A review by starsal
Catherine de Medici: Renaissance Queen of France by Leonie Frieda

3.0

This book was really rough for me to get through which, given the reviews and my fondness for historical biographies, was a surprise. It may be one of those cases that it just wasn't the right time for me to read this book. However, there was also a sort of bloodlessness and pedantry about the way the text read that was off-putting. The events were quite exciting, and sometimes even scandalous, but the dry tone of the narration put them at a remove and made them read like a textbook. Frieda also had an irritating habit to referring to items it seems "everyone" knows (or assumes they know) about Catherine de' Medici, but she never goes on to elaborate. Perhaps I didn't pay attention to this section in school, but I didn't know (or assume) much of anything at all about her. It would have been nice for her to fill in the gaps of how Catherine is painted and then contrasted with the actual historical record.

I may give this book a try again later. I did make it several hundred pages in before completely losing interest.