Ancient Britain's Heroic Kings

I got blisters because of the severe heat (which cause my feet to sweat which causes my shoes to stick to my feet which causes blisters)

This is what Saturday looked like for me.  While my family was swimming I immersed myself in the fascinating and exciting world of 10th century Britain.  The White Horse King is a fantastic book about King Alfred, the only king of England to ever be called great.  And, it seems, for a good reason.  He ruled his kingdom during the many brutal attacks of the Vikings attempting to gain England for themselves.  At one point they even succeeded to drive Alfred from his court and into hiding.  But the king didn't give up or give in.  He continued to fight back and led the loyal Saxons out of hiding and back to freedom at the Battle of Edington.  After many hard-fought battles he drove his life-long enemies out of his country of Wessex.  Alfred turned the flawed Saxon military into an army which could fight off the Danes when few others in Europe could.  He sparked the greatest literary renaissance Britain has ever seen.  Although England was never free from Viking raids during his lifetime, the Vikings never successfully conquered his kingdom of Wessex.  Not only was this book extremely well written, it was a captivating story and I have become enthralled with Ancient Britain and her history.   I learned all about Saxon life, warfare, and there were even passages of Anglo Saxon which my crazy language-loving self drooled over.

Speaking of my crazy language-loving self, I also read Tolkien's The Fall of Arthur last week and may I just say it was so, so good.  The poem itself, which Tolkien wrote, only lasts 40 pages but those pages are full of gorgeous, delicious language.  The book was worth the price of purchase a hundred times over just for those pages.  Christopher Tolkien's notes, which make up the rest of the book, were full of lovely bits of language (Old English and Middle English, if I guessed right) and a very interesting comparison of the different versions of the Arthur story.  All in all, these two books have awakened in me a very great desire to learn some of these old languages (or at least learn more about them) and I highly recommend them to anyone who is looking for something new to read.