Meredith > Recent Status Updates

'The dead are lonelier than the living ever can be.'

Disc 4.

I finally made it past the football game chapter! My problem is any time football is mentioned, my eyes glaze, and I go la-la-la.

Disc 3.

I'm on disc 2. Mary Karr reads the audiobook, and it's fantastic!

My conclusion is that Anne Boleyn's story is so interesting she would have been remembered despite the attempts to erase her from history.

Strangely, the author states that Anne Boleyn would probably have been forgotten if her daughter hadn't become Queen Elizabeth I.

'And if in my life I ever did offend the King's Grace, surely with my death I do now atone.'

'I come here only to die and thus to yield myself humbly to the will of the King, my Lord.'

Henry VIII commuted the sentences of the queen's alledged lovers to beheading from being drawn and quartered. Why?

13 out of the 21 charges against Anne Boleyn were impossible, and only 8 were plausible.

Weir's is a gentler King Henry who believed Anne's guilt without question. He's not villainous wife murderer. It's ignorance vs. wickedness.

There's much debate about whether Mark Smeaton confessed under torture. As if the threat of torture isn't enough to extract a confession.

There's much debate about whether Mark Smeaton confessed under torture. As if the threat of tortue isn't enough to extract a confession.

I just learned about the Groom of the Stool. Not a job I'd like to have, but apparently it was a real honor in Henry VIII's day.

The author proposes that Cromwell trumped up the charges against Anne on his own accord rather than on Henry VIII's orders.

I always felt sorry for Anne Boleyn. She shouldn't have overthrown Queen Katherine, but she didn't deserve the death she received.