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3.87 AVERAGE
3.87 AVERAGE
I always think context is important, especially when studying a historical figure, and Weir spared no details. Very interesting read!
i just love learning history, especially womens history
Well researched and written, maybe just too much supposition for my taste.
The book that inspired me to read history... I'm not sure I can give it a higher compliment!
Well, I'm disappointed. When in the two previous books of Weir's I've read I met vivid portraits, this book failed to give that. Sure, the author says that little is known of Eleanor but she should have just sticked to what she has instead of left her behind to tell the lives and deeds of her husbands and children. One gets a general outline of her life, and an overview of her times, but not much else.
informative
slow-paced
Although I understand that it might be a little much to expect a biography of a woman 800 years dead to be engrossing I found this book to be unreasonably dry. Eleanor of Aquitaine is one of the most fascinating women I had ever heard of, and I was disappointed that so much of this book revolved around her male counterparts. While I understand that not much is known about her life and thus must be told through the people around her I feel that there is a better way of telling her story. I would have been much more satisfied with a shorter book only about Eleanor, than a longer book about her husband, father, and uncles.
I think that Alison Weir had her work cut out for her job writing this biography - writing about a woman from the 12th century who disappears from the contemporary records for years at a time is no easy task. Clearly, though, she is a woman worth writing about and a woman worth reading about.
However, I am not convinced that histories of the Middle Ages are the best choice for my leisure reading. It can be frustrating as a reader to read qualifier after qualifier and possibility after possibility, even though the author is doing her best to fill in the gaps. I am not so disillusioned that I will never read anything more about the Middle Ages, but I may not jump right into another book about them.
On the whole: glad I read it because Eleanor of Aquitaine was a very interesting woman and I learned a great deal about something I knew very little about.
However, I am not convinced that histories of the Middle Ages are the best choice for my leisure reading. It can be frustrating as a reader to read qualifier after qualifier and possibility after possibility, even though the author is doing her best to fill in the gaps. I am not so disillusioned that I will never read anything more about the Middle Ages, but I may not jump right into another book about them.
On the whole: glad I read it because Eleanor of Aquitaine was a very interesting woman and I learned a great deal about something I knew very little about.
A sturdy and carefully researched and documented biography.