WHAT ARE YOUR HISTORICAL HOLIDAY READS?
What’s on your TBR pile this summer?
I’m recovering from my THIRD bout of the Great Ague - clap clap, clever me - so have dipped into my summer holiday reading pile early.
Above is Lapvona by Ottessa Moshfegh - a sort of cod-medieval video nasty replete with cannibalism, abuse, shagging, mild torture and quite a lot about sheep. It’s deliberately grotesque and bizarre and I think does a worse job of the same trick pulled by Patrick deWitt in Undermajordomo Minor. The latter was set in a sort of pseudo seventeenth/eighteenth-century and I think the baroque era suits the subject matter much better than the medieval. DeWitt is also, for my money, the best young writer working in English today, which seems to be what a lot of people think Moshfegh is, though I am in no position to judge definitively because although I’ve read everything by deWitt (Ablutions, The Sisters Brothers, French Exit) I’ve read nothing else by Moshfegh. Who knows, maybe she’s great and this one is just a dud.
Annnnnyway. The rest of my holiday pile includes The Man on the Donkey by HFM Prescott (classic Tudor fic); Harrow by Joy Williams (post apocalyptic? Maybe?); Russia by Anthony Beevor (I doubt I’ll get round to it but would like to be the person who would); The Spire by William Golding (Marc Morris told me it was good); The Physician by Noah Gordon (crusades caper, can’t remember who recommended it); History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides (cause I’m classy); and about 5 Jack Reachers. I want to listen to James Ellroy’s new podcast too.
Alright, that’s me. What about you? Please recommend below - paid subscribers get comment privileges, the rest of y’all just get to lurk.
Bleugh. See you in wellsville, if I ever get there
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I've ammased a TBR pile for my TBR pile 😂 but it includes:
The Butchering Art by Lindsey Fitzharris
Cecily by Annie Garthwaite
King John by Marc Morris
Eleanor of Aquatain by Alison Weir
Six Wives by David Starkey
Richard III by Chris Skidmore
Powers and Thrones by your good self
And I think that's enough to be getting on with 😂😂😂
I'm a huge fan of Ottessa Moshfegh. You should try her novel My Year of Rest and Relaxation - really creative and well written.
I recommend WJ Small's A Knight's Duty. It's based on the life of 14th century Northumberland knight Thomas Gray (the constable, not the chronicler). Yes, it's my book, so this is a shameless plug. :-)