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Just finished watching Duck Soup.

It’s a tragicomic ritual I’ve observed for decades now. Whenever our country gets into a new war-like situation, I get incensed and sorrowful and sullen. So I screen this Marx Brothers war parody from 1933 and while it doesn’t change anything it reminds me that war is crazy and that humankind is mad and bent on self-destruction. That ridiculousness and lunacy helps me maintain balance and a modicum of sanity in a society whose bloodthirstiness I cannot fathom.

Last night’s announcement that the U.S. will be arming Syrian rebels against their ignoble dictator is not, I realize, any sort of declaration of war. It’s not even necessarily an altogether bad thing, though my own absolutist pacifist nature does not really allow for such gradations and generalizations.

But the door has just been opened for further justifications and threats and power plays. It’s disheartening that even before President Obama announced that the Syrian government had crossed the “red line” and that U.S. intervention was now inevitable, some Republican senators had already leaked the plan and were saying it hadn’t gone far enough.

This is scary talk, on a subject that should be discussed much more carefully. The situation is also full of a lot of bad signals. A lot of international conflicts have conveniently served as distractions from domestic scandals in a presidential administration. The timing is too right for that right now.

Upstarts! Fredonia’s gone to war.

Getting my house in order before the International Festival of Arts & Ideas starts taking up most of my time for the next fortnight.

Here, for the first time in months, is a list of where you could find my writings. It’s been a pretty busy time, which may explain why my blogging has been so sparse here and at New Haven Theater Jerk.

I’ll be working on that blogging discipline, as I hope to start a new page shortly, to promote my first-Monday-of-every-month storytelling series Get to the Point! at Cafe Nine here in New Haven.

So here’s where the other words are:

• Last fall and winter I was helping Hashim A’Allah of Hallah Edutainment with a broadcast journalism project he set up at Metropolitan Business Academy, the business-oriented magnet high school in New Haven. I did some teaching and some blogging with the students. The MBA program ended a few months back, but Hashim has other similar projects thriving at other schools in other states, and it’s possible I may return to the fold sometime. The Hallah Edutainment site, with some of my work, is at http://hallahedutainment.com/.

• In March my dear friend and fellow theater critic Lou Harry and I were the advance team for a new-media experiment supported by the USC Annenberg School of Journalism. The idea was an extension of Engine 28, where a group of arts journalists covered the heck of several arts conferences and festivals in Los Angeles in the summer of 2011. This time, we hit the 2013 Humana Festival of New American Plays at the Actors Theatre of Louisville in Kentucky. Lou and I filled the site with all kinds of stuff, some of which has since been removed, but most of which remains, at http://www.engine31.org/

• While I was in Indianapolis visiting Lou Harry prior to hitting Kentucky, I got a surprise phone call from Paul Bass at the New Haven Independent asking if I’d review a film for that wondrous hyperlocal news site’s new arts section. I have been quoted in the Independent a number of times, but until now had not written for it. Paul and I worked at adjacent desks for a decade at the New Haven Advocate, and it was nice having him for an editor again, if only for a day. The review is here: http://www.newhavenindependent.org/index.php/archives/entry/freak-out_plays_well_on_big_screen/

• I have a story in the current (summer) issue of the New England visual arts magazine Artscope. It’s a feature about the Create.Here.Now project which unites civic leaders, property owners and artists to stimulate underused or blighted areas of Connecticut cities with creative and potentially sustainable arts enterprises. Since the article was published, there’s been good news about the program. It received a major national grant and will expand from its pilot program in Bridgeport to several dozens towns and cities statewide.

• I write two regular features for New Haven Living, a slick new culture magazine covering the city in which I’ve lived for half my life now. I do a calendar-highlights thing called Best Bets and another column where I describe a different New Haven neighborhood each issue. I’ve also down a Spring Arts preview feature, a story on New Haven theater history and a couple of other things for them. Best thing about it is that my old friend Frank Cohen is the local editor of the thing.

