Monthly Archives: October 2006

All Quiet on the Eastern Front

Sorry for the silence. This is a busy time at work—we’re preparing for the Holidays here, coming up with our list of what we call The Holiday Hundred. It’s usually a mix of new and older books from the year that we think are some of the best. Of course, people will quibble with the list—there were many great books that didn’t make it.

One book that made it and I’m am nerdily excited about is Robert Fagle’s new translation of the Aeneid. I’ve only had a chance to read the intro by Bernard Knox and a few pages of the first book. There’s an interesting article in the NYT about Fagles’s efforts.

Monday Distractions

  • Alex Beam writes in today’s Globe about the new Sony Reader, a portable electronic “book”. So far the reviews have been mixed. Somehow I don’t think the old fashioned book is in any danger of extinction. Too many people love holding a real book in their hands, turning each page, savoring the smell and look.
  • Robert Birnbaum spoke with Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie while she was in the Boston area. I even got a glimpse of Mr. Birnbaum and Rosie as they turned the corner in their cool convertible the day she was in town presumably on the way to the interview.
  • Mr. Champion’s review of the new Stephen King appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer yesterday. So far the reviews have been mixed.

Augustus: The Life of Rome’s First Emperor by Anthony Everitt

Anyone attempting to write a biography of Augustus faces a monumentous task. Not only are sources limited during the era, but the information that is available is often biased. Not to mention the fact that so many important events occurred during such a short period of time. Everitt manages to take all this in stride and presents a readable and interesting portrait of a man who transformed a crumbling republic into the world’s largest empire with his new book. Beginning with Augustus’s rise through Roman society including his adoption by Julius Caesar to his power struggle with Mark Antony to his becoming the head of state, the author makes all of this fairly easy to follow. Names and dates can be a little confusing. Some diagrams and family trees interspersed throughout the book might have helped. Instead they were unhelpfully placed at the beginning with no information that would tell you what part of the book they were relevant to. Everitt paints a thorough picture of a man who worked hard to create an image of power, simplicity, and above all else a near mythic aura. His novelistic reconstruction of Augustus’s last days offers a bold new interpretation, which he carefully backs up with historical research. Written to reach a wider audience than Classicists, Everitt even attempts to make some comparisons to today’s world events. Overall, I found the book a fresh recounting of historical events.

Too Many Books

There seems to be a glut of books by big named authors this Fall. Wait, haven’t we already read this before? Right, the Los Angeles Times put out an article several weeks ago and now the New York Times has a similar one. The same authors are mentioned again: Thomas Pynchon, Michael Connelly, John le Carré, Cormac McCarthy, Charles Frazier, Alice Munro, etc. Do you think the NYT cribbed from the previous article? I shouldn’t complain I suppose, since they are covering books, but it still seems sloppy to me.

The Echo Maker Round Table

Ed has posted the first of five installments of a round table discussion of Richard Power’s new book The Echo Maker, which was just nominated for the National Book Award. I can’t speak for the other books, not having read them, but this book by Powers is definitely deserving of the award. It’s one of the most thought-provoking books I’ve read this year. His previous book The Time of Our Singing is one of my favorites. I didn’t think he could surpass that one, but he’s managed it with this new one.