March Picks

Since I was teaching Ancient Rome in history this term, and since I am a passionate believer in matching excellent historical fiction with the study of a people and a time period, I decided that I would go ahead and get this book which had been sitting on my Amazon wishlist for quite some time. I had also heard it mentioned in my Emperors of Rome Great Course, so I was even more eager to finally read this book. Well, I was not disappointed! I think this author did an excellent job of making you understand how, shall we say, 'messy,' the lives of the Roman elite were without going into disgusting detail. The conniving, the moral bankruptcy, and the use of religion as a bludgeon are all well portrayed. I found this a hard to put down read, and while I won't be using it in my classroom with my tender middle school ears, this book deserves its reputation as a great piece of Roman historical fiction.

My music pick for this month is something else that has been sitting on my Amazon wishlist for quite some time. I grew up listening to Roger Whittaker, and since I wanted something Irish for March this album seemed a good choice. I also had this album on my wishlist because it has some of the songs on it from my all time favorite Whittaker album, Folk Songs for Our Time, this is only available as a cassette, 8-track, or LP. While I wasn't a huge fan of all his renditions of these common Irish folk songs, there were a few that I really do like, so I consider it money well spent. Now I just need to track down that cassette again and get it converted to digital format so I can't loose it again!