I’m going to do the full rundown of my vacation reads at some point in the future but today I want to talk about a book I very nearly finished before leaving (you cannot bring a HARDBACK BOOK with 40 pages remaining on vacation, it’s against the law) as incentive for me to dive back in when I return, even with the heft of eight other completed books clogging my brain. It’s The Pretender, by Jo Harkin, and it’s about a young boy raised by a widower farmer until around age 10, at which point he’s told that the boys he thought were brothers are not his brothers and his father is not his father and he is not, by birth, a farmer at all — but the next in line to the throne, secreted away at birth and publicly replaced by a decoy son.
It’s based on a true story from the time of the Tudors’ ascent to the throne in 15th century England, and it is wry and beautifully voiced and deliciously immersive. If you like Hilary Mantel, specifically the Wolf Hall trilogy, this is very much your shit.
But what are you reading? What’s hitting, what’s not, what turned out to be just not for you, what’s next? Tell us everything — and try and use the Culture Study thread norm of PUTTING ALL BOOK TITLES IN CAPS (it makes it a lot easier for people to scan and navigate the threads).
As always, this is a private, subscriber-only space; don’t be butts about what you’re reading and let’s keep this one of the good places on the internet.