#gj meyer

[thisisbookland]

Books: ›The Borgias: The Hidden History by G.J Meyer ›The Iliad by Homer (Translated by Robert Fagles) ›The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

Currently Listening: Through the Valley by Shawn James

Drink: Black tea with honey, sugar, and milk

[thisisbookland]

Book: ›The Borgias by G.J. Meyer

Drink: ›Black tea with milk, sugar, and honey

Music: ›Give Us A Little Love by Fallulah

[thisisbookland]

Good morning everyone, it is July 5th 2019 and I’ve decided I’m going to give myself a reading challenge from today until next Friday, the 12th. 

I know I’m busy today, but I also know I have no plans for the following week and I have time today up until 4ish. So, I’ve decided I would challenge myself to read a thousand pages this week. Which might seem easy with a clear schedule but I’ve found myself being unable to focus on reading that much this week so we’ll see how it goes. 

My starting pages are as follows: ›Good Omens: 67 ›The Iliad: 354 ›The Borgias: 121

My prediction is that I’m not gonna make a thousand pages, but I’m hoping I will! And if I do it’ll be from finishing Good Omens, maybe getting a chunk in of the other two, and likely starting another book. We’ll see! 

[myhikari21things]

Title-A World Undone

Author-G. J. Meyer

Year of Publication-2006

Summary-On a warm June day in 1914 the heir to the Hapsburg throne Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife Sophie are in an open topped car driving through Sarajevo when a young man Gavrilo Princip throws a bomb into the car. The couple is killed and the stage is set for the bloodiest conflict in human history. By the end of the summer the fighting has begun with the thought the war will be over by Christmas. It isn’t. Instead Great Britain, France, Austria-Hungary, Germany, Russia, Ottoman Turkey, and eventually almost the rest of the world will be embroiled in 4 years of blood. From French fields to Turkish beaches a whole generation of young men will die or be broken beyond repair not to mention the countless civilian lives lost. By the time the war is over on November 11, 1918 there is a sigh of relief. But it won’t last long. Nonfiction.

Pros-Including the brief timeline at the beginning. Plenty of pictures and maps. Breaking things down by year made the content easier to process. Including extra details on certain people and places. Continuing slightly into the 1920s to set the stage for World War II.

Cons-Content Warning: graphic violence and disturbing imagery. A little too wordy in the beginning.

Overall Rating-5/5

[flores-et-dracones]

On top of all his other blessings, Henry had the inestimable advantage—one that fit beautifully with his increasingly grandiose conception of his own place in the world—of happening to rule at a time when the curious idea of the divine right of kings was becoming fashionable across much of Europe. The emergence of this notion was understandable as a reaction to the bloody instability of recent generations, and as an expression of the widespread hunger for law and order and therefore for strong central government. But it gave crowned heads a justification for turning themselves into despots with no obligations to anyone. It fed Henry VIII’s inclination to think of himself as a quasi-divine being whom heaven intended to be all-powerful and had endowed with the wisdom to decide all questions. He did not have to look far, in the first decades of the sixteenth century, to find scholars eager to assure him that it lay within his authority to overthrow centuries of law, tradition, and precedent.

Meyer, G. J., The Tudors: The Complete Story of England’s Most Notorious Dynasty