Arrived today, will be reading in next week or so for Booker European Roundabout
List order:
1. Katrinat
2. Sternschnuppe 28
3. EmgeeNL
4. Franaloe
5. Sidney1 **its here**
6. Mafarrimond
7. Cross-patch
8. Katrinat

Please aim to read this within a month and then pass on promptly. Also remember to come back and leave a JE with your impression of the book

I managed to pick this up during the busiest week of my year! Not the best time for such a heavy book (weight and content!).
I loved parts of this. Cromwell's relationship with his family, his dealings with Mary Boyelen, all the affairs and his conversations with his son and nephew. It was also a very readable novel. However I felt that I missed out on tons of stuff as I knew nothing of the history of this time, except recognising the names. The author has a huge cast of charcaters and the novel spans 35 years. I was often lost as to which Henry or Mary they were discussing. Segments frequently started with 'he...' and it wasn't until a page later that I could work out who they were talking about.

I'm thinking that I may do a bit of reading on the period and then try and tackle this again next year when I'm more clued up and when the book returns home to me.
Will be posted this weekend

Just picked it up at the post office. Thanks for sending!

I just got the book as a gift yesterday. So I will forward this one to the next reader (EmgeeNL). I will comment on it here, as soon as I have read my copy.

The book arrived today. It's going on my TBR for now.

February: I hate to say it, but the book just couldn't get me interested. I read over 250 pages before I decided to give up. And I really do hate to quit a book halfway. It could have something to do with a lot of things going on in my life through which I have a harder time concentrating and my lack in background of Great Britains history. Maybe I will try the book some other time and buy a dutch translation, maybe it helps :).

Katrinat, thanks for allowing me to keep the book a bit longer than normal. I appreciate it.

CONTROLLED RELEASE NOTES:

Droped the book of at the postoffice today. Hope you enjoy the read Franaloe.

Arrived here. Thanks for sending and sharing. All rings that come in at the moment seem to contain at least 500 pages, so I hope I will be able to read this book within a month. We'll see...!

I am surprised that this is the book that won the booker prize...Just like EmgeeNL I gave up halfway. I could not get into the story and it took too much efford to keep reading. Frustrating as it is to give up a book halfway (especially when it is a prize winning novel), it seems that this is what I just did. Too bad!
I will contact the next on the list to send the book on.

Off to Sidney1.

Just came back from my short Easter vacation to find this book waiting for me. What a whopper (clever way of sending it, franloe). Hope it's worth all those pages. Liked the first chapter so far, but I guess that doesn't mean much ...

This book is written in the unusual tense of the third person present (he goes, he walks …), an extremely rare tense for a novel. The present tense gives a sense of immediacy. It’s a clever choice and through it, the story becomes more relevant to the modern reader, although it takes place some 500 years ago. The third person, on the other hand, is less personal than the first person. The story is still told exclusively from Thomas Cromwell’s viewpoint, but I suppose Mantel preferred a certain narrative distance, rather than pretending to be in his head.

We do get to hear some of Cromwell’s thoughts, but a lot of the story is detailed observation, particularly on gowns and fabric, as he was a cloth merchant in his former life, and also about the weather, people’s mannerisms and ways of speech and so on. This novel was surely thoroughly researched, and Mantel manages to make the world of Henry VIII come alive. She is at her best when she describes Cromwell’s love for and loss of his wife and daughters. She truly makes his character come alive, and he is very likeable: reasonable in a mad world full of egomaniacs like Anne and Henry, fair, diplomatic, hard-working, kind, helping the pour, religiously open-minded …

The religious upheaval and emotional struggle that Henry forces his country to go through in order to annul the marriage to the woman he has been married to for 18 years are described so very well. The king’s fears and frustrations, the haggling about words and definitions, the core questions – was Katherine a virgin or not when he married her? Had she consumed the marriage to his brother or not? – are so well shown.

Yes, the story does have its lengths, and the style does get tiring after a while. This is not a book to read in one go, but to enjoy in slices.

What katrinat says about whole sections going on with the subject he, without it becoming clear who is meant, is really a bit annoying and unnecessary. I worked out that unless specified otherwise, he always refers to Thomas Cromwell. But it makes some parts unnecessarily hard to read. It’s difficult enough as it is to keep up with all those names and places. Every other man is called Thomas, every other woman either Mary or Anne. Thankfully, Mantel has added a five-page cast of characters at the beginning of the book, which I had to refer to again and again.

I’m not sure I’ll read the second part of Cromwell’s life, his downfall, which Mantel is currently writing. I greatly enjoyed this – but also because here Cromwell is the hero who succeeds in spite of his low birth and abusing father (what a great start to a novel, by the way: ‘So now get up’.)

The book is off to Mafarrimond tomorrow.

The book has arrived safely. I am really looking forward to this one.

I was really looking forward to reading this but have to say I was somewhat disappointed. The book was quite difficult to read.

Some parts were very enjoyable and flowed - particularly Cromwell's personal relationships. However the vast majority was quite laborious and difficult to follow.

I am surprised that this won the prize - I enjoyed most of the other short listed books better.

Sending onto Cross-patch. Enjoy!

Wolf Hall has arrived, thanks to our lovely postman who left it with nighbours rather than making me deal with the unhelpful opening times of the local sorting office. I have been looking forward to reading the prizewinner, but after reading your JE's I am not so sure. Well, there's only one way to find out, so I'd better get on with it!

I'm in the "wonderful"camp. I couldn't put it down! Although I was grateful for the advice to consider 'he' to always mean Thomas Cromwell!

Passed to a friend who hasn't read it - and you must!

leaving in the Parents Room on Ward D33 in the Children's Hospital