• For New Haven Living’s sister publication Hartford Magazine, I did something on the new children’s theater program at Hartford Stage. That story also ran in a new magazine from the same publishers, CT Family Fun.

• I write for another Connecticut-based magazine as well. Hoffman Decades is a quarterly general-interest publication sponsored by the Hoffman auto dealerships in Hartford. I’ve done two or more stories for each of the last three issues, including the cover stories for each of those: a history of the Hartford Civic Center/XL Center, a top 40 of signature events in the history of Hartford and a history of Lincoln Continental automobiles (for which I came up with a list of songs about that car spanning most of the 20th century). Good fun.

• I continue to write regularly for the New Haven Advocate, which I served in a number of different editorial positions for 17 years before quitting the desk job to go freelance in 2007. My online work for the paper, which gets posted directly to www.ct.com, is too voluminous to recount here, but I was especially proud to be asked to write an obituary for the great local pop-rocker Steven Deal, and to plug a host of worthy plays and concerts. In the print edition of the Advocate, I continue to be the main theater critic and the go-to guy for features on the Meriden Daffodil Festival, the International Festival of Arts & Ideas and other great local arts traditions. The site’s search engine can be frustratingly spotty, but if you Google may name and the name of any play at the Long Wharf or Yale Rep (and in some cases Westport Country Playhouse and Goodspeed Opera House) you’ll likely pull up a ct.com review of it. Recent New Haven Advocate features I’ve done include an interview with jazz pianist Donn Trenner and a cover story on the Arts & Ideas festival.

• For the Hartford Advocate, I write the Roundabout theater-preview column bi-weekly. My favorite recent one connected the demise of the TV show Smash to the Hartford-bound national tour of Catch Me If You Can, featuring the same composers.

• Then there’s the Daily Nutmeg. I do three articles a week for this online magazine, which has a website at www.dailynutmeg.com but is best accessed through a free subscription which lets you receive one story every day by email. One of those articles every week is “This Week in New Haven,” which highlights upcoming cultural events in the city.

• I won’t bother to include all the links—the Nutmeg site has a fine search function—but here are the feature stories I’ve done over the last few months:

A bus trip down Route 34 from New Haven to Derby. (The story ran March 1).

Coverage of the Edwardian Opulence exhibition at the Yale Center for British Art. (Ran March 6.)

A joint review of Michael Bolton’s autobiography and Tony Consiglio’s memoirs of his years as Frank Sinatra’s confidante. (Ran March 8.)

A comic concept about all the blue-colored or blue-themed things in New Haven. (Ran March 13.)

A Saint Patrick’s Day piece about New Haven’s Irish mayor Frank Murphy, the years before there was a big parade, and other things. (Ran March 15.)

A litany of Paul Giamatti’s theatrical accomplishments at Yale, prior to his grand return in Hamlet this year at the Yale Rep. (Ran March 20.)
DelMonico’s hat shop! DelMonico’s hat shop! (Ran March 22.)

A musing on slogans and messages posted on New Haven streets. (Ran March 27.)
A local baseball story. (Ran March 29)

Coverage of the Arts & Ideas 2013 festival announcement. (Ran April 3.)
A profile of Merwin’s art framing shop on Chapel Street. (Ran April 5.)

A piece on the collaboration betwen Long Wharf Theatre and New Haven Free Public Library, which created a bookcase in the theater lobby stocked with titles relating to the current production. (Ran April 10.)
A preview of the Wooster Square Cherry Blossom Festival. (Ran April 12)

Praise for Artspace. (Ran April 18)
A pleasnat walk down Chapel Street, from one end of New Haven to the other. (Ran April 19.)

A brief history of New Haven, to mark its 375th birthday. (Ran April 24.)
A comment on how many New Haven musicians were performing at the Meriden Daffodil Festival. (Ran April 26.)

May Day coverage, including labor history and the annual festivities on New Haven Green. (Ran May 1.)
Robert Greenberg’s extraordinary private museum of New Haven history. (Ran May 3.)

An interview with Long Wharf Theatre Associate Artistic Director Eric Ting regarding his directing of Bruce Norris’ Clybourne Park. (Ran May 8.)

