213. Eamon Duffy, Marking the Hours. A beautifully illustrated and researched examination of the role of Books of Hours in late medieval and early modern England. Duffy has a particular viewpoint (as anyone who's read Stripping the Altars will know) but he is unbeatable as a historian of the medieval church. This book has gorgeous reproductions of ( Read more... )

These are the top 106 books most often marked as "unread" by LibraryThing's users (as of today). As usual, bold what you have read, italicize what you started but couldn't finish, and strike through what you couldn't stand.

Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell
Anna Karenina
Crime and Punishment
Catch-22
One Hundred Years of Solitude
Wuthering Heights
( Read more... )

212. Debbie Macomber, A Good Yarn. Audrey sent me Liz's copy of the second installment in this series. It's as delightful as the first and there's something rather special about reading it while knitting. I've never knitted socks because my great aunt used to give me hand knitted bed socks and I've never found them that comfortable but the patterns ( Read more... )

I went to see Branagh's film of As You Like It earlier on today. It's well acted, well directed, entertaining ... but bizarrely set in late 19th century Japan. Since the text continues to mention and feature the Forest of Arden, the Japanese aspects seem a bit peculiar. I'd been looking forward to seeing Adrian Lester as Oliver de Boys (I love him ( Read more... )

211. The Medieval Murderers, The Sword of Shame. Please, if ever I look like I'm going to read a co-authored novel again, stop me. This was contrived and silly. The only segment I enjoyed was the Susanna Gregory chapter. Perhaps the book is aimed only at people who've read every one of the novelists featured; a short story is certainly not ( Read more... )

Happy birthday to Lynne and Karen :-)

210. R.N. Swanson, Religion and Devotion in Europe, c.1215-c.1515. Swanson cleverly uses the IVth and Vth Lateran councils as the date limits of his hugely comprehensive study. It's definitely more focused on England than on Europe (which for my purposes is good since I'm only using Middle English texts for my thesis!) and perhaps could have ( Read more... )

Richard Marks, Image and Devotion in Late Medieval England. A beautifully presented and meticulously researched compendium of late medieval iconography. Using the documentary evidence of wills to supplement the scant physical evidence remaining after the reformation, Marks constructs a picture of how decoration in churches was an integral part of ( Read more... )

208. Marti Leimbach, Daniel isn't Talking. Leimbach shows how effectively an experience from life can be the genesis of a new creation. She has an autistic son and therefore the story of a mother with a three year old boy whose communication difficulties are diagnosed as moderate autism might be seen to be purely autobiographical. However Leimbach ( Read more... )

207. Reading Medieval Images: The Art Historian and The Object, ed. by Elizabeth Sears and Thelma K. Thomas. A diverse collection of essays on aspects of medieval art history. Each takes an object, painting or piece of architecture as its focus and there are some nice colour plates at the end of the book. It's a shame that those in the text are