I normally do not do the homework, unless I am interested. Like how I would survive The Purge.
Now, we are asked about our favorite books and authors. Unsurprisingly, they are about the fall of the Roman Republic. I do not normally like mysteries, but the SPQR mystery series, by John Maddox Roberts is amazing. These are excellent detective stories, and the political intrigue revolving around our hero Senator Decius Caecilius Metellius the Younger reaches fever pitch. While history suffers for the story, things do hang together. So much about ancient Rome is just ridiculous bullshit dreamed up by second rate writer who cannot be bothered to do the reading. Maddox is not one of these.
Nor is Colleen McCoullough. If you have a taste for real historical fiction, her Masters of Rome series will enthrall you a hundred pages into the first book, The First Man in Rome. You will simply devour The Grass Crown, Fortune's Favorites, Caesar's Women, Caesar: Let the Dice Fly, The October Horse, and finishing wanting more with Antony and Cleopatra. These books got me reading the real historical texts, and I liked them as well. Her characters, mostly actual great men of Rome, "quiver with life," as one reviewer stated. Simply the best yarn I have ever read.
