So I picked this book up after finishing Jennifer Wright’s fantastic book about plagues. I’ll never be interested in historical breakups the way that I am in plagues (who could be, really?), but I still enjoyed her writing style in this book like I did the other. Several other people have reviewed it, but in case you missed those — she basically picks 13 breakups throughout history and explains how a really terrible they were. Like, really terrible. It’s a pretty simple concept and a […]
“If you take nothing else away from this book, I hope it’s that sick people are not villains. They are unwell. It’s impossible to say this enough.”
I really enjoyed Wright’s It Ended Badly and I’ve read several book on the subjects covered in Get Well Soon (like Smallpox, Rosemary Kennedy’s lobotomy and Oliver Sacks) so this seemed like a natural Must Read. Vaccination is one of the best things that has happened to civilization. Empires toppled like sandcastles in the wake of diseases we do not give a second thought to today. If taking a moment to elaborate on that point will make this book unpopular with a large group of antivaxxers, that’s okay. This feels […]
Y’all are going to love this one
Okay, speaking directly to those of y’all who love Mary Roach and that book about being a woman in Victorian times — just go read this book. It is by far the funniest book about plagues that I have ever read. And I am saying that as a person who has read multiple books about plagues. Jennifer Wright, who also wrote that book about bad breakups throughout time that most of y’all didn’t seem to like very much, wrote Get Well Soon about 14 different plagues throughout […]
A Book for the BBC Movie At Home Set
This book has been reviewed several times for the Cannonball Read and that is how it ended up on my radar at all (which is how oh so many books end up in front of me). I am a history nerd so a rundown of thirteen historical relationships that did not end well sounded great to me. I have to tell you, I slammed through this book in two sittings. Quick review: a witty, friendly, informally written but well informed gathering of information that you […]
You Can be Anne Boleyn or Eleanor of Aquitaine, Just Don’t be Nero
None of my breakups have been particularly dramatic. Maybe that’s why I have a fascination for messy break ups. Messy, not violent. I’m not in favor of violence. Nero did not feel the same way. Nero loved violence. If I learned nothing else from this book, it’s that I do not want to live during the Roman Empire. I’m also in an anti-romance phase. It’ll pass, but for now, reading about love affairs gone wrong and listening to murder podcasts is my bag. Jennifer Wright […]
The hottest love has the coldest end
Like most of the books I read these days, I discovered It Ended Badly: Thirteen of the Worst Breakups in History (2015) through a Cannonball Review. It sounded like a fascinating, fun read, and it was immediately available at my library. That’s really all I needed, but knowing that one of the break-up stories was about Edith Wharton was probably what had me picking up this book so quickly. I love Wharton’s writing, and I wondered if I would be able to see any of her […]