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Wednesday Reading Meme
May. 26th, 2021 07:33 amWhat I’ve Just Finished Reading
Despite my quibbles last week, I enjoyed Emma Southon’s A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum: Murder in Ancient Rome so much that I instantly went on to her earlier book Agrippina: The Most Extraordinary Woman of the Roman World. Despite that perhaps rather bombastic subtitle, I enjoyed it even more.
I especially appreciated the way that the book unpacks the primary sources. Southon points out that all the extant sources were written decades or centuries after Agrippina’s death (so they’re not really primary sources at all - you wouldn’t call something written today a primary source about Watergate) and also often lays the different accounts side by side so you can see how they differ, and it’s really interesting to see how divergent the different histories often are - and also it feels very telling on the few occasions they all converge on a single story, like Agrippina’s assassination of Claudius.
(This is an interesting moment because Southon doesn’t really want Agrippina to have assassinated her uncle/husband Claudius, as it seems to contradict the picture she’s built up of Agrippina, Able Administrator, Not as Murdery as She’s Painted. However, the rare moment of agreement between all the sources forces her to say, okay, Agrippina probably did it.)
Vladimir Gilyarovsky’s Moscow and Muscovites, however, remained a struggle all the way through. Maybe it really lost something in translation? It’s disappointing because I had really looked forward to this book, but such is life.
I also zoomed through volumes one to four of Fence, which is delightful, and you will be UNSURPRISED to learn that Ice Prince Seiji has stolen my heart. But it’s also frustrating, because the first four volumes are really just the beginning of the story, the set-up, and it’s not at all clear when the next graphic novel will come out!
There are two tie-in novels by Sarah Rees Brennan, which of course I will read, but I’m not sure if these are direct continuations of the story (as in, you read the first four graphic novels, then you read the two tie-in novels, then you read the next graphic novel whenever it comes out…) or are more along the lines of optional extras.
What I’m Reading Now
I found Nancy Farmer's House of the Scorpion a grim slog, and expected to have the same reaction to A Girl Named Disaster, but actually it’s great! Strong My Side of the Mountain “child surviving in the wilderness” vibes, except instead of a boy in the Catskills it’s about a girl on the border between Mozambique and Zimbabwe. Right now she’s sort of accidentally started observing a baboon troop and I’m eating it up with a spoon.
What I Plan to Read Next
Nancy Farmer's The Ear, the Eye, and the Arm. A Girl Named Disaster has made me much more hopeful about this book!
Despite my quibbles last week, I enjoyed Emma Southon’s A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum: Murder in Ancient Rome so much that I instantly went on to her earlier book Agrippina: The Most Extraordinary Woman of the Roman World. Despite that perhaps rather bombastic subtitle, I enjoyed it even more.
I especially appreciated the way that the book unpacks the primary sources. Southon points out that all the extant sources were written decades or centuries after Agrippina’s death (so they’re not really primary sources at all - you wouldn’t call something written today a primary source about Watergate) and also often lays the different accounts side by side so you can see how they differ, and it’s really interesting to see how divergent the different histories often are - and also it feels very telling on the few occasions they all converge on a single story, like Agrippina’s assassination of Claudius.
(This is an interesting moment because Southon doesn’t really want Agrippina to have assassinated her uncle/husband Claudius, as it seems to contradict the picture she’s built up of Agrippina, Able Administrator, Not as Murdery as She’s Painted. However, the rare moment of agreement between all the sources forces her to say, okay, Agrippina probably did it.)
Vladimir Gilyarovsky’s Moscow and Muscovites, however, remained a struggle all the way through. Maybe it really lost something in translation? It’s disappointing because I had really looked forward to this book, but such is life.
I also zoomed through volumes one to four of Fence, which is delightful, and you will be UNSURPRISED to learn that Ice Prince Seiji has stolen my heart. But it’s also frustrating, because the first four volumes are really just the beginning of the story, the set-up, and it’s not at all clear when the next graphic novel will come out!
There are two tie-in novels by Sarah Rees Brennan, which of course I will read, but I’m not sure if these are direct continuations of the story (as in, you read the first four graphic novels, then you read the two tie-in novels, then you read the next graphic novel whenever it comes out…) or are more along the lines of optional extras.
What I’m Reading Now
I found Nancy Farmer's House of the Scorpion a grim slog, and expected to have the same reaction to A Girl Named Disaster, but actually it’s great! Strong My Side of the Mountain “child surviving in the wilderness” vibes, except instead of a boy in the Catskills it’s about a girl on the border between Mozambique and Zimbabwe. Right now she’s sort of accidentally started observing a baboon troop and I’m eating it up with a spoon.
What I Plan to Read Next
Nancy Farmer's The Ear, the Eye, and the Arm. A Girl Named Disaster has made me much more hopeful about this book!
