I love prizes like this: short lists provide me with excellent reading choices. I’ve read Wolf Hall already, of course–and, yes, it’s good, very very good, go buy it–and the first book in Harris’s series, but I haven’t encountered Mawr or Foulds, so I’ll be downloading sample chapters.
I’m also enjoying watching historical fiction’s long, slow climb back to respectability. Hopefully that journey will be complete by the time Hild is ready for the world.
So, despite the rain (oh, yes, still), my Midsummer is beginning well. How’s yours?
Nicola Griffith 
Hot and gorgeous here in ATL. Temps to 95° this afternoon. Been going through boxes of my mother's papers (keepsakes mixed with lots of old recipe and home & garden clippings) and sharing personal and family history (photos, telegrams, birth / death announcements) with family. Not as interesting as Hild, I'm afraid.
That's a hard job. Though if your experience is anything like mine, it's also shot through with odd little squirts of joy (and nostalgia, and forgotten rage, and and and). Very complicated emotional stuff.
Nicola — nicely put. A friend once told me that when my mother died, I should just cover the house in concrete and leave it as a time capsule of the 20th century. Would've been much simpler, but where then would I live? I rarely go through a box of her stuff that I don't end up crying at least once, or find something that touches off a mindstorm of memories (good and bad) and all the sensory and emotional links that come with them.
How's the writing coming? And on a totally different tack, I read an old column you wrote that said you were (then) working on the screenplay for The Blue Place. Did you ever finish it?
Yes! I think your timing for Hild is going to be perfect.
And I was wondering what you thought of Wolf Hall, I've been meaning to check it out.
I'm still trying to wrap my head around the fact that this is summer. Huh… But I do see some blue sky creeping by my window right now. Yay.
Dianne, Hild is going very well. As for the screenplay of TBP, nope, I wrote the first two scenes, thought it was kind of cool, but decided I needed to get my novel done first. I have so very many things I want to get done…
Jennifer, I really liked Wolf Hall. Definitely worth a read. I'm not wholly convinced that her experiment wit POV is 100% successful but I'm not sure it's not, either. I think it could have done with a bit of tweaking here and there to avoid confusion but, eh, it was good.