A preview of the annual ArtWalk in Westville Village. (Ran May 10.)

Another “walk down…” piece, this time along Howard Avenue to the waterfront. (Ran May 15.)
Something about Sleeping Giant State Park, after I’d been on a field trip there with my daughter Sally’s third grade class. (Ran May 17.)

A concept piece on outdoor seating at downtown eateries. (Ran May 22.)
A Memorial Day feature, with a strong pacifist theme. (Ran May 24.)

A profile of guitarist Shawn Persinger, focusing on his new book The 50 Greatest Guitar Books. (Ran May 29.)
A thought piece on “change,” as when shops close downtown while students are on summer break. (May 31.)

A preview of summer concerts on New Haven Green and elsewhere. (Ran June 5)

A fun interview with the acting ensemble and Artistic Director of the 2013 Yale Summer Cabaret season. (Ran June 7.)
The three churches on New Haven Green, as they celebrate the 200th anniversary of their respective buildings. (Ran June 12.)

An Arts & Ideas preview, on the eve of the 2013 festival. (Ran June 14.)

That’s enough for now. Don’t feel like I’m expecting you to read it all, or even any of it.

Nice to be able to recap all that work from recent months. Am kind of amazed I got all that done. Accomplishment is cool.

In 2003 Richard C. Levin, President of Yale, published The Work of the University. A decade later, he’s just produced its sequel, The Worth of the University.

Now he’s retiring, he can write these:

The Worm of the University. (Composting comes to the sustainable-food Yale Dining Services.)

The Whirr of the University. (Only way to get from class to class, with the campus expanding so broadly, is to take a helicopter.)

The Woot of the University. (A necessarily brief history of hip-hop at Yale.)

The Woof of the University. (Bulldog! Bulldog! Rah! Rah! Rah!)

The Whorl of the University. (Yale has its fingerprints everywhere.)

The Wart of the University. (What’s that on Elihu Yale’s face in the old portraits?)

For many people, the Meriden Daffodil Festival is simply a great spring festival, one of the outdoor fried-dough and touring-carnival extravaganzas held in glorious springtime in a lush city park.

But for the Connecticut local music community, it’s much more than that.

This growth from the city park affair to unparalleled local band showcase is due largely to one man, Rob DeRosa, and a horde of Daffodil volunteers. DeRosa spends months every year investigating new talent, keeping in touch with established acts, and creating a balanced two-day schedule of bands loud, soft, rocky, folky, melodic, raw, tribute-oriented, and excessively original.

According to DeRosa, exactly half of the 36 bands booked this year are new to the festival. Some are brand new acts; others (such as the nationally known Poor Old Shine) are well-established, but have just never made it out to Meriden before this. The others are reliable and popular acts who’ve rocked the Daffodil on other occasions, some of them numerous times. But just because those bands are have played before doesn’t mean they’re safe selections. I don’t think you can look at a list that has The Peacock Flounders, Mold Monkies, The Sawtelles and the great Mark Mulcahy on it and call it common festival fare.

Yes, Mark Mulcahy. The Miracle Legion founder and acclaimed solo artist makes a welcome return to the Daffodil Festival after an absence of several years following tragedy and upheaval in his personal life. While away, Mulcahy’s songs became the subject of a 2009 tribute album, Ciao My Shining Star, which included interpretations of Mulcahy tunes by Thom Yorke, Michael Stipe, Frank Black, A.C. Newman, Chris Collingwood, Juliana Hatfield, Ben Kweller, Dumptruck and dozens of other acts.

Other clear highlights of Daffodil 2013: Hartford’s Little Ugly, New London’s wondrous Daphne Lee Martin, the educated jazz combo Sparkplug, instrumentally inventive folkies Goodnight Blue Moon, alt-rocker Hostage Calm, singer/songwriter Becky Kessler and Falcon Ridge festival showcase winners Poor Old Shine.

