It’s Wednesday, and as we have a Papal conclave starting next week, I’m bringing you a Recommendsday themed around the Vatican City and or the Catholic Church. You’re welcome.
Of course one of the big movies of Oscar season was Conclave, which is based on a book of the same name by Robert Harris. So you could read that or if you haven’t already seen the film, now might be the perfect time! But before Conclave, if you’d asked me to think of a book that’s set around the Vatican I would have said Angels and Demons, which is the first book in Dan Brown’s Robert Langdon series. This has the Illuminati and a bomb in the Holy See on the eve of Conclave. This was the third Dan Brown I read, 20 or so years ago and I had started to spot his tropes and patterns by that point, but there’s a reason he’s sold so many books – he’s very easy to read, particularly if you’re not a big reader. There’s a sixth book coming in the autumn – and all of the others have also had strong links to religion in some way. I still think the Da Vinci Code is probably the best of them though.
After not having thought about these books for probably actual years, I’m now mentioning Gyles Brandreth’s Oscar Wilde myseries twice in just a couple of weeks – as book five in that series The Vatican Murders (if you’re buying on Kindle) or Oscar Wilde and the Vatican Murders (if you’re buying in paperback) sees Wilde and Conan Doyle in the Holy See in the aftermath of the death of Pope Pius IX – my review from all the way back in 2016 (!) says it’s a bit like a Victorian Da Vinci Code, so it would seem like a really apt choice for this post!
Not set in the Vatican, but very much about the Catholic Church is Umberto Eco’s In the Name of the Rose. I mentioned this last year in my post of books set in Italy, but it also fits here. Like The Da Vinci Code, it’s one of the best selling books ever published – with about 50 million copies worldwide compared to 80 million for the Da Vinci Code – but people are a lot less sniffy about this one than they are about Robert Langdon. As I’ve said before I read it as part of my history degree because of all the research and detail that Eco put into this, and its set in the fourteen century during the Avignon Papacy. Fun fact: there hasn’t been a French Pope since all of that went down, which didn’t stop the French media from really, really hoping the new Pope would be French during their coverage of the Conclave after the death of Pope John Paul II, which happened while I was living in France. Ahem. Anyway, back to In the Name of the Rose: this has got lots to unpick in it – from the Sherlock Holmesian hero – William of Baskerville – to spotting the deliberate anacronisms and errors and working out why they’re there. There was a TV adaptation five or so years ago (which I found way more gruesome than the book) which was an Italian and German co-production but also featured Rupert Everett in the cast. It was shown on BBC Two (that’s how I watched it) and I enjoyed it but thought some of the dubbing was clunky as well as the simplification of the plot but it’s very expensively done (and they spent the money better than Disney+ did on the Shardlake adaptation) – it’s still available to rent from Amazon should the mood take you.
On my to read list in this sort of area is Katte Mosse’s Labyrinth which has got an archaeological mystery set around some bodies discovered near Carcassone and a crusade 800 years earlier. To be honest the only reason I haven’t read this yet is because it is absolutely huge and my record with very long books right now is not great. I’m pretty sure I’ve got some Medici fiction somewhere on my shelves too – but I can’t remember if it’s Papal-Medici or other Medici doing things around Florence! And I’m also pretty sure I’ve got some Father Brown on my shelves somewhere too.
But what I’m actually doing at the moment is listening to Terry Pratchett’s Small Gods, which is his satire on religion and philosophy and the role of religion in politics. It would have been Sir Terry’s birthday this week and it’s been ages since I read this – and the shiny new recording has Andy Serkis narrating it which is a lot of fun. And in a weird quirk of fate, I’ve just had an email saying it’s actually the Audible Daily Deal today (Wednesday) so if you don’t already own it, now is your chance…
Happy Humpday everyone.
Verity Reads Books (lots of them) 
I’ve already ordered the new Dan Brown/Robert Langdon book. I loved The Da Vinci Code: it was just a shame that so many people took it too seriously!