I am posting one book per day from my extensive to-be-read collection. No description and providing no reason for wanting to read it, I just do. Some will be old, some will be new. Don‘t judge me - I have a lot of books. Join in if you want!
#ABookADay2023
pickEdward III is usually either lionized or denigrated, but Ormrod seeks (and I would say succeeds) to show him as fully human. At times amusing, but always readable, the biography is cradle-to-grave, not just the fighting. I have a greater appreciation for how much we have in common with medieval people, and how complex their lives were. Highly recommended!
Edward III is dying, and I‘m only at 69%? #slowdeath
“The whole affair had served to confirm the contemporary belief that closed political systems had a tendency to implode, and that the ultimate effect of faction was simply to produce a paralysis of the state.” (Painting of Alice Perrers with Edward III) So, we have learned nothing politically since 1373, apparently. 🙄
“Nothing, it seemed, quite became Queen Isabella's performance of queenship like the leaving of it.”
“And in 1336, on a campaign in the north, Edward managed to break a nacker (the shallow kettledrum used by mounted musicians in medieval armies) belonging to one John Pot, presumably in an over-enthusiastic display of his percussion skills.”
It‘s sentences like this that make this an enjoyable read. @GingerAntics @Graywacke
A rainy Saturday seems like as good a time as any to start a biography of a monarch who just may be an ancestor. #currentlyreading
pickI definitely wouldn‘t have bought this if I knew it‘s focus was on the political history of England 🙈 it‘s fact after fact so hard to take all the information in and I wouldn‘t have got through it in print, but I found it relaxing to listen to on my walks. It‘s very dry but informative and it‘s clearly thoroughly researched and thought out. ⭐️⭐️⭐️ #nonfiction2021 (free space)
And this is why unemployment benefits are essential part of a capitalist economy.
First part of #chunksterchallenge2020 completed. So far it's a fascinating and angering survey of the circumstances of the unemployed and under-employed and their families. It's particularly frustrating that so much of the thinking that prevailed at the time is still trotted out nearly 100 years later to justify the treatment of those out of work.
