It's been a while between book posts!

[lizbee]

Suffice to say, American Prometheus left me with a book hangover, much like Oppenheimer is still on my mind a month after I saw it. I started a lot of books, and eventually finished some.

Catilina's Riddle by Steven Saylor

The third in this series, and probably where I'm going to leave it for now, as each successive time skip makes me like the protagonist less. I note that his interactions with Catilina were extremely homoerotic, but, being spoiled for the end of the Catilinian Conspiracy, I couldn't really get excited about that.

Not finished: Paper Emperors: The rise of Australia’s newspaper empires by Sally Young

I got about 60% through this, which I think is enough to make it worth writing up. A fascinating topic, but I simply could not with Young's structure, which divided events up by newspaper company instead of chronologically. This is especially frustrating because various Murdochs and Packers were moving from company to company, so the narrative kept doubling back. It's a shame, because this book and its sequel are the definitive examinations of the Australian media landscape through history.

A Fatal Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum by Emma Southon

A genuinely fascinating blend of serious scholarship and pop history, conveyed in a chatty style that makes me very much want to sit down and split a bottle of wine with Southon. Example: 

When Augustus began creating the Roman imperial system, which he cutely called the Principate, when he was still called Octavian, he did so off the back of winning two civil wars, creating his own private army, and enacting a series of proscriptions that had around two thousand people arrested and executed for crimes as minor as 'Existing as Cicero' or 'Being Really Rich' or 'Friendship ended with Marcus Favonius, now Marcus Antonius is my best friend'. Thus, before the Principate even officially existed, it was bathed in the blood of the upper classes, and god knows how many working free and enslaved people died in the process.

Whether this style works for you is entirely a matter of taste, but I was sufficiently indoctrinated into the Cult of Classical History that making fun of Cicero feels a bit subversive. So it very much worked for me, and I learned a lot from Southon's examination of the Roman understanding of "murder" as a concept.

Blind Man’s Bluff: The Untold Story of Cold War Submarine Espionage by Sherry Sontag, Christopher Drew and Annette Lawrence Drew

Weird fact about me: I fucking love shipwrecks and submarines and reading about maritime disasters. There was a time, in my teens, when I was going to become a marine archaeologist. There are a bunch of reasons that didn't happen, starting with the fact that I'm a very poor swimmer and also terrified of drowning, and if you spend a lot of time reading about maritime disasters ... well. Suffice to say, the whole Ocean Gate fiasco was extremely relevant to my interests on a bunch of levels.

I'm still catching up on the backlog of Behind the Bastards, but I skipped ahead to the episode on OceanGate. Host Robert Evans mentioned this book in passing, and I hunted down a copy (I had to buy the paperback from Amazon Japan) and read it with great interest.

If you're into submarines, espionage and really terrible events happening at sea is your jam, this might be the book for you! It's a bit episodic, but interestingly skeptical about the military industrial complex -- more than I expected, anyway. I personally think it should be required reading for any writer working on a Star Trek, but that's just me (and my love of submarine nonsense).

Unscripted: The Epic Battle for a Media Empire and the Redstone Family Legacy by James B. Stewart and Rachel Abrams

Reads like the tawdry Succession knock-off that Showtime desperately needs right now, except that because of the events of this book, and the total ineptitude demonstrated at Paramount/Viacom/CBS, Showtime has been folded into Paramount+.

A very quick, easy read, which I think goes a little too far in depicting Shari Redstone as a totally relatable busy working mom/adult child caring for elderly parent/billionairess girlboss/friend of Donald Trump. But at the same time, the way she is treated by Les Moonves and the various boards kind of makes it hard not to be on her side, just a little. Fortunately, I have four seasons of having feelings about Shiv Roy under my belt, so I have practice at this sort of thing.

The Wolf Den by Elodie Harper

"Where is all the Roman historical fiction from the perspective of the enslaved?" I wondered, and the answer was right here. The Wolf Den follows an enslaved prostitute* in Pompeii as she engages in a battle of wits with her enslaver and schemes to regain her freedom at any cost.

There's a notable lack of obvious historical figures, save for a brief appearance by Pliny the Elder -- but I read through the list of excavated buildings in Pompeii and recognised every single one. Harper is mainly concerned with the Roman lower classes, which makes this a refreshing read. Although not an easy one: I think Harper handles the matter of sex with caution and respect, but obviously this is a book with rape at its core.

* Harper uses the modern language of "enslaved" and "enslaver", and I know I'm usually out here complaining about anachronisms, but it works perfectly here because Amara never regards slavery as anything but something done to her. At the same time, Harper refers to "prostitutes" not "sex workers", which I think is reasonable: it might be an anachronism too far, and it almost imbues this situation with a dignity that absolutely did not exist.

A River with a City Problem: A History of Brisbane Floods by Margaret Cook

First of all, that is an amazing title.

Second, this was a very enjoyable and informative book which covers a lot of what I shall loosely call ground, although you wouldn't want to build your house on it. I inhaled this on a plane on the weekend, and very much wished I had a pen so I could annotate it with notes like, "I lived here!" and "My brother went to school there!" and "I don't hold a hose, comrade." (Turns out that Gough Whitlam had a real problem with turning up to the sites of natural disasters. Great man, but an absolute tosser.)

My edition was updated to include the 2022 floods, and also goes into some detail about the current culture war taking place around dam management and whether or not Brisbane needs more dams (absolutely not, but try telling people that).

