Well, this would have been on the book shelf, if I were still buying books in print, which I rarely do, over here in the UAE. It’s not like I’m going to carry them out with me, some day.

So, on the the Kindle, this is where the focus has been:

The two most recent books by Steven Saylor: Empire: The Novel of Imperial Rome and The Seven Wonders.

The former came out in 2010, and moves along well enough for a century’s worth of the Roman Empire, but having taken at face value all of the scandal produced by the historian and gossip-monger Suetonius about the early emperors, Saylor produces some grim reading. How much depravity and assassination and casual cruelty and pathetic sycophancy can we wade through? (OK, maybe, in 2013, a lot.) But it still wears a person down. (And I knew it was no picnic under Tiberius and Nero and, especially, Caligula, but Saylor paints Domitian in a very bad light, as well.) Perhaps the biggest takeaway for me was the existence of Apollonius of Tyana, considered by some a sort of 1st century rival, thrown up by the traditions of Greek philosophy, to Jesus of Nazareth. Saylor seems keen to to have us get to know him.

In notes at the end of the book, Saylor suggests the Roman Empire often was not unlike the Soviet Union. Not even he is a fan.

One more note: The novel ends as Antoninus Pius takes over as emperor, from the dead Hadrian. Poor Antoninus Pius has been catching it from historians for decades. Basically, nothing bad happened during his 23-year reign, sometimes considered the zenith of the empire, and he often is criticized for not doing something to prepare the empire for the looming waves of barbarian incursions. Preemptive strikes, or something. Even Saylor has nothing to say about AP, other than putting a thought in the head of a character, in the final pages of the book, musing that Rome had reached a point where things could not be better.

The other Saylor book is far more fun, a prequel of the Roma Sub Rosa series in which we find a young Gordianus the Finder traveling the ancient world to see the Seven Wonders of antiquity, and solving mysteries en route, of course. Saylor left Gordianus old and infirm in his previous book, and for those who want more Gordianus, going forward, the young man may be the best way forward to putting us back in classical history.

Also, I have tumbled back into Sherlock Holmes. For about the 10th time. This is detective work in the Victorian Era, and it is all rather chaste and often bloodless. Yet Arthur Conan Doyle still is entertaining, as Sherlock teases out 100 pounds of information from one pound of contact.

The Adventure of the Red-Headed League is quite fun, and is the sort of tribute to deductive powers that keeps bringing us back to Sherlock revivals. At least two are currently running in television form.

May as well read the original. And if you are not up for 500 pages of Saylor dissecting the gore of the arena in Rome, recall that Conan Doyle wrote short stories. These are jewels of brevity.