Wolf Hall... struggling...

[babber]

After reading several outstanding reviews for Wolf Hall (many of which on here) i was quite excited to start this book.

I am now quite gutted that I don't seem to be enjoying it... I'm only 2 chapters in but its becoming a bit of a chore rather than a pleasure to read... Am I missing something? Why does the auther keep referring to several people as 'he' during the same conversation? is it written in first person or not? I find this is very confusing and is meaning i have to keep re-reading parts to decipher who exactly is saying what... I read a lot, but maybe this is too 'high brow' for me. Just wondering should I persevere? will i be rewarded? does it become less of a slog as you go through it?
I hate giving up on books once i've started but I also hate not looking forward to reading on my way to work...

What's Hislit?

Sorry, my sort of makeup I guess, History Literature. Or History Lite.

GL, Am giggling as I've just been on a Shardlake thread and said I know I can't do the heavy literary stuff and prefer HistLite, (love that genre!)

BG, I've spent the day with three two year olds and they are just like Henry!

Sorry, I loved it - warts & all. I also adore A Place of Greater Safety. I didn't think any book could make me fall in love with both Desmoulins and Danton, and even have some sympathy for Robespierre. Passionate stuff!

Yum - Shardlake. I haven't read the new one yet.

Have instead been measuring out my life in tediously long Wolf-pages with not even a coffee spoon to motivate me.

I love travelling the UK after reading all of this. My partner lives in Deptford at the moment and I go to Greenwich wherever possible and imagine the old palace there. Was a little dissapointed I couldn't find a marker for it's remains, I think they're still doing something with it.

Sorry, should have been 'reading all of these' (as in history books, both coffee table proper-upperers and HisLitLite!)

I loved Wolf Hall, or rather I found I loved Thomas Cromwell . I think Hilary Mantel is writing a follow-up. Hope it comes out soon, although its got to have the ultimate sad ending!

Library audiobooks are your friend. Suddenly my 90 min daily dog-walk is all edumacational...

Sorry to disagree with the posts sbove but i didn't like it at all, i struggled to follow the storyline and found the ending anticlimactic to sau the least - i kept waiting for something to happen and..... nothing did. Dull, dull, dull.

Now Last Train to Lisbon - that's a cracker!

Join the club! It's a very common afflication. There will be a medical name for it soon. I got about a third of the way through but as I mostly read before I fall asleep at night I was finding it impossible to focus on the storyline and kept falling alseep and then having to recap the previous four pages - gave up in the end!

Lupin supine - a sleepy draught. Falls from my hands night by night.

I gave up on Night Train To Lisbon!

I can't agree that 'nothing happened' but I do think she could have condensed the 'waffle' and reached TC's death in this one.

I had one go at WH, and gave up.
Had a second run at it recently and I'm loving it - am now about 2/3 of the way through - this time it just suddenly clicked with me, and I'll definitely be reading the sequel.

For me, it wasn't that I didn't enjoy it - I did, very much, but I found it required my full attention and concentration - if that wandered for a couple of minutes I had no idea what was going on! It's a good read but certainly not an easy read. Better for on holiday when you can devote great swathes of time to it without dropping off to sleep after a hard day.

first time I read it i stuck with it for some odd reason (very annoyed by "he"s too). Afterwards I felt like I had really missed something (read it as dozing off each night) so read it straight through again and LOVED it and can't wait for the sequel.
I't quite a handy crash course in power mongering amongst other things.

it's