Tag: fitness

Lindsay Powell, Bar Kokhba, the Jew who Defied Hadrian and Challenged Rome (Pen and Sword Military 2021)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/57168141-bar-kokhba?ref=nav_sb_ss_1_23

In researching my fourth novel, The Receptacles of St. Ananias, set in 132 CE when the Bar Kokhba Revolt, the third great Jewish revolt against Rome, was happening, I bought this (Kindle) book after searching for—without finding—a novel on the subject. Since then, I’ve found one—My Husband Bar Kokhba by Andrew Sanders—although there are many military novels from the Roman soldiers’ point of view. I selected this history as one hopefully less obviously Zionist in tone as Yigael Yadin’s or others’ take.
There are two problems facing those wanting to learn about Bar Kokhba in the 21st century. The first is that unlike the first Jewish Revolt of 66-73 CE, where we have contemporaneous accounts from Flavius Josephus and Tacitus , the precious and almost only records we have of the Bar Kokhba Revolt are the letters discovered in the 1950s in the Cave of Letters, some of them in the general’s own hand. Without knowing any of the context, these letters can read as cryptically as the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Rabbinical sources refer to the man as just ‘the southerner’ (from Judaea). Cassius Dio’s account of the war doesn’t name him, and neither do Christian writings mention him by name. We don’t even know the location of Betar (maybe modern Bittar), the site of the famous last stand. What we know is pieced together from scant references in ancient histories and archeological finds.
What information we have is highly susceptible to mythologisation. For example, the destruction of the First Temple, the destruction of the Second Temple and the fall of Bar Kokhba are all said to have fallen on Tisha b’Av (the 9th of month Av). Twice may be a coincidence, but three times is, I would imagine, a myth. Bar Kokhba is supposed to have cut off the little fingers of his men to ensure none were ‘afraid or faint-hearted’, hardly something a general in his right mind would do. Unfortunately, Powell accepts these ‘facts’ as history.
The second problem is that Bar Kokhba has been claimed ideologically as a David-against-Goliath hero of Zionism. David ben Gurion, first prime minister in 1948, proclaimed, ‘The chain that was broken in the days of Shimon ben Kokhba…was reinforced in our days, and the Israeli army is again ready for the battle in its own land.’ A revision of this viewpoint is under way, e.g., Elon Gilad (2015) .
Powell recounts the history using a literary technique I found particularly interesting. He expounds the history from the origins of the Israelites to Bar Kokhba as he makes his way through the galleries of the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. He goes through the life of Emperor Hadrian as he’s on his way to interview Professor So-and-So. He paints the second century topography and road system by recounting the progress of Hadrian’s well-documented travels. He talks about events in Jewish history after recounting similar things that happened on his travels. It makes the read more like a chatty travelogue than a dry history book and makes it more accessible.
There is a lot of information in this book which is only laterally related to Bar Kokhba. Unfortunately, so little is known about the man and the war he waged that otherwise, it would have been a very thin book.

Ann Swinfen, The Bookseller’s Tale (Shakenoak Press 2016)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30639175-the-bookseller-s-tale?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=Y89I8PTLtG&rank=1

Nicholas, his sister Margaret and children Alysoun and Rafe are rare survivors of the great pestilence in Oxford that caught his wife Elizabeth and Margaret’s children and abusive husband. Nicholas is official bookseller to the university, and his two scriveners are at work copying.

On his way home from collecting goose feathers at a local farm, he spots a body floating in the river. The boy is a young student, William Farringdon. Jordain, Warden of the Hall at the university, collaborates with Nicholas in investigating the crime.

The next day, students come round the shop and recount how William had been worried of late. One of them, Peter de Wallingford, said William had been planning to take holy orders. He had seen him meeting with two ‘prosperous looking’ men, and he’d seemed afraid of them. Nicholas and Jordain visit William’s room at Hart Hall and discover that he had been at work copying a fine Irish psalter. How had he borrowed the original, kept under lock in the Merton collection?

A mystery involving famous antique books ensues, and Nicholas and Jordain track down clues helped by local tradesmen and farmers, risking danger to themselves.

It’s very well written, and the language is believably antique, with enough mediaeval minutiae to make one feel in the moment. I was fascinated by the details of the bookmaking industry—how parchment was made, what raw materials were used for pigments—as well as details of how crimes were investigated and prosecuted in the Middle Ages. Several interesting characters enter the picture, and the pace of the investigation is lively but not rushed.

