Henry IV: Parts 1 and 2 (c1597): William Shakespeare

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Henry IV: Part 1: William Shakespeare

(Shakespeare’s Globe, 2010)

My first encounter with Henry IV was via the BBC’s The Hollow Crown last year, when I was unexpectedly captivated by this story of a disappointed father and his wayward son. Afterwards I wished I’d had the sense to see Dominic Dromgoole’s 2010 production at the Globe (especially since I did see their 2012 Henry V, in which Jamie Parker reprised the role of an older, wiser Hal). However, my uncle very kindly bought me the DVDs of Henry IV for Christmas and I curled up with them this week, with ever-increasing pleasure.

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The Sea Hawk (1915): Rafael Sabatini

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★★★

First things first: I hope you all had a marvellous Christmas and a very happy New Year. I’ve spent a thoroughly self-indulgent few weeks with my family and am now looking forward to getting my teeth into 2014. End of year review posts and New Year’s resolutions are popping up all over the place and it’s been great to see which books captured everyone’s imagination (or failed to), and the various challenges people have in store for the coming months. Here at The Idle Woman there aren’t any planned challenges, which is to say that life will tick along much as usual: a mixture of the characteristic and the utterly random. And so: to the books!

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Merry Christmas!

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Stom: Adoration of the Shepherds

Well, it’s that time of year again! The TV schedules are groaning with the old classics, the larder is full of more food than seven people can possibly eat, the mince pies are cooked, the cake decorated, and I’m trying to figure out the precise nature of the giftwrapped packages under the tree… Wherever you are, I hope you’re settling in for a day of fine food, time with family or luxurious self-indulgence, depending on your preferences.

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Memoirs of Hadrian (1951): Marguerite Yourcenar

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★★★★★

Like a traveler sailing the Archipelago who sees the luminous mists lift toward evening, and little by little makes out the shore, I begin to discern the profile of my death.

With these words we are drawn into one of the great modern examples of historical fiction: a book which was first published in 1951 but which had been taking shape in the author’s mind for thirty years before that. It was a reread for me – a treat before Christmas – and in my opinion it ranks with Renault and Dunnett as an example of how magnificently a writer can immerse you in the conviction of a vanished age.

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Luck in the Shadows (1996): Lynn Flewelling

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★★★

Nightrunner: Book I

After Angélique, I thought it was time for something slightly more characteristic. Lynn Flewelling has been on the edge of my awareness for a couple of years and, when her books were also recommended by Goodreads, I decided it was time to give her a go. Luck in the Shadows has proven to be an enjoyable start to the Nightrunner series: something of a lighter cross between Swordspoint and The Lies of Locke Lamora. Unlike those, however, this is unashamedly high fantasy, with wizards, magic, the odd centaur, and a definite hint of Dark Lord brewing on the horizon.

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The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (2013)

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The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

★★★

(directed by Peter Jackson, 2013)

With Christmas hovering on the horizon, it’s once again time for a trip into Middle Earth and, since I wrote in some detail about the first instalment of The Hobbit, I don’t think I need to do too much scene-setting here. We rejoin Bilbo, Thorin and their companions exactly where we left them: on the far side of the Misty Mountains, finally within sight of the Lonely Mountain, with a warg pack on their trail. A breathless cross-country chase takes them to temporary shelter in the cottage of the skinchanger Beorn (Mikael Persbrandt) and then into the forest of Mirkwood, to the realm of the elven king Thranduil (Lee Pace, on imperious form). Beyond Mirkwood lies Laketown, the final settlement before the Lonely Mountain; and then there is only the mountain itself to challenge them, as they seek the hidden door that will lead them into Smaug’s domain.

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Angélique: Book I (1956): Sergeanne Golon

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★★½

The Marquise of the Angels

I know. I know. This needs some explanation. Angélique was recommended automatically, either by Goodreads or Amazon, with a considerably more innocuous cover. I’d never heard of the series but reviews were glowing, promising wonderful characters and breathless adventure; and one reviewer even suggested that readers looking for something similar should try the Lymond Chronicles. Naturally such a comparison caught my attention and, despite slight misgivings, I went ahead and ordered it.

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Millennium (2008): Tom Holland

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★★★★

The End of the World and the Forging of Christendom

My goodness, it’s been a busy couple of weeks. Now at last the winter frenzy of work has been wrapped up; and today I experienced that most blissful of feelings: clearing my desk, closing down my computer and leaving the office for Christmas. No doubt the holidays will fly by very quickly, but I hope to spend a good proportion of them curled up with a good book. Luckily I have more than enough of those to choose from (though one of the novels on my to-read list is the kind of thing you might be rather surprised to see here; but more of that soon). For the last week or so, however, I’ve been kept occupied by a gripping, dense and rather enjoyable history book – a sweeping panorama of Europe in the two centuries which straddled the end of the first millennium.

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Black Powder War (2006): Naomi Novik

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★★★★

Temeraire: Book III

It’s been a long week at work and so I decided it was time for another Temeraire novel. This series has become my comfort reading of choice at the moment, as it so perfectly combines very good writing with spirited adventure. Opening a new Temeraire book is the literary equivalent of curling up with a warm blanket and a cup of tea. This, the third after Temeraire and Throne of Jade, reunites us with our heroes in China as they prepare to begin the long journey back home to England aboard the Allegiance. However, a destructive fire in the ship’s galley before they have even left port, coupled with the arrival of a dogeared but urgent letter from their commander, forces Laurence to change his original plans.

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The Swerve (2011): Stephen Greenblatt

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★★★

How the Renaissance began

The winner of the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Non-Fiction, this book was recommended to me during our Sicily trip a year ago, in the course of a rather splendid dinner-table conversation. It tells the story of Poggio Bracciolini, an Italian humanist who worked at the papal curia and who, during the upheavals after the Council of Constance, sought to distract himself by going book-hunting in the monasteries of Germany. Poggio dreamed of finding previously unknown classical texts in these monasteries, preserved by chance through years of copying as part of the monastic discipline. He and his fellow humanists had already uncovered fragments of letters and treatises, but the discovery that Poggio would make in 1417 would come to have a powerful impact on the very roots of Western philosophy: the full text of De rerum natura (On the Nature of Things) by Lucretius.

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