Book Club – Julie's Bits

Reading: Caesar’s Women

I’m currently reading Caesar’s Women, the 4th book in Colleen McCullough’s Masters of Rome series:

The First Man in Rome – spans years 110 through 100 BCE
The Grass Crown – spans years 97 through 86 BCE
Fortune’s Favourites – spans years 83 – 69 BCE
Caesar’s Women – spans years 67 – 59 BCE
Caesar – spans years 54 – 48 BCE
The October Horse – spans years 48 – 41 BCE
Antony and Cleopatra – spans years 41 – 27

I collected all of the books in the series and started reading them, in order, several years ago. I’ve read books 1 through 3 and am now reading my way through book 4. My reading has stalled due to personal reasons and my attention has gotten pulled into other activities, but I’m back to reading and hope to finish this book soon.

We are all yeses

“We are all yeses. We are worthy enough, we passed inspection, we survived the great fetal oocyte extinctions. In that sense, at least — call it a mechanospiritual sense — we are meant to be. We are good eggs, every one of us.”

― Natalie Angier in “Women: An Intimate Geography”

The best thing for being sad

“The best thing for being sad,” replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, “is to learn something. That’s the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you. Look what a lot of things there are to learn.”

― T.H. White, The Once and Future King

Now reading “The Road” by Cormac McCarthy

“Less” by Andrew Sean Greer wins the Pulitzer Prize for 2018

I’ve added the 2018 Pulitzer Prize winner in fiction to the reading list. We’ll be reading it this coming September. Please review the Epilogue reading list for the up-to-date reading list.

Current Reading List

Here’s the reading list of the Pulitzer Prize winning books I plan to read over the next several months:

The Road, by Cormac McCarthy (2007)
The Late George Apley, by John Phillips Marquand (1938)
Less, by Andrew Sean Greer (2018)
The Sympathizer, by Viet Thanh Nguyen (2016)
The Age of Innocence, by Edith Wharton (1921)
The Yearling, by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (1939)
Honey in the Horn, by Harold L. Davis (1936)
The Reivers, by William Faulkner (1963)
The Good Earth, by Pearl S. Buck (1932)

The Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead

Tonight I finished reading this amazing book. The story depicted slavery in a much more brutal way than any other story I can recall reading. As I worked my way through the book, the terms, “white privilege” (a term I have struggled to understand) and “black lives matter” have played over and over again in my mind. I also think of “black holocaust”, a term I had only recently heard, yet as I read of Cora’s experiences and observations in North Carolina, shares so many similarities to the Jewish holocaust.

I need to take a day or two to think about this book and let its story gel in my mind before I can write much more about it. I am appalled and moved beyond description for the things that occurred in this story. I think this is an important book that will stand the test of time and, and hard as it was to read, I am glad to have read it.