Traveling offers the best opportunities for me to read. My job often involves long intercontinental flights that allow for rare uninterrupted hours to read. Family vacations are even better as I can find time to turn off my phone and sit by the beach or pool with a good book, typically a nonfiction one that teaches me about my location or a novel that is set there.
This summer we took a family vacation to Greece and in between the historic sights and great food, I was able to read three books, each of which I can enthusiastically recommend to readers of Book Nation by Jen.
The Rise of Athens by Anthony Everitt
While we visited Athens, Delphi and Hydra I read The Rise of Athens by Anthony Everitt. It’s a welcome retelling of the story of a small city state with a unique culture that flourished for a remarkably brief period – but nevertheless laid a key foundation for what became “the West.” If democracy was a natural way for humanity to organize itself, there would be more examples of it recorded in world history. If ancient societies were commonly structured to encourage philosophy, science and the arts, humanity would have advanced much more rapidly than it did. There is a reason why John Stuart Mill argued that Marathon was the most important battle in British history. And there is a reason why this example was sadly so fleeting.
The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
While on Crete I read The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller. This novel is a faithful yet modern retelling of the Iliad, a three-thousand-year-old story with an immediately recognizable plot even if we’ve never read Homer. But this one is told from the perspective of Patroclus, and unlike in Oliver Stone’s terrible movie Troy this Patroclus is clearly not Achilles’s “cousin.” It’s story of war, honor, glory and love that expands on the original in several intriguing directions. It’s a quick read and surprisingly quite moving given that we all know how this story ends.
Circe by Madeline Miller
Then in Santorini and on the flight home I continued on with Madeline Miller and read her second book Circe. This one doesn’t retell the entire story of the Odyssey but imagines a full backstory for one Odysseus’s adversaries on his way home from Troy, the witch that turned his crew into pigs. In these pages Circe is a complex and fundamentally sympathetic character, someone who was subjected to repeated cruelties from the gods and sexual assaults from men. It’s a deeply feminist story of a minor immortal who grows, both in terms of her own power and her emotional maturity, while experiencing the familiar joys and heartbreaks of love and motherhood. I thought it was even better than Miller’s first novel and I look forward to what she will write next.
