Like a canoe caught in an eddy, the Wheel of Time has turned ’round to Teaser Tuesday. Although, in its case, I suspect Dramamine won’t be necessary.
Just in case you don’t know, Teaser Tuesday is a weekly bookish theme, and anyone can play along! All you have to do is grab the book you’re currently reading, open to a random page and share a few sentences from that page. Make sure you don’t share any spoilers!
I left How to Survive the Apocalypse at work, so there goes my plan for finishing it over Spring Break. But, that’s OK, becuase my book of family history arrived . . . and I read it in two days. I learned some interesting things, and I was going to share them here, but I think I’ll write an entirely separate post later this week. Suffice to say The Saxon House of Eldred helped me choose my next book, Alfred the Great by Justin Pollard.
The Goodreads’ Blurb
Alfred was England’s first king, and his rule spanned troubled times. As his shores sat under constant threat from Viking marauders, his life was similarly imperiled by conspiracies in his own court. He was an extraordinary character – a soldier, scholar, and statesman like no other in English history – and out of adversity he forged a new kind of nation. Justin Pollard’s enthralling account strips back centuries of myth to reveal the individual behind the legend. He offers a radical new interpretation of what inspired Alfred to create England and how it how it has colored the nation’s history to the present day
The Random Number Generator sends us to page 155:
Worries crowded in on Alfred that winter as he made his way to the royal vill at Chippenham. He had once again fought the Vikings to a standstill and had secured their withdrawal from his kingdom, but at a price, and once that clearly gave the Church, and probably the nobility too, cause to complain.
Review of The Saxon House of Eldred
Well, it only took reading a book about my own family to get me to write my first book review of the year, despite having read 22 new-to-me books in 2017 so far. I’m thinking of writing short reviews, but never seem to get beyond the thinking stage.
Anyway, here’s the review:
I enjoyed reading this book, drawing connections between what I already knew of my family history with the information presented here. I am also grateful for the depictions of family crests, as many online versions are either wrong for my branch or too grainy to be of any practical use.
What are you reading today?
Running In My Head 
Fascinating stuff about Alfred the Great. I’m reading If the Oceans Were Ink – An Unlikely Friendship and a Journey to the Heart of the Quran by Carla Power. I am learning much about Islam.
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