The singer-songwriter, whose album "The Last Ship" will be released this week, says his favorite novels are really extended songs: "What is ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude' if not an opera?" I enjoyed Hilary Mantel's "Bring Up the Bodies," almost as much as I enjoyed its predecessor, "Wolf Hall." Her portrait of Thomas Cromwell is complex and largely sympathetic to a character that is usually cast darkly and exclusively as Henry VIII's "muscle." I enjoyed Nathaniel Philbrick's treatment of the American War of Independence in "Bunker Hill" for similar reasons, a well-researched story proving to be more nuanced and compelling than a well-established myth...