FN Blog - Seven heads are better than one!

H and I were hanging out at Fully Booked before catching a friend’s performance at Mag:Net, and this book caught my eye:

Though I normally gravitate toward fiction books, I’m a bit of a sucker for history (which some have argued is one of the more useless subjects). But I like learning about the past, and how the world turned into what it is. This particular book caught my interest because it was about how women managed (or didn’t manage) to rule in a patriarchal society.

I don’t really know much about the monarchy (most of my knowledge involves Henry VIII, whom we studied in Religion class back in high school, I think), so before picking up this book, I didn’t realize how much of an impact Elizabeth I had on England. She was arguably the greatest ruler they’ve ever had—male or female. And from there, I was drawn to this book:

This to me by David Starkey is about Elizabeth before she became queen. He says that, in her first 25 years Elizabeth “had experienced every vicissitude of fortune and ever extreme of condition. She had been Princess and inheritrix of England, and bastard and disinherited; the nominated successor to the throne and an accused traitor on the verge of execution; showered with lands and houses and a prisoner in the Tower.” We never studied her in school, I haven’t seen Cate Blanchett’s movie, so I really don’t have much of an idea of what Elizabeth was like. Starkey’s book has gotten good reviews, and I’m tempted to buy it. But I also kind of want to read something that talks about Elizabeth’s reign as well, not just her formative years.

And then there are those other books that I’m itching to get (Kazuo Ishiguro’s When We Were Orphans, Jeffrey Eugenides’ Virgin Suicides, everything by Gabriel Garcia-Marquez…). Sigh. H and I haven’t really given each other Christmas presents, so he’s offering to give me a book shopping spree. But it’s a toss-up between that and an Asus Eee PC. Decisions, decisions.