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4.06 AVERAGE
4.06 AVERAGE
slow-paced
This book was so interesting but hard to absorb. There was so much information, dates, and people it was hard for me to keep track of what was going on, but I loved how it was written.
I read all her books a long time ago. Just updating Goodreads.
I found Guns of August a little rich, but this book seemed like a better fit of style and subject. Kind of a downer, re the ceaseless misery/cruelty of late medieval life/the plague years/etc, but really satisfying reading. I like to read medieval macro-history for inspiration, to write and think about more basic, simpler ways of seeing and describing the world, but still complex enough to capture the absurd world we create/have created/will create etc. This was great for that. A little overlong, and definitely pretty sour in terms of how catastropic this period of human history was, but really great work in turning source material into readable history. I probably spaced out on like 25 percent at least of this book (the perils of audiobooks on the elliptical machine) but it didn't mangle my larger page on page enjoyment.
adventurous
informative
reflective
slow-paced
Technically I skipped the epilogue, I think I still deserve credit because this book was bad. But not badly written, nor is the material inaccurate. But I mean in the structure. This is a book originally published in 1978, and it shows. I've come across other non fiction works of European history published in the same time period, but I really feel the works of that time are sort of caught in a an in between chasm of confusion. Non fiction before that read as text books, that is why In Cold Blood was such a defining piece of non fiction for its time, providing a true story in narrative form. Following the seventies, non-fiction I feel started to become more main stream, more accessible to the day reader. The seventies however, loaded with all this historical information and names of historical characters never figured out how to get the narrative form right. Pluck out any group of paragraphs from the book, and you will find maybe 50 names of people who existed at the time, whose only claim to history is being mentioned in a receipt in 1398. Which means the author can prove the existence of the person, and the one time transaction they had, and nothing else. Its incredibly frustrating as you get to know a character, the author espouses about the person, and they disappear.
This book was supposed to be about the Count of Coucy in France. I did not know this was about the 100 years war until 500 pages in because they never named it until then. I'm going in circles in the narrative, so it would helped to have know that before hand. And, the biggest crime really is the lack of concern for the narrative to at the very least to follow chronologically the events. You are jumping back and forth throughout the 1300s, because the author had themes for chapters, that also didn't make sense, and worked the theme regardless of when the scene took place.
I don't want to say this is a bad book, because it is quintessential reading for the French Medieval scholar, it is so thoroughly researched. But, it is not for the person causally interested in Medieval history. Last time I take a recommendation from Salon.
This book was supposed to be about the Count of Coucy in France. I did not know this was about the 100 years war until 500 pages in because they never named it until then. I'm going in circles in the narrative, so it would helped to have know that before hand. And, the biggest crime really is the lack of concern for the narrative to at the very least to follow chronologically the events. You are jumping back and forth throughout the 1300s, because the author had themes for chapters, that also didn't make sense, and worked the theme regardless of when the scene took place.
I don't want to say this is a bad book, because it is quintessential reading for the French Medieval scholar, it is so thoroughly researched. But, it is not for the person causally interested in Medieval history. Last time I take a recommendation from Salon.
I must admit I got about 3/4 through this 14+ hour tome and have returned it early. I picked it up for the references to the plague and it was interesting and a great way to bring 14th century life to life as it were. But I fatigued of the endless battles and gore and male power lust . By this point it’s become a blur and I’m moving on.
The Black Death has been one of the most significant disaster of recorded history, and the effects it had on the population were severe and lasted a long time. The book takes on the history and changes that come in the 14th century, from the everyday of peasants to kings and army, listing all the majors events from a "curse century", only to be centered around the coming and efects of plague.
A little dry, but the vast swathes of fascinating information more than make up for it. The focus on a particular family over a complicated period of social and political upheavel gives such a wealth of insights for the "calamitous" century.
