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3.54 AVERAGE
3.54 AVERAGE
challenging
emotional
informative
reflective
medium-paced
informative
medium-paced
informative
fast-paced
Informative and balenced look at the woman behind the legend.
This book was decent enough but I agree with other reviewers....the scant records of women of this period hurts the writing.
Mary is an interesting character as herself, as well as being Anne Boleyn's sister, and sister-in-law to Henry VIII. I think her story would have been more at home in a book about the Boleyn family as a whole, because the historical knowledge about her is very thin.
Her main fame/infamy is from her being Henry VIII's mistress, but obviously there is next to nothing about their relationship or even their whereabouts during their affair so we can't even make any real assumptions about them.
It would be great to know more about women like Mary but, sometimes, it's better to accept our limits.
Mary is an interesting character as herself, as well as being Anne Boleyn's sister, and sister-in-law to Henry VIII. I think her story would have been more at home in a book about the Boleyn family as a whole, because the historical knowledge about her is very thin.
Her main fame/infamy is from her being Henry VIII's mistress, but obviously there is next to nothing about their relationship or even their whereabouts during their affair so we can't even make any real assumptions about them.
It would be great to know more about women like Mary but, sometimes, it's better to accept our limits.
i actually enjoyed hearing the research process for lesser known historical figures… but anyways y’all the English were fucking DIRTY
It's important to remember when reading this book, and Weir does state this within the introduction, there is barely any information available on Mary Boleyn. She also states in the introduction, something that a lot of reviewers seem to have missed, that due to this lack of information this book is not so much a study of Mary Boleyn the woman, as Mary Boleyn the myth.
As someone who read The Other Boleyn Girl and was pretty annoyed by the blatent inaccuracies (Mary Boleyn? Try Mary Sue) it was nice to see some of the myths that book portrayed torn apart, aswell as the varying treatments of Mary throughout the years.
As someone who read The Other Boleyn Girl and was pretty annoyed by the blatent inaccuracies (Mary Boleyn? Try Mary Sue) it was nice to see some of the myths that book portrayed torn apart, aswell as the varying treatments of Mary throughout the years.
informative
slow-paced
informative
reflective
relaxing
slow-paced
In a nutshell, everything you think you know about Mary Boleyn is wrong. I love Alison Weir for a lot of reasons, but one of the biggest reasons is that she is very clear about what can be known as fact, what is educated guesswork based on logic and historical context, and what is pure rumor and fantasy. It's true, much less is known about Mary than her famous/infamous sister Anne, but unfortunately a lot of what is *known* about Mary in popular culture comes from historical fiction novels, films and tv shows. She was not The *Great Whore* that popular imagination has cast her being. Alison Weir's books are meticulously researched and very easily penetrable. I have yet to have a bad reader experience with any of her works. If you are a Tudor-phile and would like a more honest book about Mary Boleyn, this would be an excellent place to start.
informative
slow-paced