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

i'm kind of bummed they skimmed over a lot of the calais sequence, it's one of my favorite pieces. he meets king francis! he finds that french urchin!

kitty <3

it's weird how no-one looks at all like i pictured yet for the most part they are all so unexpectedly great

love sir thomas moore, and wriothsely looked appropriately twatty

how is rylance so good in this? he's so subtle & excellent

Thank u this thread, reading WH and liking it a lot

aw man they skipped over henry's visit to the house after C gets over his fever. i'm loving this but a lot of the sweet moments and personal stuff is gone.

also it could be faulty memory but anne is coming off way worse than on the page.

poor joan :(

yeah they def miss all the gorgeous detail...100% broadstrokes this

Yeah, I think I'd be way more into this if I hadn't read the books. OTOH, Rylance is perfect.

JUst found a copy of the 2nd book reasonably cheap in a charity shop. haven't read the first but have watched the tv series. So wondering if I'm missing anything by starting in the wrong place chronologically. But bet I'm not the first to do so.
Surprised to see that on the shelves when I was looking since this close after the series was shown I would think it would be snapped up almost instantly. maybe I did . Don't know when that went out. but it wasn't the series tie in version so maybe people didn't see it.

series was good and enjoyable (haven't watched the final ep yet) but felt almost like a ghost of the world of the books

you might not exactly miss anything of the sense of chronology Stevelende but you'll miss a whole book of words and in the end I think it's all about the words

words v important. one of my favourite things about the second book that won't resonate so much without reading the first is the 'left leg' etc bits.

you gotta read the first book. as good as it is, tv broad strokes barely scratch the surface of the book's richness

THing is I probably will read the first book at some point. it's just so happened that the 2nd book has appeared before i found a cheap copy of the 1st so my opportunity to read it is coming first. Subsequently wondering if I did need to wait and try to get to read the first one first or just go ahead with the 2nd one.
Was thinking that everything I needed to know would probably be explained in the book since with it having been a popular book it has to have been expected that a significant part of the audience would not have read the first one first.

& that what ever plot development i was missing by not having read it first would have probably also been covered to some extent in the tv series. But I do know that they are different media with different focuses for the story. Book is apparently a lot more internal to Cromwell. Will find out when I go to read it. But do have a couple of things to finish first.
Chance is open taht in the interim I might just score a copy of Wolf Hall before I start Bodies anyway.

LISTEN TO ME

READ THE FIRST BOOK FIRST

you must listen to vg, stevolende, she has not said a false word in this whole thread. it was her posts that finally got me reading these books and i am so grateful.

plot's good but with wanting not to be evangelical or didactic plot's a bit secondary like

agreed

no they're really not about plot at all but the first book establishes so much more otherwise. couldn't imagine starting with BUTB, seems like a terrible idea.

Definitely read the first book first.

Virtually all the plot is in the real history anyway. It's about character really.

Right, do have a number of other books to read anyway, just happened to pick the 2nd book up. Maybe I can get the first one from a library before that or keep my fingers crossed for a cheap copy to appear.

Anyway have the 2nd book and being told to wait before reading it just means its going to be backburnered.

But everything is a question of chance anyway in terms of what does turn up. Did think that maybe a number of things that would make reading the 2 books in the wrong order in isolation from the tv series odd might be somewhat different once I had seen the tv series.
Which I have but people are saying stick to chronological order.

Really it is just a book that I have picked up cheap in a charity shop and I doubt I would have been the first person to read those the other way round. Sure some people have gone back to the first book after enjoying the 2nd. Happens with a lot of series I think.

JUst hope that backburnering doesn't become permanent and the book remain unread.

patience grasshopper

the exchanges between Moore & Cromwell as things ratchet up in the show are starting to get v close to the electricity conveyed in the book

there are times when it feels like a look from Cromwell could set Moore alight

u+k:
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/apr/30/wolf-hall-codpieces-too-small-says-literature-researcher

I borrowed Niccolo Rising from the library, saw it recommended upthread

Love her writing style, can see some distant Mantel/Wolf Hall similarities even early on

interesting, historically-critical take of the series/book (and summary of others)

http://unireadinghistory.com/2015/02/12/a-historical-perspective-on-wolf-hall-thomas-cromwell-and-thomas-more-revisited/

though i do feel like a lot of these pro-more type of crits really overestimate how "good" cromwell is in this thing. i mean, you like him. but so what?

