At the start they say to cultivate a relationship with a tea seller and keep a notebook. Maybe that advice and the time and temp tables for steeping are all I came away with. This is not a criticism of the book: their enthusiasm is palpable and their knowledge seems broad. I don’t think a book can really be written about types of tea. You have to just drink it.
The material moves from the legendary to the historical, careful to keep the strands separate. Plenty of quotations to demonstrate what the ancients thought of their own or the immediately preceding times, and enough explanation to guide us through propaganda. These are stories familiar to our better educated predecessors, in need of a good modern presentation. The social and political history and cultural coverage is wide but not scholarly-deep. The book is less well-written than the author’s Cicero which I had enjoyed very much and which led me to read this book: Rise of Rome has some purple prose and plenty of sensationalism, but that is as much a fault of the subject as of the telling.
I am not a classical scholar, but many more years ago than I like to say I read avidly the first volume of Lewis & Reinhold’s Roman Civilization: Selected Readings on the Republic after consuming with voyeuristic glee Graves' Claudius novels and Suetonius' Twelve Caesars…)
A well-told, gossipy but historically and sociologically detailed study of Cicero’s life. Everitt quotes extensively from the letters and creates a sympathetic and engaging story of a fascinating fallible man, not entirely admirable; yet I found Cicero likeable. There is a fine précis of Cicero’s books. The biography is of necessity also the story of the final stages of the transformation of the Republic into a Monarchy.
spoiler alert
The aliens were alien but not very. I liked them and was more interested in their story than in the humans’. The climactic conflict promising dystopic mutual destruction ended in optimistic mutualistic synthesis. The tech that made everything possible was too vaguely magic, so the denoument was unsatsfying: lessons were not learned but imposed by biochemical fiat. Maybe we should be trying to develop a pan-empathetic nanovirus….
A collection of short essays by RSC actors each describing the preparation of a role played in production in the ’90s. I’m a community theater player with minimal formal acting traing, so I found the incidental explanations of the rehearsal process from various perspectives enlightening. And as I’m more familiary with some of the actors' TV and screen work than with their stage work, it was wonderful to read about the craft they trained in.
Paul Jesson’s essay on Henry VIII and Jane Lapotaire’s Queen Katherine were especially interesting because they had to explain the similarities and differences between historical reality and Shakespeare’s fiction. I know the play superficially, and found it difficult to relate to these characters. Both actors must have done a superb job of making these characters come alive on stage because they succeeded in doing so for me in these briefs.
John Nettles essay on Brutus was fascinating for the same reason: balancing what we have of history with what we have from Shakespeare. Nettles' portrait of a man of deep ideals who thinks himself important to history yet is intellectually and politically woefully inadequate to his self-appointed role is bitter.
Other highlights: Christopher Luscombe’s Launcelot Gobbo & Moth, Philip Voss' Menenius.
Several actors describe feeling miscast in their parts: Derek Jacobi made the interesting observation that he is a tenor with a slight appearance on stage, which he thought inappropriate for Macbeth, whom he felt should be a powerful bass. He played his Macbeth over-intelligent and over-imaginative, unable to still his skittish mind. David Tennant did not fancy himself a clown in the least, and had to work hard to create his Touchstone.
Isaac Asimov, scientist, polymath, and science fiction author, presents a detailed overview of the Hebrew Bible and of the New Testament. He sets the books in historical context, glossing names, places, and aspects of culture. He does so in a compelling style and authoratative voice, possessed of a scholar’s great detailed knowledge, a novelist’s expressive appeal to imagination, and a teacher’s skill at arousing and sustaining interest. He makes the subjects, the writers and the original readers of these foundational narratives come alive.
Great premise well played out. Realistic, deeply likeable characters, even the heavies, though the outright villains are slightly cardboard. Tense action, a lot of great military detail. The mystery of motivations spins out at a perfect pace. There is some gentle philosophy, a good balance of explanation & unexplained mystery, and, incredibly in this late age of science fiction, some unique aliens. The writing, concerns, and style remind me of Hilbert Schenck’s Chronosequence.