This 14^th century mediaeval who-dunnit is Book 1 in the Oxford Medieval Mysteries Series. I can presume that the others are of equivalent quality. It is an easy read and would be suitable for a younger readership.

This review first appeared in Historical Novels Review.

Captivating History, The Bar Kokhba Revolt (Kindle 2021)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/59720401-the-bar-kokhba-revolt?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=CeXt0elXwi&rank=1

The book starts with a whistle-stop tour of Jewish history, beginning with the Exodus (without going into the fascinating question of historicity as backed up by the archaeological record, the biblical account is used). Then, whizzing through the Babylonians, Persian, Seleucids, Ptolemies and Hasmoneans (Maccabees), we’re up to the Romans by Chapter 2.
The speed made my head spin, but the simplification of the Sadducees/Pharisees conflicts during the Hasmonean period was helpful.
Herod became vassal king to Rome by backing the right Romans at the right time. The Romans began the practice, so vilified by future Zealots, of appointing their own puppet high priests.
With a view to the Bar Kokhba revolt, all this background serves to outline the reasons why Jews wanted independence from Roman rule. Underlying it all was a cultural antagonism going back centuries of conflict between Greek-speaking Greco-Roman-influenced ‘Hellenists’ and Aramaic-speaking ‘Hebrews’. Then there was a religious conviction that Israelites were destined by God to be free. Successive Roman authorities didn’t help matters by trying to erect statues of emperors, considered religious anathema. Antagonism between Judaeans and their neighbours—Idumaeans, Samaritans, Galilean—dates back to the Hasmoneans, who forced Jewish customs and religions on the conquered people.
After the first Jewish Revolt, things got worse, with the fiscus judaicus tax imposed only on Jews and anti-Semitism from both rulers and populace. Emperor Domitian was openly hostile to Jews (including Christians). There was a second Jewish Revolt with the Kitos uprisings of 115-117 CE in the Diaspora.
The final straw before Bar Kokhba erupted in 132 CE is debated. Hadrian rescinded his promise to rebuild the Temple and began construction of a Roman colony Aelia Capitolina atop the ruins of Jerusalem. He planned to site a Temple of Jerusalem right on Temple Mount, although this may not have happened until after the revolt.
Interestingly, it ends by reviewing the various scholarly controversies concerning the revolt, a situation engendered by the paucity of real information, which was itself probably engendered by the completeness of the defeat and the enormous deathtoll. Unfortunately, the conclusion reached is a silly, revisionist one—that it was ‘basically a cultural misunderstanding’.

James Essinger, Writing Fiction (The Conrad Press 2019)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/50199457-writing-fiction—a-user-friendly-guide?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=aIXIcYOFM0&rank=1

When I first began writing novels, I was determined that I was not going to ‘follow the rules’. How boring it was always to have a ‘five-part structure’, always to follow the stages in ‘the hero’s journey’.
However, now that I’ve grown up, I realise that there are rules. Readers expect them, and if your novel doesn’t follow them, the reader feels disappointed. We want a big climax in the middle and some kind of resolution at the end. We can’t empathise with a protagonist who’s fighting for a goal we don’t understand, and we lose interest in a hero who wins too easily.
It begins with the basics—write an outline, show don’t tell, character and voice. A novel needs a hero who is grappling with stakes the reader considers significant.
Two of the most important basics Essinger calls ‘golden rules’. 1. Stick to your story. Everything in your novel must be ‘pursued’; it must have something to do with the story. Any detail that’s out of the ordinary needs to be there for a reason. 2. Make your hero be an active participant in the story. Avoid authorial intrusion.
Essinger explodes some old canards. For example, if you ‘only write what you know’, your novel is probably going to be as boring as real life usually is. No, you should use your imagination, but only write what you know, emotionally. ‘Tell’ is not an inferior cousin of ‘Show’; it is simply a different way of telling a story, useful in particular circumstances, for instance, to summarise events in order to move the plot along quickly.
In a useful Appendix, Essinger includes specific advice on common mistakes he’s seen as a publisher.
He concludes, ‘So let’s get to work.’
This how-to book is a good exposition of the basics of fiction writing, featuring illustrative examples from literature and films. It would be a useful handbook for someone who is just starting out. This book adds to a growing shelf in my office of how-to-write books, as, now I know, I need all the help I can get.
I was given an ARC by the author.

Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness (1899; this edition Green Integer 2003)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4900.Heart_of_Darkness?ref=nav_sb_ss_1_17

A dreamlike tale of a man’s moral integrity challenged by the barbarity around him

In this famous novella, Marlow recounts the story of his voyage to the Belgian Congo one evening while he and others are moored on a boat in the Thames.
It is written in an old-fashioned style (published 1899) that modern readers may find difficult (I did). For example, he begins with a long, though beautiful, description of the Thames ‘crowded with memories of men and ships’, which strains the attention span.
Marlow decides to seek his fortune. He wants to go to somewhere that was ‘a blank space on the map’ and procures himself a position as captain of a steamboat involved in the ivory trade. He finds that the steamboat has sunk and is dredged up to dry dock, where Marlow must repair it, an enterprise thwarted by the inefficiency of bureaucracy and the resulting lack of supplies. High on his list of wants is ‘rickets’, of which there had been thousands at the coast.
From other white men he hears complimentary things about the mysterious Kurtz, another ivory trader, the man he is supposed to meet. He eventually sets off with a crew of cannibals, and his descriptions of the jungle they float past—dense, oppressive silences ‘with the word ivory ringing in the air’, punctuated from time to time by threatening native drums whipping the crew into a frenzy—are dark and disturbing.
Finally arriving at Kurtz’s Inner Station, they discover that the man has set himself up as a sort of god, and a collection of severed heads on posts attest to his omnipotence. Kurtz is determined to ‘civilise’ the natives, his motto being ‘exterminate the brutes’. The steamer breaks down, and they have to dry dock again. Kurtz dies, uttering the last words, ‘the horror, the horror’.
Marlow struggles to maintain his moral integrity, with all the savagery around him, and he struggles against Kurtz in his descent into madness. He barely survives but makes it back to Europe.
Along the Congo River, exploitation of the native black men is at its most raw, and the scenes Marlow describes are nightmarish. Various techniques add to the dreaminess. For example, no character other than Kurtz is named. It is often unclear where Marlow is situated within the narrative. He begins telling us him impressions of a place before he has told us he has travelled to that place. The dream-like feel of this book led to its providing the inspiration for the film Apocalypse Now. The nebulousness is artful, but makes for difficult reading.
This is a ‘hero’s journey’ where the hero doesn’t prevail, but instead returns home haunted by the horrors he has seen.

David Gaughran, Following: A Marketing Guide to Author Platform (2020)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/53919170-following?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=KER0IP0xH9&rank=1

This pamphlet, which the author gives away free as a Reader Magnet, boils down the essential elements in developing an author platform. What is an author platform. It is ‘a writer’s collective presence on the internet’. Gaughran simplifies the gobbledy-gook and pares it down to the essential tasks, also recommending requisite services and software.
Never mind blogging, he says, unless you want to. The three main ‘planks’ of your author platform need to be 1. a Great website 2. a Thriving mailing list 3. an Active FaceBook page.
He goes through, step by step, how to do this.
Check it out, and start building your ‘following’.

Ian McEwan, Solar (Random House 2010)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7140754-solar?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=cHaGQwgYSE&rank=2

The beginning is studiedly nebulous. ‘He belonged to that class of men—vaguely unprepossessing, often bald…’ physicist Michael Beard is an Everyman, but in a tongue-in-cheek way.
His fifth marriage is disintegrating—his wife Patrice is having a flagrant affair—and he hasn’t a clue how to react. Adultery seems to have made her more desirable. Even his Nobel Prize and the fame of his Beard-Einstein Conflation couldn’t keep her in his bed.
While his attention is occupied by Patrice’s affair, he sleepwalks into leading a huge project, which grows more unmanageable by the day. He takes off for a sinecure trip to a frozen fjord to discuss climate change with a select group of artists and scientists. Stuffed into a 20-pound snowsuit, urination-related accidents and near-encounters with polar bears ensue, seemingly designed to ruin his chances of fjord-based hanky panky.
Enter brilliant, young, idealistic post-doc Tom Aldous, who, annoyingly, worships Beard. Then, mishaps and retribution.
Years on, Beard tries to live his life in the same way, resting on his laurels. A battle of wills with a younger man on a train over a packet of crisps and an ideological disagreement with a female colleague in which the press become involved push him to his lowest point. For a while, he retreats from human involvement. ‘Stick to photons,’ he thinks—his current project involves simulating photosynthesis—but there comes a point when the brou-ha-ha dies down. Then, on the eve of the grand opening of his project, all his ghosts come out to haunt.
One of the world’s great writers, McEwan turns a beautiful phrase; it’s chock full of inventive metaphors and gorgeous descriptions. In this Bollinger Everman Wodehouse winner, he applies his skill to wit as well as beautiful language. The plot overall is quite humorous, and some of the scenes are hilarious.

