The Library of a Book Reviewer

I’ve mentioned my library a few times in the past, but I figure I might as well show you what I’m talking about.  So here is a picture of my family library:

It doesn’t look like all that much, but the room is at such a weird angle that I couldn’t fit everything in the picture.  There’s about four generations of books going back around 100 years in that little library, which also doubles as a guest room.  Apparently someone in my family loved both Dickens and Reader’s Digest Condensed Books because they seem to take up a lot of space.  And if you’re wondering, no, my books aren’t down here.  My personal collection is much, much smaller.

It’s hard to tell from this angle, but that’s the only way I could get the whole shelf in.  As you can tell, there’s a lot of series and they’re all nicely arranged by alphabetical order.  I may be an extremely messy person normally, but I’m obsessed with order when it comes to my books.  However, if you zoom in you can tell this shelf only goes up to ‘M’ in the alphabet.  That’s because there’s another shelf:

Yes, I am obviously running out of room.  The next time I get any new books I’m either going to have to give some more books to my little sister to make room or start clearing myself a shelf in the family library.  No, I don’t know how many books I actually own, but they’re a tiny fraction of what I’ve actually read.

Enough about my library, though..  What does yours look like?

Blog Tour

Well, I’m doing my first blog tour!  Well, technically it isn’t even my tour.  As part of his mission to promote indie and self-published authors, Mark of The Masquerade Crew has reached out to other bloggers to get the word out about a certain number of books.  Those of us that post for his tour will get a chance to win an Amazon gift card and our readers will get the chance to learn about great indie books they never may have heard of before.

Tomorrow I will be posting my first tour article, but I want to ask you guys: Do you want me to do blog tours?  Please post your answer and reasons in the comments section.  If the general consensus is no, I won’t go any further on the tour, but if you guys like blog tours I will keep going with it.

Look What Just Arrived! (#3.5)

I hadn’t intended on buying 5 more books, but for whatever reason I decided to go birthday shopping for my friend in a book store.  That was how I blew my entire month’s book budget.  Anyway, here are the books I bought:

  • The Clan of the Cave Bear by Jean M. Auel
  • Old Man’s War by John Scalzi
  • The Kingdom of Gods by N.K. Jemisin
  • Delirium by Lauren Oliver
  • Wondrous Strange by Lesley Livingston

Wondrous Strange is what I originally bought for my friend’s birthday present, but then my shopping kept going.  Delirium by Lauren Oliver is a book that didn’t really sound appealing to me before I read an excerpt online and liked what I saw.  The same was true of The Clan of the Cave Bear, but I’m skeptical about how that one will turn out.  The Kingdom of Gods by N. K. Jemisin is a book I’ve been looking at for a while, but never found it in my small local bookstore.  And yes, after following John Scalzi’s blog for 3 years I finally got around to buying one of his books.  If his blog is anything to judge his writing by, I have a feeling I’m going to enjoy Old Man’s War.

I, Claudius by Robert Graves

(Cover picture courtesy of Bookyurt.)

Tiberius Claudius Drusus Nero Germanicus lived from 10 B. C. to 54 A. D.  Despise as a weakling and dismissed as an idiot because of his physical infirmities, Claudius survived the intrigues and poisonings that marked the reigns of Augustus, Tiberius, and the mad Caligula to become Emperor of Rome in 41 A. D.  I, Claudius, the first part of Robert Graves’s two-part account of the life of Tiberius Claudius, is written in the form of Claudius’s autobiography and stands as one of the modern classics of historical fiction.

I love both Roman history and historical fiction, so when I got the classic I, Claudius for my birthday, I was incredibly excited.  But did it live up to all of the hype?

Actually, yes.

I, Claudius is written from Claudius’ point of view and really did a lot to repair the reputation of one of the most unlikely emperors in the history of Rome.  Claudius was often portrayed as an inept fool who survived only because he was the butt of the Imperial family’s jokes, but Robert Graves’ classic really did make people start to examine the real Claudius.  Due to my interest in Roman history, I was lucky enough to be introduced to this Claudius through Mike Duncan’s History of Rome podcast.  Both Mike Duncan’s incredible podcast and I, Claudius do Claudius justice and shed a lot of light on the complicated politics of Imperial Rome.

One thing I didn’t like, and this is more of a personal matter, is the fact that Robert Graves seemed to subscribe to the Livia-poisoned-everyone theory.  Did the Augusta poison people?  Almost certainly.  But did she really have Augstus, Agrippa, Lucius, Marcellus, Gaius and Claudius’ grandfather poisoned (and many, many others)?  Almost certainly not.  However, this particular theory makes for excellent fiction and some of the incidents related by Claudius are probably embellishments, but that’s why it’s called historical fiction.  These things could have happened, but they likely did not.

Claudius himself is a great character.  Because of the autobiography format of the novel, we get to see him as he grows up through his eyes.  The writing style is as if Claudius is writing many years later, so there is quite a bit of foreshadowing of certain events and we do get insight into some incidents we never would have gotten otherwise.  My only real complaint was that the book ended just when things were going to get good: his ascent to the purple, so to speak.  That’s also why I’m eager to read the much overshadowed sequel to this classic novel, Claudius the God.

I give this book 5/5 stars.

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