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tannat

Tannat

Not so much a blog; just lots of books

Currently reading

The Grace Year
Kim Liggett
The New Voices of Science Fiction
Jamie Wahls, Sarah Pinkser, Vina Jie-Min Prasad, Rebecca Roanhorse, S. Qiouyi Lu, Darcie Little Badger, Kelly Robson, Nino Cipri, Amal El-Mohtar, Sam J. Miller, E. Lily Yu, Alice Sola Kim, Suzanne Palmer, Alexander Weinstein, Rich Larson
Progress: 13%
Engineering Animals: How Life Works
Alan Mcfadzean, Mark Denny
Progress: 125/314pages
The Rise of Yeast: How the Sugar Fungus Shaped Civilization
Nicholas P. Money
Conservation of Shadows
Yoon Ha Lee
Progress: 22%
Le premier jour
Marc Levy
Progress: 180/496pages
Moby-Dick: or, The Whale (Penguin Classics)
Herman Melville
Manifold: Time
Stephen Baxter, Chris Schluep
Progress: 99/480pages
The Long War
Stephen Baxter, Terry Pratchett
Progress: 68/501pages

The Last White Rose by Desmond Seward

The Last White Rose: The Secret Wars of the Tudors - Desmond Seward

My rating reflects my enjoyment of the book rather than the quality of its information, although it did seem to present some of its information in a confusing way and it was pretty dry overall. I’m not confident I can rely on its analyses (concerning what people were like and whether or not a particular situation was hopeless), but the facts are probably fine. This was also a book I was forced to return to the library and take out again a couple months later.

 

I didn’t particularly like how it seemed outright judgemental at times, like when it called Anne Boleyn “stupid.” It also preferred to follow the stories of people rather than the evolution of particular events, which made sense in light of exploration of the various people given the title of “White Rose”, but didn’t help understanding all of the circumstances in their lives. Some events appeared to be mentioned out of chronological order as an aside before delving back into someone else’s story. There was also a lot of chronological back and forth even within a few paragraphs that didn’t help understanding events.

 

Someone else might get more out of this book than I did. My own conclusion was simply that the White Rose stories culminated in Henry VIII’s kingdom being a very scary place.