Currently reading: 

Agrippina: Empress, Exile, Hustler, Whore by Emma Southon

Do I know any necromancers? I need to fight Robert Graves in a Red Rooster carpark.

Comments

[sabotabby]

I should probably read the submarine book. I am told the submarine scenes in my latest book are the worst thing ever and need to change.

[lizbee]

I'm sure that's not true! But it's a good read.

[selenak]

I'm glad Emma Southon's take on these topics worked for you as well as it did for me, and can understand the increasing loss of sympathy for Gordianus, though for me it happened a bit later in the series.

As for Robert Graves: what would be your weapon of choice? I mean, there's the problem with physical fights of the man having learned how to box in high school and having been a WWI era soldier, and if you have a verbal argument with him he might jump out of a third floor window, so best leave him in his grave on Mallorca.

[lizbee]

I reckon I could take Graves pretty easily, since he's been dead for nearly 30 years, HOWEVER, I reckon the roll of coins in a knee-sock is the weapon of choice. Can do a bit of damage, but I don't have to get too close to his fists.

[gelliaclodiana]

I think I lost patience with Steven Saylor around Catalina's Riddle as well: I just felt like he and I disagreed really strongly about what kind of protagonist Gordianus was. (I maintain a fodness for Falco, however, and think Lindsey Davis is actually a pretty clever author of historical fiction.)

I have asked myself the same question, about literature from the perspective of enslaved people in Rome, so I will go look for the Elodie Harper book immediately!

Robert Graves makes a lot more sense if your realise he believes everything he writes in the The White Goddess but that he is also (in some very deep way) a historical con artist.

[lizbee]

I think I lost patience with Steven Saylor around Catalina's Riddle as well: I just felt like he and I disagreed really strongly about what kind of protagonist Gordianus was.

I think that puts it really well! They're not bad books, they're just not what I want.

Good news: the Elodie Harper book is the first in a trilogy; bad news: the third one isn't out until November.

[nostalgia]

I got the Roman murder book cos it was 99p and someone else on my flist had recommmended it, but I haven't got started on it yet. I know almost nothing about Ancient Rome, am hoping their murders is a good place to start.

[lizbee]

It kind of is! I hope you enjoy it.

[genarti]

Ooh, Blind Man's Bluff and The Wolf Den both sound fascinating!

(A Fatal Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum was already on my list, although I do think the writing voice will annoy me; that kind of meme-laden style is hit or miss and mostly miss, for me. But the subject matter sounds fascinating enough that I kind of want to give it a try anyway.)

[kelly_chambliss]

Fascinating list.

I'm about a quarter way through American Prometheus right now. It's really captured my interest even though so far I have two quibbles: 1) the authors constantly refer to situations/events as "ironic" when they sometimes aren't, or aren't very; 2) they seem unduly impressed by people's low body weight; so far, we've been told that JRO "never weighed over 130 pounds," that his brother "never weighed more than 135," and that Jean Tatlock "never weighed more than 128 pounds." Okay, I can maybe see mentioning JRO's weight; he's the subject of the book, and his exceptional thinness was a memorable trait, one that seems relevant to his health issues (chronic colitis and so on). But why do we need to know about Jean's and Frank's weights? (And how do they even know?)

But as I say, these are nit-picks. I'm impressed by the book.

There's an interesting editorial in today's (8-17) New York Times about the use of the terms "sex worker" and "prostitute." The author, Pamela Paul, questions the use of "sex worker," arguing that "the term 'sex work' whitewashes the economic constraints, family ruptures and often sordid circumstances that drive many women to sell themselves. It flips the nature of the transaction in question: It enables sex buyers to justify their role, allowing the purchase of women’s bodies for their own sexual pleasure and violent urges to feel as lightly transactional as the purchase of packaged meat from the supermarket. Instead of women being bought and sold by men, it creates the impression that women are the ones in power."

I was rather surprised by the number of commentators who took strong, even indignant exception to this argument, some insisting that "sex worker" is an unproblematic, clearly neutral, even potentially celebratory term, others arguing that most prostitutes are not "victims" in any sense and it's only lefty softies like the author who falsely portray them as such. Some either willfully or obtusely misread the article as somehow being a moral judgment against selling sex (it's not). Etc. (Some did make exceptions for sex trafficking in terms of abuse, but often wanted to see it as only a fairly small problem.)

A large proportion of these comments seem to come from males (or at least people who chose male user names). I'm not sure that "sex worker" is as dangerous a term as Paul suggests, but the vehemence and intensity of some of the opposing comments was eye-opening. Obviously it's very important to a lot of people that "sex work" (or whatever we call it) be seen as a deliberate, rational, and free choice of career on the workers' parts, not as anything that might be at all coercive or forced or that might cause buyers to question their own actions.

[lizbee]

But why do we need to know about Jean's and Frank's weights? (And how do they even know?)

This was one of the things which made me go, "Yes, this book was definitely written by men."

Re "sex work" versus "prostitution", I think it's definitely an issue that comes with a lot of nuance -- my friends who had good experiences in the sex industry favour "sex work", especially because that covers everything from paid intercourse to erotic nude photos. The friends who didn't enjoy working in the industry are a little more skeptical of the term, while also acknowledging that they didn't enjoy it any less than, say, retail.

(But I expect it makes a big difference that sex work is legal in Australia under many circumstances, and a lot of the debates around it essentially involve the sorts of workers rights issues that you get in any field that requires intense physical labour.)

[lokifan]

I need to fight Robert Graves

So relatable! I think I need to read some Southon.