Traitors of the Tower – Alison Weir
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I came across The Traitors of the Tower by Alison Weir for a very cheap prize, so I thought I’d order it along with some other books. This however, turned out not to be my kind of read. It is a quick and easy-to-read account of 7 persons who were imprisoned and put to death in the Tower of London. I am not familiar with the concept of “Easy Reads”, but I have a feeling it has to be just that to make people pick up a book more often. When it comes to history however, I enjoy lots of information, and especially lots of footnotes and a bibliography at the end of the book, all of which was missing. I know that it was probably done on purpose, but referring to a recent historical discovery as “someone recently stated that..” without any reference whatsoever gets on my nerves. Maybe I’ve been trained as a historian for too long to take such statements at face-value. I know Weir has written a lot of history books, and they probably involve footnotes, so it might just be the format of the book that bothered me. However, I did enjoy reading about Lady Jane Grey, as I never knew anything about her (this might sounds shocking to Americans or people from the UK, but we simply only learn the general outlines of British and American history, you can specialize in a certain period, but I never took a class on Renaissance England). I think I might want to learn more about her.
Flesh and Grass – Libby Cone
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Flesh and Grass by Libby Cone was given to me through the member-giveaway programme on Library Thing. I feel bad for not enjoying a book that I was given for free, but I want to be able to be honest in my reviews.
Flesh and Grass is about a small Dutch Mennonite settlement in Delaware. The reader follows the community through their struggle to survive and the changing ownership of the land (at first a Dutch colony, to be taken over by the UK during the Anglo-Dutch wars) through the eyes of Cornelis, the blind son of the initiator of the settlement Pieter Cornelissoon Boom.
I had two problems with this story. First, it is very hard to relate to the characters and what is happening. The story reads as a sequence of events happening, but isn’t detailed enough to start to feel anything for the people involved. Second, there’s the style. I get that authors try to make a story look more historical by using what I take to be older styles of English. In this case this involved a lot of capital letters throughout the story, but I couldn’t make any sense of why they were used in some instances and not in others. For example, food-wares sometimes got a capital letter and sometimes didn’t. Also, a lot of the sentences used the word ‘did’ and I do mean a lot. After reading four lines that all started with the use of “He did feel.. he did think.. he did pray, brother [X] did..” the style gets on your nerves. Especially if it isn’t just one paragraph, but the whole book that is written in this manner. At one point I started reading did everywhere, even if it wasn’t used. And then there’s the use of Dutch words, which aren’t explained when they’re used. I understand their use in giving the story a more authentic feel, but I don’t think it works in this case and I can imagine it being really annoying to people who do not read Dutch.
God is Gek – Kluun
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I read God is Gek (“God is Crazy”) by Kluun for the read-a-thon (this small book isn’t translated to English, but the author has been translated to English as “Ray Kluun”). It is a book about the dictatorship of atheism in the Dutch media. This may yet again come as a surprise to US-citizens (or inhabitants of other countries, but I don’t know that much about their religious landscape), but in Dutch media it is not considered intelligent or modern to express your religious beliefs in the media, let alone defend them. I think Kluun has a point there. It seems a lot of the time people have to defend their religious affiliation on TV, getting mocked about it, or are simply told that ‘the pope has such weird ideas on condom-use, how can you even consider being a catholic?’. Kluun did a great job describing some of the broader debates on atheism v. religion, and refers to all the right people in his description of the debate on Richard Dawkins, for example.
As you might know, I am not a huge fan of Dutch literature in general, and I have been avoiding Kluun’s books. But I have to admit that his style was amazing. I went from laughing out loud at certain pages to crying my heart out in the next few. I never expected that to happen, let alone in a book on religion, but it did. I am still not sure if I’d like to pick up another book by Kluun, but I’m more likely to do so nonetheless.
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