BOTM: M. Lefkowitz and J. Romm (ed.), The Greek plays: sixteen plays from Aeschulyus, Sophocles and Euripides
E. Bulwer-Lytton, Vril: the power of the coming race (1871)
P.L. Fermor, Mani (1958)*
P. Pullman, The Northern Lights (1995)*
_______, The Subtle Knife (1997)*
_______, The Amber Spyglass (2000)*
S. Runciman, The lost capital of Byzantium (1980)*
Thucydides, tr. Lattimore, The Peloponnesian war*
Xenophon, tr. Warner, Hellenica
It's wildly unclear how to rate this month's reading, two third of which were rereads anyway. I love Mani and I loved rereading it, but I can't just keep giving it Book of the Month for that reason. I also really enjoyed rereading Runciman's book on Mistra partly because we went, but also because it has a briskness and refreshing approach that I didn't appreciate the first time I read it, seven years ago. Then I described it as 'solid', but I don't think that's fair. It's much more fun than that, though probably less solid than I thought. I also revised, on rereading, Philip Pullman's books, which I read because my son and I are watching the BBC series, and thought were a lot weirder this time than they were before.*
After all that, I plumped for a book that I initially wondered shouldn't be a book at all, and that's the excellent collection of Greek tragedies (and that's partially a reread because I've seen several of these). However, I found it genuinely mind expanding to go back to the (albeit translated) text and plots. It also came with good essays to frame it for novices. The plays themselves remain the star though, both in terms of what they illuminated and about their own quality. This didn't make me wish I'd done classics, because I already think that, but it did make me want to read and see much more Greek tragedy.
*This didn't belong above, but I really liked them on publication. I think that's because the world is great and the religion narrative intriguing, but also because I was young and didn't know anything. In reality, while the first one is the best and the world is superbly built in that novel. After that it's hampered by a) the breakdown of that worldbuilding, which doesn't hold true later, b) the inconsistency of the religious angle, which I felt was lacking in texture when it could have been so much better (and also literally referred to a major plot device as working through 'grace', without a hint of irony), and c) what now feels quite creepy about adolescence and love as THE major plot driver.
