After two less than satisfying books (Goddard and Lamb) I’m reading three books which require a time commitment. Alison Weir’s The Lady in the Tower is a monument to detail. At times it’s literally an hour by hour telling of Anne Boleyn’s fall. I like to imagine fans of The Other Boleyn Girl scooping up this book in hopes of more juicy Tudor goodness only to be confronted by a lengthy discussion about the preamble to the 1536 Act of Succession. Not for the casual reader.
Thomas Costain’s The Conquering Family, which I’m listening to on audio book, zooms all the way to the opposite end of the popular history scale. A history book with extensive dialogue. Twelfth Century history, that is. After two weeks how can I only be on Chapter 11 of 16?
Then there’s Blake Bailey’s highly entertaining biography of John Cheever. Ten chapters in and Cheever still hasn’t written a novel. His alcohol consumption on the other hand is truly epic. If it’s possible to get a contact buzz from reading about drinking I will fail a breathalyzer test.
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