Ronan > Recent Status Updates

I had no idea this book would be so funny but I'm living for it.

Don't be fooled - I read through the prefaces and introductions and that's about it. I'm on about page 6-7 at this point.

Though I find at least some of these things helpful, I did sigh in relief when I finally got out of the Teutonics chapter. It is so, so long.

I regret making this book the first one of the year but I do sometimes learn new things from it.

Enjoying that this has the energy of a speedrun but in the 1940s, and very interested to hear etymology / quirks of words of English from the Romance languages and how to pronounce certain letters... at least according to the author, which I'm going to trust for now.

it's getting interesting now where he's talking about editing / communicating via writing in the English language and what to avoid. That's quite useful. The rest of it seems to be a roast of the English language itself which I guess I'm here for, but the old-fashioned (and frankly sometimes bigoted) cadence sort of makes me distrust some of the evaluations he's made thus far. So it's more like a skim.

I know that an experience with a book is going to be not great because around the first third of it I start becoming just a little insane. I suppose because I'm not a man in 1943 and have the power of retrospect to say "what do you MEAN? No, that didn't happen!" That sort of thing.

Phrasing is unhinged but I wouldn't say wholly inaccurate? Needless to say it's a considerable contrast to older history books I've read with similar theming. Its more recent publishing date definitely shows in how it covers the subject matter.

I'm not kidding when I say that I'm eagerly anticipating not having to read this book anymore. No wonder people decide not to go into history if this is what they're reading. Even I'm bored.

Would probably look impressive on display or on a bookshelf but does makes me question if anyone read it out loud before publishing. There are a lot of sentences that sound too long or end abruptly, and some words that sound ridiculous. Who ever uses the word "obstreperous"? I've never seen that word in my LIFE.

Only mildly interesting at this point, wanting it to be done with already. The layout of the book is very confusing because each chapter is based on dynasty / political entity rather than plain chronology, which I would have preferred.

Though I haven't read the rest of the series at all, this might be the most meticulously-written case of literal and figurative character assassination I've ever seen. Well-written and well paced? Yes. Made me laugh at the gradual absurdity? Also yes.