Category: Uncategorized

Discussion: Your Favourite Historical Figure(s)

This is a topic that comes up frequently amongst historical fiction lovers, but as a lover of historical fiction as well as an extremely amateur historian, I just can’t get enough of it.  My question for this week is: Who is/are your favourite historical figure(s)?  Why?

Here are some of my favourite historical figures:

  • Julius Caesar.  His mixture of cunning on the battlefield combined with his impressive political savvy make me really appreciate him as both a man and the legend that he became.  When you read about it, his life essentially reads like an epic movie and it’s just plain awesome (aside from the whole violent death part).  Having the guts to order around the pirates holding you captive and seemingly always fighting with the smaller force and winning is pretty impressive.
  • Hatshepsut.  I’ve always had a soft spot for strong female leaders throughout history, and the Iron Lady of Egypt is one of my absolute favourites.  She presided over a golden age with minimal military activity and a new resurgence in trade from her Punt expedition.  And she did all this in an extremely sexist society where she was never, ever meant to take the throne.  The more I read about her, the more I love her.
  • Niccolo Machiavelli.  This is probably not the most popular choice, but having read The Prince I can’t help but admire his cunning.  His political theories ring true throughout history; having a background in Roman history certainly didn’t hurt his credibility.  And he presents them in a very concise way without adding in too much fluff like many of his contemporaries.

I could go on and on, but that wouldn’t be fair.  Now it’s your turn to answer the question: who is/are your favourite historical figure(s)?  Why?  How did they come to be your favourite(s)?

“Fairy Lovers” and Still More Weird Search Terms

Yep, it’s that time once again folks: time to round up all of the weird search terms!  If you’ve missed the previous installments of my weird search term series, here they are:

1.  “Why do People Hate Naked Men?” and Other Weird Search Terms

2.  “The Spread of Kidness” and More Weird Search Terms

3.  The Return of the Weird Search Terms

4.  “Game of Thrones man hatred” and More Weird Search Terms

5.  “Yes I Can Do” and Other Weird Search Terms

 

So what weird search terms are we up against today?

fairy lovers

mad brown girls porn photo

is it bad to read 100 pages in one day

5 hours to.read.100 pages

read to me the word lynburns

mad reviews

adult vacation partils

reading pages through 1 and 100

And the weirdest of all:

old building-ajacket-being escorted around by strangers

Any of these ones stand out to you guys?  What are some of the weird search terms that you’ve received recently or not-so-recently?

 

The Hunger Games and The Third Servile War

The Third Servile War is probably one of the most famous wars you’ve never heard of.  What I mean by that is that everyone knows about Spartacus’ rebellion from the movie Spartacus, but few people know that there really was a Spartacus and he really did start a rebellion that morphed into what the Romans knew as the Third Servile War.  In Roman history, it was a monumental event that forced the Romans to reconsider their treatment of slaves and paved the way for later legislation to give slaves some protection (you could be charged for murder if you killed a slave during Claudius’ reign!).

What really struck me when I read The Hunger Games is that the Third Servile War is startlingly similar and is probably at least what partially inspired Suzanne Collins’ depiction of the rebellion of the Districts.  First I think we need a little background on the inspiration behind this and then we’ll go more in depth into why there are so many similarities.

The Third Servile War didn’t start out as a war.  It started out as a breakout from a gladiator school in Capua that included some two hundred slaves and gladiators.  Unsurprisingly, with that many people involved, the plot was discovered and the rebel slaves had to fight their way out of the school.  Spartacus was among them and he was naturally looked to as a leader, but what most people forget is another man who was a key player: Crixus.  Crixus was a Celt who had also been captured to fight in the gladiator schools of the Roman Republic and he didn’t like his situation any more than Spartacus did.  He and Spartacus, even though it may not have started out that way, became the ringleaders of their little revolt. Continue reading →

Your Open Post Promotion Thread

Yesterday I couldn’t post anything due to internet difficulties (mainly that it kept cutting off randomly) and today I’m travelling for most of the day.  Thus, you guys get a promotion thread to promote your own work and find some awesome posts by other bloggers.

Basically, this is how it works:

1.  You comment below and in that comment, give us a little blurb about one or two of your best posts and a link to it/them.  Essentially, tell us what makes that post so special to you.  Is it your favourite post because you think your writing was top quality then?  Is it one of your most viewed posts?  And so on and so forth.

For example:

The Hunger Games and Ancient Rome

 

Technically I’m a book blogger, but here on The Mad Reviewer I also love talking about the occasional pop culture feature as well as history.  So I combined the two and talked about the similarities between The Hunger Games series (both the movies and books) and ancient Roman history.  Even though I wrote it a while back, it’s still one of my favourites because it was one of the first articles I wrote, whereas before I had just done book reviews.

See, it’s pretty easy and it’s free!  So go ahead and promote your favourite blog posts.

Discussion: Keeping Things Fresh

My three year blog anniversary is just a couple of months off and over my nearly three years of blogging I’ve noticed something: sometimes it feels like your blog is going stale.  Your writing isn’t as good as it seemed to be before, you’re doing the same features over and over again, etc.  You really do lose your motivation and doubt yourself every once in a while; I think every blogger experiences that.

What’s different is how everyone deals with that funk and how they keep their blog fresh.  When I get in a funk, sometimes I’ll just take a day off from writing altogether (usually a Sunday).  Or, I’ll start researching for an article I want to write instead of my usual four reviews in a week.  That’s actually what I’m doing right now since I was just in a funk: I’m researching for an article about how history seems to be at odds with so many dystopias.

My question for you guys is this: How do you keep your blog fresh when you feel it’s getting stale?  What’s the best way that works for you to get out of a writing rut?  And how do you personally stay motivated to keep going?