two words difference between them. I did not exactly have a big breakthrough based on this new information.

my mother in law was Catholic & we used to go to church together at Christmas
i remember she was surprised that I knew the words to mass etc lol

also my first trip to the US i stayed with a devout Roman Catholic family, and i told mum on the phone “there’s crosses everywhere & they have a bottle of holy water in the house!” and she said “don’t tell them you’re Church Of England or they’ll burn you alive”

is there any word on the mirror and the light tv series eta? will it be this xmas?

wait so did they already do Bring Up The Bodies and I missed it?

the series "wolf hall" covers the first two books.

apparently s3 was in preproduction in 2022 but i haven’t seen any updates lately

s2 sorry

theyre reshooting the ending after the first one screened badly with the focus group

tc goes to space

in the last page of Mirror he kind of does!

the audiobook read by Ben Miles is great. i've never been one for those but I gave it a shot and now I think I'm spoiled on any other, it's a tremendous performance.