Ermahgerd, how is November almost over?!

Hello readers! I can’t believe it’s almost Thanksgiving. Things have been a little slow around here due to the inescapable reality of things being busy in life, but I wanted to get one post in before the holiday madness begins. I haven’t been finishing many books lately (again with the busy), but I thought I’d do the review-in-progress thing for a couple that I’m flailing about in the middle of, note a few upcoming ones I’m looking forward to reading, and other sundry book-related stuff. I’m also very excited for Entertainment Weekly’s holiday shopping guide! It’ll have a section dedicated to books, so you can expect me to prattle on about that for a while whenever it arrives in my mailbox. So, what have I oh-so-valiantly been trying work my way through?

Books I’m Reading

Look! A pretty cover! And a biography of Cleopatra!

I’ve been stuck in the first hundred pages of this one for a couple weeks, and I just don’t understand. When this one was sitting on the library stack in the corner of my room, I would cheat on the books I was actually reading by going over and flipping through its pages, and the passages I opened up to would be really absorbing and I’d have to tear myself away to go finish the books I was focusing on. But strangely enough, now that it’s time for me to focus on this one, I can’t. It’s not that it’s boring—it’s just very slow going for me for some reason, which is so confusing considering how I got sucked in before. Ten pages is about my limit before I starting thinking to myself, I’ll just rest my eyes for a minute, and then read some more… before nodding off.

I’ve learned a lot, though—for instance, I somehow completely missed in my years of education that the Ptolemies of Egypt were not actually Egyptian at all, but Macedonian Greek. Pharaohs who weren’t Egyptian?! I feel a little betrayed! The writing somehow dances a line between feeling academic and popular history-ish, which I’m mostly okay with. But I do keep wanting the footnotes to provide deeper explanation of things mentioned in passing in the text above, rather than tangents with little to do with the thing they’re footnoting. And that’s another thing I’m having trouble with: The author, though writing a biography for general consumption, presupposes a lot of knowledge on the part of the reader, and mentions esoterica in passing with a feeling of, “Oh, everyone knows about that!”, or will refer to interesting things obliquely and then not provide further information. For example, there’ll be something like, “Though Cleopatra made terrible snickerdoodles, there was in fact an ancient king in the middle east who made the most scrumptious cookies around,” and then move on to talk about Cleopatra and Marc Antony’s home life WITHOUT TELLING US WHO MADE AWESOME COOKIES. So…we’ll see. This one might be going back to the library without me finishing it, but I’ll try a little more first.

I’ve only read one of the short stories in this anthology, but I’m enjoying it so far. It’s a book of retro sci-fi stories about “Old Mars,” a.k.a the Mars of aliens and canals and Edgar Rice Burroughs, compiled by longtime partners-in-editing, George R. R. Martin (of A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones fame) and Gardner Dozois. I like the idea of taking the older, pre-space exploration sci-fi ideas and bringing them back and revisiting them in an era after the discovery that the reality of Mars is not completely in line with the imaginations of those early sci-fi writers. There’s an element of fantasy to it (which I guess can be said of all sci-fi, when you get down to it), and it’s really fun. More thoughts to come after I’ve digested more stories! It’s hard to go wrong with GRRM. Which bring us to…

Books I’m Excited to Read

I know a lot of book blogs do the “Waiting on Wednesday” meme where each week on Wednesday they highlight an upcoming book that they’re excited to get their hands on, but…I’m not sure memes are my thing. And I don’t know if I could keep it up every week. AND it’s Tuesday, so I choose to be the salmon swimming against the meme current. I do what I want!!

Anyway, I am very much looking forward to the fantasy anthology Dangerous Women, edited (again) by George R. R. Martin and Gardner Dozois, out on December 3rd. Many of the stories appear to be set in fictional worlds with which I’m not terribly familiar (Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series, Lev Grossman’s The Magicians, Jim Butcher’s Harry Dresden books, to name a few), but many seem to be standalones, too. And, of course, the main reason for my interest is GRRM’s A Song of Ice and Fire novella “The Princess and the Queen,” which while sadly doesn’t feature Dunk and Egg, covers the tumultuous period of the Targaryen civil war 200 years or so before the events of the ASoIaF cycle proper. I am definitely one of those OH MY GOD GAME OF THRONES BOOKS WESTEROS I LOVE YOU I WILL READ ANYTHING YOU WRITE ABOUT IT GEORGE people, so this is a wonderful thing to be published right around the holidays (say, you think they did that on purpose?). You can read an excerpt of GRRM’s story here, and find excerpts of the other stories via Tor.com as well. Entertainment Weekly gave the overall collection a B and George’s story a B+, so I’m excited to read and see how my own evaluation holds up against theirs. Oh, here’s the not-particularly-inspiring cover:

What books are you reading? What are you looking forward to picking up soon? Let us know!

Read in Progress: An Ephesian Story

Title: Ephesiaca, or, Anthia and Habrocomes
Author: Xenophon of Ephesus
Publication Year: Mid-2nd century CE
Genre: Classic, as in old (not classic, as in everyone should have read it in high school)

The other day I was rummaging through some bins for stationary when I found, to my delight, my copy of the Ephesiaca (Book 1) by the Xenophon most people don’t encounter in their reading. You may be scoffing, “As opposed to the other Xenophon I don’t know?” And that’s okay, because unless you’re really into classics, history or philosophy, you don’t particularly have a reason to know of the Xenophon who wrote about Socrates (yup, Plato is not the be-all and end-all of Socratic wisdom) and concluded the History of the Peloponnesian War (you’re forgiven if you thought only Thucydides touched that subject too).

But Xenophon of Ephesos is not that guy. Xenophon of Ephesos is like the Danielle Steele of Greek writers, as opposed to say James Madison. This Xenophon is so lightweight that Wikipedia only has a stub about him, but the Ephesiaca has a lengthy plot summary on a separate page.

And here is where the fun starts, because the Ephesiaca is one of the oldest surviving novels, and it’s an adventure/romance. Pirates, true love, robbers, forced marriage, deathlike sleep, torture…can we say, proto-Princess Bride?

I should probably wait until I’ve read more to post about this, but I’m having too much fun so far. Here’s what’s going on in the first page:

Some youth Habrocomes is a popular guy, good at sporty things, with a rocking body and noble soul. I’m not totally convinced I’m translating the soul thing correctly because a sentence later we find out that he’s conceited. People will tell him that they’ve found some beautiful boy or shapely virgin, and he’ll look and laugh, saying that he doesn’t see anything great. (I couldn’t help hearing Colin Firth’s Darcy: “I saw little beauty and no breeding” and “She a beauty? I should as soon call her mother a wit.”)

Habrocomes is so convinced that he’s hot stuff, he’s been mocking shrines and statues of Eros (Cupid) under the belief that he’ll never fall in love with anyone.

This is clearly foolish on Habrocomes' part. And where I left off, “Eros rages at these things: for the god loves to win and is merciless to the conceited. He searched for something to use against the young man, yes for even to the god, Habrocomes seemed hard to beat.” Ha, Habrocomes, you are going down!

I can’t tell if it’s because I was just reading Wodehouse, but I love that Eros is kind of in awe of Habrocomes to the point that he can’t immediately find an opening to teach him a lesson. It seems like the sort of reaction that Bertie Wooster or Lord Elmsworth would have—but in an age of unironic togas. Sweet stuff.

Anyway, you know you want to read this one with me!

(Bonus points if you do it in the Greek! :-P)