A lull in reading

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But not too big of a lull.

Last night, after a marathon not-quite-all-day bout of reading, I finished Robert Graves‘ I, Claudius. Not only did the action and characters in the book carry me along quite effortlessly, I was also refreshed by reading about a political climate that is even more poisonous (literally) than ours today — the one that existed two thousand years ago in Rome. Therefore, our political climate is not, in fact, devolving into some kind of sub-civilized mosh pit, but is quite a normal one, judging by every single other society we know of since recorded history began. I suppose that this is all a great relief to me; we have been like this before, and survived it.

I am turning now to a re-reading of A. S. Byatt‘s The Children’s Book both because I want to re-read it and because the second volume of Graves’ Claudius books won’t get here from Amazon.com until Tuesday.