Reflecting on a Year With Napoleon
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- Опубликовано: 12 сен 2024
- I really enjoyed theming my reading year around Napoleon. Here are my thoughts on how the project went!
My original Napoleon video: • A Year of Napoleon | B...
Books I Mentioned:
Napoleon the Great by Andrew Roberts
Candide by Voltaire
The Essays of Michel de Montaigne
Amazon Wishlist: www.amazon.com...
Social Media:
Goodreads: / drowninginhistory
Bookstagram: / drowninginhistory_
Instagram: / jennyfromtheblock1292
Twitter: / drowninghistory
Email: drowninginhistory@gmail.com
Jennifer, excellent from start to finish. I’m supposed to Voltaire this year, but I want to swap it out for that Napoleon biography.
Thank you, Shelly! I hope you enjoy either Voltaire or the biography 😂
Congratulations on achieving this great project! I have been close to borrowing the Josephine B. from the library but have not got to it yet.
I also read a few books on Napoleon this year, and I have to admit that my opinion of him has improved, especially thanks to Thierry Lentz's "For Napoleon". He is a French historian who works a lot on Napoleon and his book is a very clever defense of him in which he goes back to his achievements, explains how he is viewed currently in France and how some would like to more or less erase his existence from French history. He is still not one me favorite historical figures (I guess I'm very much like other French people, on one side fascinated by this exceptional man and his life story, and on the other disagreeing with some of his domestic and exterior politics) but I'm glad that I learned to appreciate him more.
"Finding Napoleon" by Margaret Rodenberg is a very good fictionalized account of the last days of Napoleon. 😭
I did enjoy it. Some of the passages included in this book are from a real book, Napoleon's unfinished tragic romance-Clisson et Eugenie.
Definitely a successful project and I hope you continue to get a lot out of it. The only thing I’ve read that features Napoleon is War and Peace and it’s quite the amusing portrait.
This was such a cool project! I started the Napoleon biography but ended up putting it down. I need to get back into it because I was really enjoying it! I also grabbed that collection of Lord Byron's works which I hope to tackle this year lol
A great video Jennifer :) This past year I read Les Miserables and I felt that was an amazing book to read to see how far reaching Napoleon was to France and the French people and all the complicated feelings he brought up. It wasn't anything I heard about Les Mis before picking it up but it was definitely a huge takeaway I had upon finishing it.
If you are interested in Napoleon's Clisson et Eugenie, it is short, simple, and tragic. Who'd have thought that he could write like Goethe (okay sort of) Clisson is kinda like Werther. I liked it.
I've had the Roberts biography on Napoleon for some time so should get to reading it. Family lore says that my people came to the US after losing their land in Napoleon's war.
Thank you so much Jennifer for making these videos on your experience and thoughts on reading Napoleon. I really loved that you picked up some of the books that he read. Such a fascinating man because of his duality.
Jennifer, I am not familiar with the Bernard Cornwell series that you mentioned. Would you please tell me a little more about it? I will go out to Amazon and see what is there so I can get an idea of what you meant. (Ok, you can skip this question !! HOLY COW is he prolific. I will see what I can find in the Napoleonic era, probably the Sharpe series, and go from there !! )
I am about 30 pages into the Josephine B trilogy and it has yet to change my mind about her, oh well!!! and a little over 100 pages into the newer release on Napoleon with the red cover. I took a turn down the rabbit hole and read 3 books on the stolen art that he took from Italy, where it is now and the fact that much of it was 'supposed' to be returned and never has been. He also took many of the artifacts from the archeology digs around Gilgamesh. I wonder how much he took from Germany and Russia, I have not found anything about that as yet. Seems he said that as long as he won the war all of the literature and art 'belonged' to France and its people so he boxed it all up even if he ruined things!
I am trying to like him Jennifer, I really am LOL.
This might be my favorite video of you yet, I highly enjoyed it and felt very personally inspired again to maybe pick up more books on one of my favorite historical figures (who's quite controversial when he's brought up), Thomas Jefferson. The nuance and humanization is so important and incredibly fascinating. Thank you for uploading this! I hope you find more great Napoleonesque content (altho, as an Italian, I'm indeed not a fan of him in particular haha)
Really interesting, Jennifer! My interest in 2021 was Nicolas Fouquet, superintendent for finances for a time under Louis XIV. The Man Who Outshone the Sun King is a wonderful bio by Charles Drazin. I feel Fouquet is a friend, someone I know and respect. Lightning strikes the highest mountains, La Fontaine wrote of him, a paraphrase of Horace (whom I haven't read).
Hello Jennifer. Great video. I'm a big fan of Napoleon too. I haven't read much historical fiction about him but one I did really like was "The Death of Napoleon" by Simon Leys. The idea is that Napoleon didn't die on St. Helena but was replaced with a double. He is spirited back to France but things don't go according to plan. It's a sweet little book, my edition is 130 pages of large type and wide margins.
You explain everything so efficiently, it becomes simple to absorb it in, thank you. But off topic real quick, hearing you give a talk, it makes me wonder about your accent, it's very interesting. What kind is it? Lol
And I just heard you say from the south! I knew it 😁 I was telling myself I am sensing southern, very beautiful.
TCHOParma.. my biggest disappointment of the year (2*'s) ☹I'd planned to read TR&TB, Persuasion & Imagined Communities (B.Anderson- referenced in Pachinko btw)- alongside Mikaberidze's 'TNWars: A Global History', a fantastic read (tome) which im 1/3rd through. So my project continues 👍though Stendhal may not be for me. I wasn't interested in N as a person so much as the international "..consequences of the NWars.. not only in Europe but- Americas, Africa, Ottoman Empire, Iran, India, Indonesia, the Philippines, Mediterranean.." etc (birth of nations, identity, states, colonialism/ slavery underpinning the balance of modern socio -economics & power). The book is also a treasure trove for historical fiction/ writing inspiration! 💓Nap era reccs: Poldark! *amazing* series (1783 - 1820) set in Cornwall (Winston Graham books) 👍🙂
whats the difference between the book 'napoleon a life' and 'napoleon the great' by same author
Its the same book just different front cover
I ordered this book because of your review, but I am a little concerned because, in my experience, biographies about Napoleon trash Josephine and vice versa. I want something fair and balanced for both of them, so I’m hesitant. Would you say this book portrays their relationship realistically while acknowledging his lifelong love for her? I believe Josephine loved him too, but that seems to be a topic of debate.
Well said.
Thank you!