With rare exceptions—The Manchurians, the now-presumably-retired Reducers, or  those with deep Meriden connections such as Sean & Kelley of the Omnibus Band (playing their 18^th consecutive Daffodil Festival), the cover bands Chico & Friends and 691, and singer/songwriter/bandleader Frank Critelli—Rob DeRosa avoids booking any act for two years in a row. This not only assures variety, it proclaims without doubt how many worthy Connecticut acts there are out there to choose from in the first place. Cool returnees this year include Christopher Bousquet, The Furors, The Sawtelles, The Ivory Bills, The Mold Monkies and of course Mark Mulcahy.

Without further ado (and I realize that’s just been a heck of a lot of ado), here’s the 2013 line-up for the Meriden Daffodil Festival. I’m honored that Rob DeRosa has entrusted me with this information; this is a scoop, the first place you’re reading this list.

The 2013 Meriden Daffodil Festival takes place Saturday, April 27 from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. and Sunday, April 28 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Meriden’s Hubbard Park. There are three separate stages for live bands: the Welcome Stage (with its own bleacher seating) near the festival entrance; the Band Shell stage near the carnival rides; and the Food Tent stage, where bands play to a captive audience of thousands of hungry people standing in line at dozens of food booths.

The dates, times and stag locations for each band will play have yet to be announced. The festival’s own website is here.

The Alternate Routes. The nationally touring acoustic/folk/rock/and beyond act that grew out of a friendship at Fairfeld University. The Alternate Routes get one of the prime “Fireworks Show” slots, playing on the Welcome Stage whilst bombs burst in air.

Breakthrough Frequencies. A modern rock act with Meriden connections.

Chico & Friends. The Meriden-based cover band which plays every year.

Christopher Bousquet. The poet who filters West Coast country rock influences through acute East Coast sensibilities.

Dan Stevens Trio. The noted blues guitarist.

Daphne Lee Martin. Winner of both the Advocate Grand Band Slam and the Connecticut Music Awards, the Raise the Rent frontwoman is more than a little bit country. Her new album is Moxie.

Ellison Jackson. Not a guy but a three-piece Americana band based in Berlin, Ct.

Food. A jazz band, presumably not the European combo of the same name. Do you have any idea how hard it is to Google “food jazz band” and find a meaningful result?

Frank Critelli. Never misses a Daffodil Festival, where he’s played with a number of different bands and also served as a host.

The Furors. The grand return of frequent Daffodil duo Derek & Tom, whose singular brand of two-man high-energy pop has endured since the mid-1970s.

Goodnight Blue Moon. The Daffodil debut of the tremendously popular and emotionally moving Americana band. The “Fireworks Show” attraction in the festival’s food tent.

The Gonkus Brothers. Covers, Irish songs, Mersey beat and more from these Meriden favorites.

The Guru. The return of the young neo-psychedelicians.

Hannah Fair. Daffodil debut of the blonde “Lonesome for You” singer/songwriter.

Hostage Calm. First Daffodil gig for the nationally touring rock/hard pop act that’s been around for five years or so now and have been comfortably compared to The Smiths and Quicksand.

The Ivory Bills. Most Daffodil fests feature some manifestation of local band statesman James Velvet, who fronts several pop or acoustic acts and is the longtime co-host of the Local Bands show on WPLR.

Kelley & Sean. Low-key covers by members of the Omnibus band; their 18^th Daffodil appearance.

Becky Kessler. This Advocate Grand Band Slam winning singer/songwriter has a rich electric sound influenced by everyone from Jeff Buckley to Nina Simone.

Last Licks. The classic rock combo’s Daffodil Festival debut is also the Bandshell “Fireworks Show” on Saturday night. Last Licks is known for exceptional ‘70s covers: a Queen medley, Elton John’s Funeral for a Friend, Grand Funk Railroad’s “We’re an American Band,” etc.

Little Ugly. Best Rock Band winners in the Advocate Grand Band Slam, Little Ugly is literate, eclectic and features a violin as well as guitars and stuff.

The Manchurians. Blues-rock exemplars led by Roger C. Reale.

