A review by nindie
A Brief History of the Tudor Age by Jasper Ridley

informative slow-paced

2.5

Although I rated this book 2.5 stars, it was still decent in terms of going over the Tudor period. It includes different chapters surrounding different topics and images for further detail.

What I Liked About The Book

I enjoyed the variety of topics within the book, which made reading it a bit less dull. Usually, I find books hard to finish if many things aren't explored or have enough variety to make them engaging enough for me to finish reading, so this was good enough for that. As I mentioned earlier, there are pictures in the book. I enjoyed the little illustrations on some of the pages too. Compared to another book on Tudor history I read recently, the chapters weren't too long to the point where I stopped reading one halfway through. My stopping points were usually after a chapter or two since it didn't take too long to read them in one go.

What I Didn't Like About The Book

I only found some of the chapters interesting to learn and read about, while other topics made me a little bored. Just my personal opinion, though. Another thing is that they could have separated areas into different chapters.
An example in the book that I found was in the last chapter, which was about Tudor men and women. The last few pages discussed a lot about Catholics and Protestants. The author could have made a whole separate chapter for that topic. With Catholics and Protestants, there was a chance to explore it more thoroughly if it was a chapter by itself instead of stuffing it into the last one, where it doesn't fit as well compared to the other discussions within the chapter.
The last thing I want to add is, in some cases, stuff was being over-explained or under-explained quite often.

In Conclusion

It is quite a slow read, but I managed to finish it within a few days of on and off reading. And a few things need to be worked on to improve the contents and quality of this book. For its time, it isn't bad. This book is for anyone who would like to learn about the Tudor period, including many topics, this book is for you.
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