Elly Griffiths is my guilty pleasure. She’s done three crime series and I have all of them. There are 15 in the Ruth Galloway series. I thought I might reread Shogun this year. Picked up that, Tai Pan and Noble House at a charity shop last year. My sister first started learning Japanese from the original series 😂. True Grit sounds like a great one for me for the June on the Range event. I need to start collecting that Penguin monarchs series. Great video 😊

Have never read Shogun but saw the miniseries in the 80s with Richard Chamberlain. I’ve heard good things about the new show. I’m reading Cultural Amnesia by Clive James for People April, still working on Lonesome Dove for my mammoth, and reading Winters in the World by Eleanor Parker and A Distant Mirror by Barbara Tuchman for Q2 of Historathon. Oh and Claudius the God for There’s No Place Like Rome. Hope you enjoy your April reading!!

I’m hoping to get to some of William Dalrymple’s books this year as I also find the periods he writes about fascinating. I don’t have many options to choose from for the second quarter of Historathon so think I’ll go for Viking Britain by Thomas Williams or Matilda by Tracy Borman. I have far more options for the next two quarters. As for Shogun, I think I’ll just watch the Series. Have a great weekend Aaron!

I've never read Shogun but remember watching the Richard Chamberlain series which I thought was very well done. Your book about the East India Company looks good, I will look that up. I'm currently reading Lucy Worsley's book about Agatha Christie and really enjoying it, and that would qualify for people April I imagine.

I've read Shogun three times. Yes the ending was a bit rushed in terms of the build up to the big battle scene. Love this book. A great block buster of a historical novel and it certainly got into your mind. I don't think the differences in the culture was exaggerated. It culminated in the kamikaze pilots who were prepared to sacrifice themselves to try to sink American ships. If you are interested in this culture, try the book Hagakure. Here is a quote. “Meditation on inevitable death should be performed daily. Every day when one’s body and mind are at peace, one should meditate upon being ripped apart by arrows, rifles, spears and swords, being carried away by surging waves, being thrown into the midst of a great fire, being struck by lightning, being shaken to death by a great earthquake, falling from thousand-foot cliffs, dying of disease or committing seppuku at the death of one’s master. And every day without fail one should consider himself as dead” ― Yamamoto Tsunetomo. The original tv series of All Creatures is very good. Siegfried excellent.

I'm starting off Historathon Q2 with 1,000 Years of Annoying the French by Stephen Clarke. Usually I read a lot of biographies, so one of my new ones would fit the People event -- Shirley Jackson: A Rather Haunted Life by Ruth Franklin. For a long-term project, I thought I would start The Tale of Genji. But for context, The World of the Shining Prince: Court Life in Ancient Japan by Ivan Morris was recommended to read beforehand. This also fits with Q2.

Aaron, do you happen to know anything about Tom Holland's co-host's (Dominic Sandbrook's) books on English parliamentary politics of the 1960s and 1970s? Apparently he wrote 5 gigantic volumes of it, each of which are nearly 1,000 pages. They've all got stellar reviews on Goodreads, but can't find a single person who's read them.

I read the crossing places and thought it was fine, haven't read any more. I remember it kept commenting on Ruth Galloway's weight and I found it really unnecessary! Sorry you didn't love Shogun more, but great effort reading a 1000p book!! Not sure what to read for the next historathon...

I can relate to your comment that you want to like a book that you spend 1000 pages with. I am reading A Suitable Boy and I am finding it somewhat boring. I hate to dnf because I've read 400 pages and that feels like too much to read and then quit, but I am a bit disappointed at this point.