Off The Shelf

These are a few recent good reads I've enjoyed during January, in case anyone is suffering shortage of reading matter during the dark winter months. 

"Ooh! It's a new Shardlake..." 

C J Sansom – The Shardlake Series

(Dissolution, Dark Fire, Sovereign, Revelation, Heartstone)

The research which has gone into these satisfying historical crime novels puts them way ahead of the rest of the genre. The mysteries are set thoroughly into the historical and political context of Henry VIII’s reign, with a wealth of detail that even Philippa Gregory would struggle to match – although arguably Sansom’s love of detail gets somewhat overwhelming in his most recent novel, Heartstone. The books are sequential, featuring the same main characters, but are sufficiently self-contained that you could start anywhere in the series quite happily. The first three – Dissolution, Dark Fire and Sovereign – are the best of the bunch, with standards slipping slightly with Revelation (good, but drawing a little too obviously on Eco’s The Name of the Rose) and Heartstone (where the increasingly-tiresome Shardlake survives the sinking of the Mary Rose), although not enough to make you wish he’d stopped after three. Read it if you like historical fiction, crime fiction, combinations of the two, the medieval period, or history in general. Worth a try even if you don’t.     

Did you see...?

Douglas Adams – Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency

For anyone who saw the BBC adaptation over the Christmas period – no, the book is almost nothing like it. However, this follows in the fine tradition of most Douglas Adams’ adaptations, including ones done by the man himself, and thus is almost permissible. The book is less well-known than the Hitchhiker’s series, but is quite my favourite of the Douglas Adams canon. In typical Adams style, it features a plot based on an unmade Doctor Who story, several highly-eccentric Cambridge dons, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, a dodo, and the beginning of life on earth, as well as the marvellous line: “There is no such word as “impossible” in my dictionary. In fact, everything between “herring” and “marmalade” appears to be missing.” Worth reading if only for the beauty of lines like that.  

Christian reading

Julian Hardyman - Glory Days in the Bible

Somewhat against my will, I’ve found myself rather liking this book. Written by the pastor of a Baptist church in Cambridge which is a hang-out for a third of Cambridge’s CU, it’s an engaging exploration of how Christians can apply their faith to their “non-religious” jobs. Many of us have the sense that we can somehow do our ordinary work to the glory of God – this book articulates this nicely and backs it up with plenty of Bible quotes. The Bible studies at the end of each chapter are probably helpful, if you like that sort of thing; and the chapter on creativity and the arts is worthwhile and written with real feeling. For a relatively easy read, it provides plenty of food for thought.     

Further Off The Shelf recommendations to follow on an irregular basis... If you would like to continue keeping up, please follow my blog (cer52.blogspot.com)