More Reading...

Yesterday I read Robert Harris’s international bestseller, Pompeii: A Novel. A work of historical fiction, Pompeii is told mostly from the perspective of the aqueduct manager in Pompeii during the days immediately preceding and during the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius. Filled with intrigue, this novel took me a while to “get into,” but once it got going, it flowed like lava to its satisfying end.

Today I read the English translation (from French) of Marguerite Yourcenar’s impressive historical fiction work, Memoirs of Hadrian. While both books required a tremendous amount of research, Yourcenar's comes off as much more of a scholarly read. She draws on documents that survive from antiquity that are by and about the second-century emperor to create an interior (psychological) look at Hadrian's life. This one's thought-driven, not plot-driven.

Both books are terrific for providing backgrounds on first- and second-century history. While the former was a better "beach" read, the latter provided more on Jewish backgrounds and how Rome dealt with Judea--which Hadrian later named Palestine.