The ninety-fifth book: #75 Ivanhoe - Walter Scott

There was a point while reading this where I just struggled to ignore the casual anti semitism and misogyny - true of both the time it was written and the time it's set, but still unfamiliar and painful for a modern reader. It would otherwise be something to ignore, but in my head I found it a bit difficult not to associate with the rest of it, as combining it with the jingoisit portrayal of King Richard it includes (not entirely historically accurate from what I hear), it connects a bit more than I'd like with the modern more racist elements of society.

A lot of it feels like a action focused romance novel of the day, some big fights (sometimes described), romance, the trickery we know from Robin Hood, and the villains taken down at the end. It's in parts very familiar, which is fine, but feels a bit too overwritten to really feel accessible - it feels like Walter Scott wants to Write, which sometimes distract from the point, and I struggled to see through it in places. It's well done, but it feels like I'd have preferred one adaptation further.