Finished reading Papyrus: The Invention of Books in the Ancient World by Irene Vallejo, trans. Charlotte Whittle. This was a fascinating trip back to the birth of writing and, more importantly, of various forms of books, how they were copied, stored, sold, and valued, and a million short digressions, each of which Vallejo tied neatly back into the narrative. As usual, non-fiction meant slow reading, but it was quite good, and also has a lovely and witty index.
This book sung in a neat harmony with Ada Palmer’s Inventing the Renaissance, which looked back at the same authors and books from the other end of the timeline.
Finished reading Inventing the Renaissance by Ada Palmer. This is a history of the Italian Renaissance, and something of a history of a history of it, and shifts at the end to address “progress” and what that means. Casual in tone, but rigorous in structure and argument; quite readable, but long, and I needed to break it up with a couple other books.
Finished reading On Tyranny by Timothy Snyder. Quick and bracing; nothing I didn’t already know, but a good refresher.
I squeezed in one more book before the end of the year: Finished reading A Fatal Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum by Emma Southon, a fun and chatty look at Roman law and society through the lens of homicide. Southon uses a good chunk of her page count pointing out how little we know about the lives of Romans other than the richest men, and showing us a bit we can infer about the rest.
Finished reading How to Be an Antiracist. It feels like more of a primer than a deep dive, but it’s carefully structured and methodical, and I’m sure I’ll be thinking about it a lot. I hope I put some of what I read into action.