Linda

I knew absolutely nothing about Bess of Hardwick before I picked up this book, and I'm grateful that the cover was intriguing enough to catch my eye. It's hard to separate out what made this book more interesting: Bess's life, or the writing, but if you'd never known of her, it's worth a read just to get to know the former, regardless of the latter. She had four husbands and built an empire during a era that saw women sacrificed to the ambitions of men left, right, and center. The book gets a little dull and draggy toward the end – as most of these things do – but all in all, it's a really well-researched, very sweet biography, and I think if I had known Bess in person, I would have liked her as much as I liked this volume.

Recently reread this for probably the hundredth time and continue to love Catherine entirely too much. Sadly, a revisit to this book as an adult highlights, to my great despair, that I always wanted her to marry the goatherd, and that part of me has been mourning the fact that she doesn't for like more than a decade. What is my life. Accessible for kids and (obviously) for adults, it felt very in the moment, like I could see and hear and live all the delights and discomforts of Catherine's time – still one of the best books I've ever read.

Mary Roach's science writing is always reliably well-sourced and entertaining, and Bonk was definitely no exception. Reading this was even more entertaining because I consumed it over the course of about 24 hours of travel time between London and Seoul, which earned me a few funny looks at Heathrow, and a ton of funny looks on my Asiana 777 flight, surrounded by scandalized young families. I went into this book with the same prurient, pervert-laughing curiosity that I think plagues the researchers Roach talks to in the work, which is a sort of humbling thought, but I came out of it with a new perspective on the thing, and an even deeper appreciation for the lengths to which she's willing to go in order to get her story. Anyone who can talk her husband into having sex with her while someone X-rays them is a champion as far as I'm concerned.

Deep, fascinating and lush history of a woman I knew shamefully little of despite being so familiar with her story. She was married to Henry VIII for almost 20 years, and fought his efforts to divorce her every step of the way, with cunning and skill that flummoxed him to madness. The book, like most biographies of medieva women (or possibly life in general, which is too depressing to contemplate at length) suffers from a less than thrilling conclusion, but that's a function of the sadness of Catherine's situation at her passing, and not a failing of the writer. Overall, wonderful, and wonderfully sympathetic.