My Background

Perhaps the first thing people learn about me is that I love to read. A lot.

My reading tastes are pretty wide-ranging, and include both fiction and non-fiction. My favorite subject by far, though, is history, which has interested me for as long as I can remember. I majored in history in college, and I have continued my education ever since with a steady regimen of books on a variety of people, events, and eras.

One of the joys of reading history is that there are so many places and periods to study. This, though, is one of the problems when reading about history — with so much to read and only so much time available to read, determining which book is the best book to read can be important. As a result, I frequently consult reviews to get a sense of how to best invest my precious reading time.

When I determined that it was time to learn more about British monarchs, though, I was inspired to adopt a different approach. Rather than pick just one book about a monarch, I would try to read several of them and decide which was the best of the bunch. This I would determine using a number of factors, such as the book’s readability, its coverage, and the understanding the author provided of his or her subject. I would then sum up my assessment in reviews that I would post on the Internet, both as a way of maintaining my focus and to share my conclusions for anyone else interested in reading more about the men and women who ruled the British isles.