The Ides of March by Thornton Wilder

Not the actual cover
on the copy I had, but
I couldn't find the
cover for the one I had!

Well, what can I say about this? Some books are very difficult to love, or even get through. It helped that this one was short. Which sounds as if I thought this book was terrible, but it really wasn't. It was well-written, it was just not something I could really get into.

I knew before starting out that it was told in a format of a series of letters and that it had some serious historical inaccuracy. The historical inaccuracy didn't so much bother me; the letter format though made it hard for me to really get into the flow of the story. Though it did lend it a certain "historical" feel in a sense.

Certain things were very odd, like at one point there's a series of chain letters being distributed around Rome, which would be very difficult to do in a age without a printing press or copy machine. And there's an "Aemillian Droughts and Swimming Club" which just took me right out of the time period of the novel every time it was mentioned, because it just didn't fit.

A lot of really antiquated ideas about women in here, and I can't honestly tell if it's because Thornton Wilder was writing this in the late 1940s or if he was writing what he thought Roman men thought about women (which they well might have).

I didn't really buy that Caesar would be so fascinated by Catullus. I don't know, I just didn't.

Overall, I kind of felt like I wasn't really smart enough to enjoy a book like this.

Counting the Stars by Helen Dunmore (possible spoilers)

I'm not really big on poetry, but I really like Catullus for some reason. And I was inspired to read Counting the Stars after reading this review of it. Fortunately, I wound up liking it a lot better than she did!

I thought the book was really beautifully written. Some books aren't very long, but it seems to take you forever to read them and you sort of lurch forward in fits and starts with them, but this one just flowed. I've read other reviews of it where people were bothered by the colloquial language that was used; that didn't bother me since I don't assume the ancient Romans spoke like they wrote. All we know of them is of course what they've written, but I don't think they all went around talking like Cicero in his orations. So I was fine with Clodia saying things like "what a dump."

I think this book was all about disillusionment. The Clodia that Catullus is in love with here isn't really the Clodia of the real world, but the one in his head. Which I think he figures out, by the end. And in Dunmore's interpretation, she's pretty much a sociopath.

My illustration of one of the famous sparrow poems.

One odd thing I realized as I was getting close to the end was that I was far more affected by the story of Lucius and Catullus' relationship than that of him and Clodia! Because I could definitely see why he loved Lucius and saw him on an emotional level as being more his true father (though in a lot of ways, Lucius is really more maternal in manner). You never really do get what he sees in Clodia, since it's so obvious that he's got a different Clodia in his head than the one everyone else, including the reader sees.

Which comes back to love and hate, which is a theme throughout the book; how he loves and hates her. I think he loves her when he can see her as the fantasy in his mind, but when he sees the reality, the hate comes back again. Falling in love can be a lot about fantasy sometimes; I've observed this in my own life.

12 Byzantine Rulers

I started listening to Lars Brownworth's 12 Byzantine Rulers today. I don't like it as much as The History of Rome so far. For one thing, Lars talks just faster enough than Mike that it feels like he's rushing through what he's reading, and that makes it harder for me to pay attention.

Another thing is that he's covering a lot of ground in a much fewer amount of episodes, so he's really blasting through a lot of years of history at a frenetic pace. Which makes the whole thing feel like it's just blipping by a whorl of ambition, destruction, warfare, bloodshed, ambition, backstabbing, etc. How are you supposed to keep it all straight, I don't know.

I'll keep going with it of course, because I'm dedicated. And because I'm all caught up on THoR anyway, except for the latest episode, which I have just downloaded (yay!).

I think I'm turning into my father.

Who was a great, big, giant history buff. I blame The History of Rome podcast for leading me down the dark path of becoming obsessed with dedicated to learning more about Roman History. I've even started teaching myself Latin, which should tell you what a sad, sad creature with no life I am. :P

I've been watching Rome's first season lately as well, you can really tell on a second viewing which parts you didn't like by how hard they are to watch a second time. In general, I like the gritty take they took on it. In theory, I like that they concentrated on some "ordinary" characters instead of just focusing on the major historical figures, but in practice, this had mixed results at best. The problem is that the two guys they chose to focus on weren't all that sympathetic a lot of the time, for various reason (and I did have my "different time, different morality" hat on), plus they had to shoehorn them rather improbably at times into plot lines that did have major historical figures so that they could eat their cake and have it too and tell both stories at once. Which turned out to be a bit implausible at times. Like, a random nobody from one of Caesar's legions fathered Caesarion. Sure. And Caesar refuses to execute a soldier who let Pompey escape just because he happened to be a main character he had powerful gods on his side. *eyeroll* Really guys.

But it was enjoyable, in a trashy sort of way. Oh and there was way too much sex. I don't mind a sex scene, but if it's not outright porn that I'm watching, then I want it to be serving the plot in some way and not just feel like it was shoved in (heh) gratuitously. A lot of sex in this was pretty damn gratuitous. I mean, come on. Not every Roman emperor had sex with his sister. No, really. It's true!

I know it sounds like I'm bashing it, but I really did enjoy it in spite of its many flaws.