markk

As I move ahead with my little English monarchy biography reviewing project one of the things I'm doing is acquiring then necessary books for it. While most I hope to get through Inter-Library Loan, there are a few that, because of their obscurity or their appeal, I will need to purchase if I want to read them.

The first of these was Timothy Venning's book. This was one of the few books available about Anglo-Saxon kings that I could find in my researches, and I decided to get it to compliment Richard Humble's book. Fortunately it was pretty affordable — the total came to less than $15, including shipping — and today I opened my mailbox to discover that it had arrived.

And it took me ten seconds to discover that it wasn't a history of the Anglo-Saxon kings, but a biographical dictionary.

Now, biographical dictionaries can be incredibly useful tools, which is probably why they remain in print even in the age of Wikipedia. But for my goals it's useless, as it provides little beyond a very basic overview of each person.

In a way, I'm relieved, as it means I can cross one title off of my ever-expanding list of titles to read for the site. But it is annoying that I had to spend nearly $15 to discover this, as it feels like a waste of good money. I want to just return the book, but it feels a little unfair to the bookseller to do so, as it is in every other respect exactly what I wanted. I guess I'll take this as a handy reminder why I don't want to spend any more money than I have to in order to make this project possible,