This time it was relatively easy to select the three featured books for the blog: they’re the ones I am reading just now, and they’re all worth the time, for different reasons.
- The Mirror and the Light by Hilary Mantel. This is the final instalment in Mantel’s trilogy charting the rise and fall of Thomas Cromwell. “With The Mirror & the Light, Hilary Mantel brings to a triumphant close the trilogy she began with her peerless, Booker Prize-winning novels, Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies. She traces the final years of Thomas Cromwell, the boy from nowhere who climbs to the heights of power, offering a defining portrait of predator and prey, of a ferocious contest between present and past, between royal will and a common man’s vision: of a modern nation making itself through conflict, passion and courage.” A must read.
2. Harrow the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir. This is the second book in the trilogy of the ‘lesbian necromancers in space’ —as it has been often defined by critics— and I must say that, while I had some reservations about the first, the second is definitively a winner. It is even weirder, in a way, and not always easy reading, but it is gripping and the characters are getting more intense and the story complex and captivating.
3.The Rise and Fall of Ancient Egypt by Toby Wilkinson. A history book could not be missing in this list, and here’s the offering for this month. This book, authored by a quite prominent Egyptologist, has the virtue of giving a good outlook on one of the most fascinating civilisations ever. “As the world’s first nation-state, the history of Ancient Egypt is above all the story of the attempt to unite a disparate realm and defend it against hostile forces from within and without. Combining grand narrative sweep with detailed knowledge of hieroglyphs and the iconography of power, Toby Wilkinson reveals Ancient Egypt in all its complexity.“
What about your reading for this January 2021? Let me know or post a comment here! Happy reading.
Happy New Year! And a new year of books and reading! I’m still reading Thayer’s “Life of Beethoven,” and about 200 pages from the end of this massive biography of Beethoven. I’m still loving it. Listening to his music has context now. For the rest of the month, all I can say is that it will be something sci fi, and then I began a Nicolas Freeling Van Der Valk mystery last night. I crave the escape to another world kind of reading right now. And I decided not to do the Reading Challenge this year at Goodreads. I’m just going to read…..
I do like the variety you exhibit here, historical fiction, historical fact from a different time and culture, and high fantasy in space! My reading so far has been varied but in a different way: an SF classic in the shape of Flowers for Algernon; a children’s fantasy by Joan Aiken, the paracosmic uchronia Cold Shoulder Road; a collection of Salman Rushdie short stories entitled East, West which I’m reviewing now; and Lucy Boston’s elegiac The River at Green Knowe set in the Cambridgeshire fens, which I’ve just begun.
As it’s Vintage Scifi Month I hope to fit in another SF classic at least, probably a reread of The War of the Worlds to wipe out the disappointment experienced when watching the recent BBC serialisation, which felt as though it was set up for a second series.
Happy New Year, Steph! I’m impressed with the range of your reading:)). I loved The Mirror and the Light – the whole series has been a joy and though the pacing dipped at bit at the end, this last one is a tour de force… I like the look of the Egyptian non-fiction book, although right now I’m all about stories, given I want to get lost in something as far away from reality as possible!