Hats, aren't you smart, though? You're right, it's another Robert Harris, this one Robert W Harris not the one with the Roman series and the other series!
Bellamarie's quote there is true, I'm just reveling in reading reading reading, it's such a joy. I'm reading one book a day so far, so you know what I'm accomplishing otherwise, but it's SO relaxing. It's a mental holiday, a mental beach trip.
Jonathan, I've been doing the same, I watched, in anticipation of the third and last of the trilogy by Hilary Mantel (Wolf Hall) the Amazon prime showing of Wolf Hall (a LOT is left out, I need to find my DVD set of the whole thing, wonder why they edited it?), so next I want to read the new Thomas Cromwell: A Revolutionary Life by Diarmaid MacCulloch. This book has been it seems years in the making. The author is Diarmaid MacCulloch, Professor of the History of the Church at Oxford University, is the author of The Reformation, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Wolfson Prize, and the British Academy Prize, and of Thomas Cranmer, winner of the Whitbread Prize, the James Tait Black Prize, and the Duff Cooper Prize.
So obviously he can write, but this book has been aborning a long long time, people would talk about it, you'd hear rumors, Hilary Mantel would refer to him, and what it would reveal, and finally it came out last October. It would not sound like anything anybody would want to read but I read the first couple of pages online and his wit and wonderful way with words and brightness made me actually want to keep reading the e book and not waiting for the paper one, but at last it's coming today. We'll see what kind of silk purse he makes (or will he?) of the sow's ear which history has branded Thomas Cromwell, (Henry VIII, dissolution of the monasteries, getting rid of the first two wives) he's got access to all kinds of written records nobody else has. Can't wait!
The BBC today has a feature called Does Reading Fiction Make Us Better People?
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20190523-does-reading-fiction-make-us-better-people I think is a very interesting article. It quotes Aristotle: "Aristotle said that when we watch a tragedy two emotions predominate: pity (for the character) and fear (for yourself). Without necessarily even noticing, we imagine what it’s like to be them and compare their reactions to situations with how we responded in the past, or imagine we might in the future."
Isn't that interesting?
Does that imply then that we only read books we can see ourselves in?
Reading fiction, if you continue the article, seems to confer many benefits, better social empathy (they've actually tested for this) and all sorts of things. I had no idea!
Nice to know we're improving ourselves when we read books such as I am today, museums and monsters, biological permutations, and creatures underground NYC (Reliquary, my annual read). Now what on earth can that possibly do to give me social empathy?