It Ended Badly

Overall I really enjoyed this. I liked learning about people I didn't know about. I didn't really care for all the author's trying-to-be-funny asides though.

What a fantastic idea for a book. I don't remember the last time I had so much fun reading about history. Wright makes history so much fun and entertaining and her writing style is just hilarious.

Fun (except for the Oscar Wilde chapter, which made me sad), generally lighthearted collection of stories about terrible breakups from ancient Rome to the 1960s. Particular standouts to me were Lord Byron/Caroline Lamb, John Ruskin/Effie Gray, and oh my god, Norman Mailer is TERRIBLE. The author's tone throughout is breezy and conversational, kind of along the lines of a Drunk History narrator but wayyy more coherent. This is perfect for the type of reading I'm doing now, which is short bites after the baby's asleep. Nothing earth-shattering, and sometimes the ends of the chapters reach a little too hard for a ‘moral of the story,' but a good quick summer read (unless you've been dumped recently, I suppose).

When I was earning my degree in history, it went like this: tome after boring ass tome of history that SHOULD have been exciting but was not. If you were VERY lucky, you would chance on a prof who, like Wright, knew all the really interesting bits and shared them. I'm not sure how this would stand up if quoted in a scholarly article, and I actually winced when I looked at the works cited at the end (oh boy, all of the blogs and .coms as references) but let us pretend we did NOT see any of that and focus on the fact that for one entire weekend I was entranced reading all about these crazy ass people. ENTRANCED.

Read it. For fun. Then split into groups and discuss. Also, this would a great book club pick. It has something for everyone in it.