Under The Covers

 A new word for the new year...

At first I thought this sounded new and contrived, but it first appeared in print over a century ago.  The word is was coined by American writer Christopher Morley. In his novel The Haunted Bookshop, published in 1919, a bookseller suggests to a Miss Chapman that she take a book up to her room and read it in bed (if she wants), and then questions, "Are you a librocubicularist?" Miss Chapman is taken aback by the word, but another character, Helen, chimes in: "He only means you are fond of reading in bed. I've been waiting to hear him work that word into the conversation. He made it up, and he's immensely proud of it."

My bedtime reading has been somewhat sporadic recently, late nights, exhaustion, and lack of concentration mean it has taken me a while to finish the book I started in November. It was £1 in CS, and as I am fond of Tudor mysteries, on the page and on screen, I thought it looked worth trying.
I have really enjoyed it and found another for 50p in December - so I hope to read through them all. There are plenty available in the Norfolk Library Catalogue.
The book is in the Giordano Bruno series. One review explains "Giordano Bruno as a character was intriguing and keeps being so throughout each book in the series. He is complex, with different strands like his religious history, academic studies, and his spy and undercover work. Bruno was a real person who was in England spying for Francis Walsingham, although the exact nature of his assignments doesn’t seem to be known, and it looks as though he left England in 1585 so couldn’t have been involved in the Babington plot in 1586. A bit of historical license is OK, and Bruno is such an interesting character that I can imagine he would have been involved in the Babington conspiracy if given the opportunity."

I enjoyed it, the descriptions, the characters, the plot twists - although readers of a nervous disposition may struggle with the very graphic accounts of Tudor torture and executions. Parris is an expert on the Tudor period, and seems to give an accurate portrayal of the times. It has certainly whetted my appetite for more Bruno mysteries.

Definitely *****