Mark Mulcahy. The long-awaited return of the beloved Connecticut bandleader (Miracle Legion!), singer/songwriter, poet and spiritual magnet of the old New Haven music scene.

The Mold Monkies. Nick Appleby and Russell Shaddox’s loud swirly pop band. Since the last time the Mold Monkies played the Daffodil Festival, Thad Brown has left the band and Gerry Giaimo is now the lead guitarist. (Wade Rice drums.)

1974. Daffodil debut for the longform-conceptual-song-cycle bunch awarded Best New Band in the Advocate’s Grand Slam poll

Orquesta Afinke. And now for something completely different. The first Daffodil gig for this eight-piece salsa band, well known on the Latino club circuit hereabouts.

Paper Hill Casket Company. Daffodil debut. The PHCC album Undertow came out just a few months ago. The band describes itself as “Gothic Americana,” and blends bluegrass, rock riffs and ethereal clashing cymbals.

The Peacock Flounders. I’ve really got to stop referring to these guys as “a local band supergroup,” since I believe this post-punk pop/rock concoction (now a decade old) has lasted longer than nearly all the other bands these guys have been in. Ron Sutfin, Jeff Wiederschall, Kerry Miller and Sal Paradise have all been part of the scene since the late 1970s.

Poor Old Shine. Daffodil debut for the highly regarded Americana/roots band from Storrs which recently earned top honors at the Falcon Ridge Emerging Artist Showcase.

The Radiation. First Daffodil show for WNPR and CPTV broadcaster Ray Hardman and his psychedelic garage/punk outfit. The repertoire ranges from the Yardbird’s “Shape of Things to Come” to The Sonics’ “Have Love Will Travel.”

Rani D’Arbo & Daisy Mayhem. Middletown’s D’Arbo brings her blissful fiddle folk (featuring Scott Kessel’s 95% recycled percussion set-up, plus Anand Nayak on guitars and bassist/banjoist/ukeist Andrew Kinsey) to the Daffodil fest for the first time.

River City Slim & The Zydeco Hogs. Hartford’s jammy blues hogs are back again, washboard at the ready.

Rob Messore. If you’re a parent or a child, you know that acclaimed classical and acoustic guitarist has another side of him: a children’s entertainer. As such, he opens for SteveSongs.

The Sawtelles. The area’s prevailing “nerve rock” husband-wife duo are marvelous mavericks of the music scene. With Peter’s alternately tuned guitars and Julie’s sparse, stand-up drum kit, they provide simplicity and edge.

691. Meriden-friendly cover band, specializing in Motown hits.

Sparkplug. This Wesleyan-based jazz/funk quartet pays tribute to the late guitarist Melvin Sparks (with whom Sparkplug organist Beau Sasser and drummer Bill Carbone played regularly for years; percussionist Jamemurrell Stanley and saxophonist David Davis sat in frequently with the Sparks combo), but has also devised their own sound and style.

SteveSongs. The Connecticut-based, nationally known (and televised, even—on PBS!) children’s entertainer plays a special family show at 1 p.m. Sunday at the festival.

Turn On Your Love Light, Bobby Blue Bland. The great popularizer of the love light. This song has been covered by everyone from the Grateful Dead to the Blues Brothers.

Love Light, CNBLUE. A Korean pop boy-band. Can’t tell what they mean by love light, but it’s something smooth and creamy judging by their vocals.

Lovelight, Robbie Williams. Crazy video in which the heartthrob entertains a factory full of uniformed models, like a cross between Fritz Lang’s Metropolis and Robert Palmer’s “Addicted to Love” video. The song was composed and originally recorded by Lewis Taylor in 2003, three years before Williams got to it. The lyrics are a rarity among Love Light songs, in that they comment on such a light dimming:

I wanna know

Baby when you’re with me

Who do you think you’re foolin’?

Making me feel so sure

Turnin’ your lovelight down again.”

Lovelight, ABBA

This one begins with a complaint that a room’s too dark… until “you” arrive. So a love light is like a flashlight?