the series does place more at a scene of torture, which i don't think the book did, explicitly?

i'm pretty sure the book did also

more has enough cheerleaders, the catholics made him a saint ffs. he's FINE

i mean, I get why historians might get their panties wadded over Wolf Hall but imo it's fiction & dont be such predictable buzzkills and you have to admit it's fun to see Ole Saint Utopia portrayed in a less flattering light

think the writer of that piece is solely going off the tv show which HELLO... even if it does link to critiques of the book, it still annoys me when ppl go off halfcocked like that

Well found a €1 copy of the 1st book today, just after reserving it through a library.
So got that to look forward to.

eh i wasn't into the last ep. this whole thing was just too brief; the sense of many long disparate threads being tied off and cut with anne's execution was indicated but not really felt. the horror-movie ending shot was ok but the execution itself wasn't nearly guignol enough imo.

missed thomas wyatt too

just noticed wolf hall now on netflix uk -- i imagine i will binge-rewatch, starting in a few minutes

read both the books in no time flat as relaxation for organising my rock-write conference last year, having watched the series in real time on TV

(lol i watched A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS a few days ago: it is dreadful old rubbish by comparison)

wolsey is orson welles in make-up that looks like brown wax thrown at his face, he's p much the best thing in it

thomas more's bunny

thomas more's hipster glasses

Hoping there is a 2nd series coming at some point, but it might rely on Mantel finishing writing up to More's death.

dude more's long dead, you mean cromwell maybe

Yeah, typed that wrong.

there's a line i always misremember, about more's marriage: it's better to marry than to burn, but to be on the safe side, he had a wife he hated, or something like that

Wound up getting both of the books and enjoying the prose greatly. But got sidetracked into several other books before finishing them.
Also got the thing she did on the French Revolution

<3<3 the bunny <3<3

there are many things wrong with A MAN FOR ALL SEASONS but no bunny is the worst

anne boleyn (meaning claire foy) startlingly resembles my mum's best friend of many years, in look and mannerism and expression -- so much so i wonder if they're actually cousins or something (not sure how to find out, where my mum's friend now lives or even if she still lives)

trying (in retrospect) to think of a better* henry than damian lewis:

charles laughton (1933, the private life of…) : love love love CL but this is old school panto "bluff king hal was full of beans" stuff
robert shaw (1966, man for all seasons): good-ish in a bad film
richard burton 1969, (anne of the thousand days): burton is good in "the spy who came in from the cold", but in nearly everything else, so hopes not high
keith michell (1970, six wives of …) : famous prestige BBC series full of actors better known for other things (eg dr who), KM mainly underwhelming (sad to see RIP last november, at 89)
sid james (1971, carry on …) : actually the best ever obv yes
charlton heston (1977, the prince and the pauper): haven't seen this since i was a kid, heston is heston
ray winstone (2003, henry viii): lol
eric bana (2008, "the other boleyn girl"): LOL
jonathan rhys myers (2010, the tudors): LOOOOOOL

*= a vain, greedy, handsome brony full of self-pity and petulant self-justification, not a fool exactly -- he surrounded himself with smart** people and (as tudors always must) fended off the barons effectively enough -- but not in any sense wise: if his latent intelligence could be appealed to (which is why he was drawn to more and wolsey and cromwell and boleyn in the first place), you had always to travel via his self-admiration and appetites… i think robert shaw does get some of this, but can't get to enough of it in context

**who mostly hated one another other

(did ppl mainly hate the idea of lewis bcz of homeland? i have literally never watch a single ep of homeland so i guess i am immune to its effects)

He is pretty decent in WH and is generally a decent actor, but I feel like he draws a lot of hate in general for being part of the currently omnipresent posh actor cru and does seem a bit of a dick irl.

this was my favourite "posh actor cru" moment in WH: hapless harry percy IS
https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/976x549_b/p020hgrw.jpg

charles laughton (1933, the private life of…) : love love love CL but this is old school panto "bluff king hal was full of beans" stuff
robert shaw (1966, man for all seasons): good-ish in a bad film

33 years with no onscreen Henry 8?

oops i meant also to append the imdb complete list: http://www.imdb.com/character/ch0459965/

ans = 1935-60 was a p thin time for hals! and half of the ones that actually happened during that time were played by laughton

Lauderdale Maitland > Charles Laughton