Extra: The Tudors (Showtime original series)

Considering how many historical fiction novels I've read on the Tudors in the last few years, it should come as no surprise that I was excited about this series. My expectations were high - and perhaps that's why, after having seen the first three episodes, I feel so very low.

I read this story in the London Times discussing the show, and it basically said that the producers felt the content had to be both sexed up and dumbed down for American audiences. But has it really been that dumbed down? Ironically, by taking out all the details of why things happened, I would imagine the series is either incredibly hard to follow or too vague to get into if you don't already know the history behind it (which then makes it a series for the amateur historian, arguably someone who's more interested in American Pastoral than American Idol).

The opening credits crack me up...English hottie Jonathan Rhys-Myers intones, "You think you know a story but you only know how it ends. To get to the heart of the story you have to go back to the beginning." So why didn't they start at the beginning?!? I mean, they don't have to begin at the moment of his birth, but perhaps the beginning of Henry's reign would have been more appropriate? Why leave out the happy days of Henry and Katherine's marriage? It only adds to the pathos when he tried to disentangle himself.

Look who the dummies are now...

(Oh, and one more point, I can't resist...Natalie Dormer's eye color. She plays Anne Boleyn, who had incredibly dark eyes, but she, Natalie, has these clear blue eyes. She's an unknown actress, so I'm not sure why they didn't make her wear colored contacts, but whatever - artistic license. But then, in one of the episodes, they make a reference to her eyes, which makes this small detail stand out as a blatant error. Why ruin it?)

#6: Innocent Traitor, Alison Weir

It's been about two weeks since I finished this book, and I can barely remember what happened. I don't know, maybe I've read too much in the genre (that being Tudor era historical fiction) but I feel like each book is just a rehash of the last. Perhaps that's the problem with history in general - I guess it's hard to be creative with the truth.

Anyway, Innocent Traitor...this one was a wee bit different as the focus was on Jane Grey, a royal relation and fervent Protestant whose parents and father-in-law tried to set up as the Queen after King Edward (son of Henry VIII) dies. I wanted to like Jane, I really did - she was ill-treated by her mother and married to a brute - but she was just so damn sanctimonious. And nobody likes that.

I also hated Weir's technique of changing the narrator about every five pages - why has that become the new trend in historical fiction? It's just irritating. No need to say anything more, I'd rather just move on...

Next up? I'm reading 3 books at the moment: Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose, In the Skin of a Lion by Michael Ondaatje, AND Cesar's Way by Cesar Millan. I don't usually read more than one book at a time, but I have varied and not-worth-explaining-it reasons. We'll see which one hits the finish line first.