You must have a lovelight
Everything around you is lovelight
And I can feel your love everywhere
Maybe even when you’re not there
The lovelight
Everything around you is lovelight
You’re shining like a star in the night
I won’t let you out of my sight
I don’t want to lose you, I don’t want to lose your lovelight

Love Light in Flight, Stevie Wonder.

Love light in flight
Fuel injection passion

That’s the chorus. Really confuses the issue. Is love light similar to a lightwave or the speed of light now?

When the Lovelight Starts Shining Through His Eyes, The Supremes. The group’s first Top 40 hit, written and produced by the legendary Holland-Dozier-Holland triumvirate.

The Love Light, 1921 silent film drama starring Mary Pickford about a female lighthousekeeper in Italy who takes a shine to a sailor who is revealed to be a German spy.

Love Life, The Rutles. What’s an “F” or a “T” among friends? Comes closer to the meaning of “Love Light” than any of the above:

Love is the meaning of life

Life is the meaning of love

Love is the meaning of life

Life is the meaning of love

Love is the meaning of life

Life is the meaning of love

Love is the meaning of life

Life is the meaning of love…

Frankenstein: Dead and Alive, by Dean Koontz

I meant to polish off this audiobook quickly in October in honor of Halloween, but it stayed alive on my iPhone, Frankenstein-like, in dribs and drabs, right through December. I finished listening yesterday while chopping firewood, and was astonished that the book—the end of the main trilogy of Dean Koontz’s clever post-technological update of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein legend—ends with a reference to Christmas. The brilliant, elusive and conflicted character Deucalion (the original Frankenstein monster, now joined by a whole breed of other people created from body parts of deceased humans) recovering in an abbey, where he’s considered “the best Santa Claus.”

More than that, this is a series about redemptions, reshaping of opinions about life and death, and a sort of divine justice (visited upon a misguided creator himself) wrapped up in horror-novel scenarios.

Not the Christmas revelation I suspected, but a welcome one. The first three Dean Koontz Frankenstein books are fun action-thrillers melded with social satire, scientific know-how, and far-reaching philosophy. Koontz has chosen to continue the series and the timing seems right for me to continue the plunge.

The band is called Not Even a Mouse, and they gig in a deserted club on nights when it’s simply not worth the effort to open the place to the public. Like Christmas Eve. It’s an all-star, all-friend band whose members have no real families to go home too. Their family is at the club, so they’re allowed to sneak in and jam all night.

It’s technically an invitation-only show, but folks rap on the door and usually are allowed in. Sometimes they bring presents, or an ornament for the makeshift “tree” made of broken drumsticks, guitar strings and other odds and ends. Sometimes the guests sit in with the band, which is usually a gift but can occasionally be such a clatter we rise from our seats to see what is the matter.

We’ll keep the location and the players anonymouse. Don’t want to chill the buzz. Just call them Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donder and Blitzen.

Rest assured that the rocking is hung by the chimney with care.

At the Bullfinch tomorrow: Von Will and the Hodies, with post-Christmas English grog cheer… At Hamilton’s: back to reminiscing with Les & The Carols plus Post-Lewd… At D’ollaires: An Evening With… rap siren Jayuss Got Back! You think we’re kidding…

Mar and I pooled our savings, went to the landlord and suggested renegotiating the lease. Merry us.

“What Goes On,” The Beatles. Written by John Lennon for his pre-Beatles band The Quarrymen, it was altered and given to Ringo Starr to sing on the Rubber Soul album. It’s a throwback to the Carl Perkins country-rock sound The Beatles so admired.

“What Goes On,” The Velvet Underground. Curious but ultimately upbeat. The Velvet Underground really doesn’t get enough credit for their more positive stuff. “Lady be good, do what you should, you know it will be all right.”

“What Goes On,” Mobb Deep. “Got all caught up in Charlotte’s Web,” Prodigy sings. Got to love the literary reference.

