Rounding out my 2008 reading list is Sex with Kings: Five Hundred Years of Adultery, Power, Rivalry and Revenge, by Eleanor Herman. Not as risque as my mother would have me believe, but a fairly good and amazingly fun history of all of the ways that sex has been used inside the European corridors of power to gain lands, armies, and influence. Some of the stories here are well-known (King Henry VIII leaps to mind) but there are more sordid tales, too.
Of course, reading this type of book as my 100th title of 2008 is much more enjoyable than reading, for example, a book written by some theologian or, perhaps, a commentary on the book of Leviticus. Of course, I can read about David and Bathsheba in the Bible, but I want to read about the kings who had four mistresses and got kicked out of the castle.
Naturally, as I was reading this book, I proudly displayed it on the coffee table so my wife would take the hint. She did. But her response was, of course, "Believe me, sweetheart, you're no king!"
And so ends the wild reading experiment of 2008.
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