Tuesday, September 12, 2023



I'm about one-quarter into Bring Up the Bodies, so it's time to check out Steve Donoghue's video on part 1.  (It looks like Steve is doing 100 pages for each part.)
I don't have a ton to say about Steve's video other than I enjoyed his commentary as always.  But I'll make a couple brief notes on the things that did strike me:

* I commented in last week's Weekly Reading Vlog that the prose style in Bring Up the Bodies seemed much more readable than Wolf Hall.  It's interesting, therefore, to hear Steve say that he thinks the prose style is different because Hilary Mantel allowed herself to relax a bit for the second book.

* That part about "take a look at what's in it [the Bible] and more importantly what's not in it"--that part is from Wolf Hall.  [Or, did I miss something, was it also in Bring Up the Bodies?]

* On Steve's comment that "Mantel does not like Jane Seymour at all"--I had actually been thinking that Mantel was portraying Jane Seymour as whimsical and delightfully quirky, but now Steve has got me thinking.  Have I been misreading this?  Is Mantel trying to portray Jane Seymour as stupid, rather than whimsical?

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