“What Goes, On,” The Archies. From the band’s last and most “mature” album, This is Love, where they forsake bubblegum for soft-rock, R&B and even funk sounds. This one has a tricky intro that lures you in with exotic rhythms, jazz bass and sultry guitar. At nearly four minutes, it’s the longest song in the Archies canon. “You’ve been gone. What goes on? What goes on?”

This is the year that The Godfather 4 came out in book form—as The Family Corleone, with Ed Falco revising an unmade Mario Puzo screenplay into book form.

This week, a novelist got the sort of acclaim not seen in the arts since the films The Godfather and The Godfather II both won Academy Awards for Best Picture. Violent historical thrillers, not to mention thrillers, don’t usually get that sort of attention.

Hilary Mantel won the Man Booker Prize this year for her new novel Bring Up the Bodies. She won the prize previously in 2009 for Wolf Hall. The Man Booker Prize, like the Oscars, not only carries great prestige but tends to turn its winners into blockbusters. Winners of the annual literary prize regularly rake in millions of dollars in sales. Wolf Hall had already become the biggest bestseller of all Man Booker winners.

Bring Up the Bodies is a continuation of Wolf Hall. Both books chronicle life and political struggles of Thomas Cromwell, told in tandem with the tale of the growth in power, confidence and maturity of King Henry VIII.

They’re pretty amazing books, distinguished by vivid stretches of snappy dialogue. Mantel humanizes these historical characters in a number of other impressive ways. There’s a sense of menace, mission and emotional anguish that gives the stories the epic feel they require, while adding a humanity and reality and vulnerability to the exercise. There are psychological underpinnings, but they’re rich and grounded rather than cheap analyses.

I “read” Wolf Hall by alternating between the audiobook version and the print edition. The audiobook is read by Simon Slater, who brings a real bite to all that testy dialogue between monarchs, religious leaders and their cagy advisors. (The audio edition of Bring Up the Bodies has been entrusted to a different reader, also named Simon: Simon Vance. I haven’t heard it yet.) In both books, information is inparted through loaded pronouncements, well articulated inner thoughts, and subtle doses of historical context:

He gets Sir Francis round and gets him drunk. He, Cromwell, can trust himself; when he was young, he learned to drink with Germans. It’s over a year since Francis Bryan quarreled with George Boleyn: over what, Francis hardly remembers, but the grudge remains, and until his legs go from under him he is able to act out the most florid bits of the row, standing up and waving his arms. Of his cousin Anne he says, ‘You like to know where you are with a woman. Is she a harlot, or a lady? Anne wants you to treat her like the Virgin Mary, but she also wants you to put your cash on the table, do the business and get out.’

Sit Francis in intermittently pious, as conspicuous sinners tend to be. Lent is here: ‘It is time for you to enter into your yearly frenzy of penitence, is it not?’

Francis pushes up the patch on his blind eye, and rubs the scar tissue; it itches, he explains. ‘Of course,’ he says, ‘Wyatt’s had her.’

He, Thomas Cromwell, waits.

But then Francis puts his head down on the table, and begins to snore.

‘The Vicar of Hell,’ he says thoughtfully. He calls for boys to come in. ‘Take Sir Francis home to his own people. But wrap him up warm, we may need his testimony in the days to come.’

He wonders exactly how much you’d leave on the table, for Anne. She’s cost Henry his honour, his peace of mind. To him, Cromwell, she is just another trader. He admires the way she’s laid out her goods. He personally doesn’t want to buy; but there are customers enough.

That deft screenplay-like blend of careful description, constant reminders of who is speaking or thinking, and delineations between thought and expression is constantly invigorating. You never get lost in Hillary Mantel’s books—she nimbly leads you around all the fussy factoids which rise like stalagmites in all historical fiction. She creates characters and enlivens them with context.

Interestingly, Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies have already been compared to Puzo’s Godfather books and films by a number of alert critics. Mantel’s books, like Puzo’s, are deeper and richer and more fulfilling than the overstuffed lit genres they tend to be lumped with. Those genres can partly explain the extraordinary popularity of these works. But they transcend, and they deserve awards.