Saul Bellow, Herzog (Penguin Classics 2003)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6551.Herzog?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=9dGruMtrcW&rank=1

Moses Herzog is floored by the collapse of his second marriage; she’s leaving him for his erstwhile friend Valentine. For Madeleine, the announcement of their break-up is ‘one of the greatest moments of her life’; for him, he realises that he ‘has mismanaged everything in his life, everything’. He seeks solace with other women—Wanda, Ramona, Zinka—avoids work on his book on Romanticism, and writes manic notes to himself and erudite ‘impertinent letters’—which never get sent—to all and sundry.
I remember someone from my feminist days describing Bellow as ‘misogynistic’, and for that reason I avoided for years picking this book from my bookshelf. Reading it myself, I can agree that he has little empathy with his female characters, and Herzog has little remorse for his philandering. Nevertheless, the depiction of his characters, both female and male, is immensely deep, rich and funny.
During an event-filled five days, he descends into madness, becoming ever more philosophical and verbose. He ends up at his erstwhile marital home in the countryside, realising that, like the old place, he just needs a bit of fixing up.
Bellow won the Nobel prize in 1976 for works such as this National Book Award for Fiction and Prix International winner. Herzog doesn’t really follow a linear plotline, instead, mostly consisting of the ramblings inside the protagonist’s head—but, what a protagonist! His mental process as he prepares for a date goes on for twenty whole pages. For this reason, I found it a bit hard to read, though worth it for its virtuosity.

Colleen McCullough, The Grass Crown (Avon Books 1992)

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3424.The_Grass_Crown?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=Jn1BkEG0NI&rank=1

This Book Two of the Masters of Rome series follows the political and personal lives of the famous men and women of ancient Rome.
Gaius Marius, Lucius Cornelius Sulla and Publius Rutilius Rufus dine together. Marius announces his intention to go on pilgrimage to Pessinus, but his friends know he wants to check out what’s going on in Cappadocia.
Quintus Caecilius Metellus (Piggle-wiggle) is out for blood, and Marius’ man Manius Aquillius is on trial. Sulla is about to leave for Spain on campaign. Marius takes his family to Patrae, then Athens, then Helicarnassus and in the spring, on to Pessinus. Young Gaius Julius Caesar is a precocious lad, and Aurelia hires a pedagogue. The rivalry between Sulla and Piggle-wiggle escalates.
In Sinope, King Mithridates of Pontus reads a letter—Gaius Marius wants to meet. Mithridates travels incognito. He is out for conquest.
Marius and family make it to Bithynia, where he becomes involved in politics with Mithridates and Nicomedia.
Marcus Livius Drusus dreams of ‘a general enfranchisement for the whole of Italy’; Quintus Poppaedius Silo, an Italian, dreams of Italian ‘secession from Rome’.
Drusus is determined to get his law passed emancipating the Italians. Their spokesperson thwarted and murdered, leaders of 14 Italian peoples decide to use threat of war. The early victories in the Social War go to the Italians, giving Rome a fright. Though Rome eventually wins, the Italians win their citizenship.
The story follows the lives of Young Caesar and Young Marius. Young Caesar attends upon Marius after his second stroke. Caesar pulls Marius back into politics, and Marius begins to train him. Young Marius kills Lucius Cato the Consul in a mutiny, which saves a battle. Sulla is awarded by his men a Grass Crown. Sulla massacres Aeclanum.
Despite his infirmity, Rome wants Marius at the helm against Mithridates, and Sulla is told to hand over his legions. Instead, he invades Rome. But the troops rebel. On the run from Sulla, Marius flees and takes shelter at Cercina.
At the ludi Romanii, Lucius Cornelius Cinna makes his move to introduce laws regarding the distribution of new citizens and for the recall of 19 fugitives—including Gaius Marius. The controversy leads to the Massacre of Octavius’s Day.
The story finishes with the tale of the battle between Cinna and Gnaeus Octavius Ruso and the deadly rivalry between Marius’s faction and Sulla’s.
The scope of this novel, encompassing the gamut of Roman history, both political and personal, during the 1st century BCE, means learning a lot of complicated Roman names, more so than Book One, which was mostly Marius and Sulla. It takes you through the Senate meetings, the patricians’ dinners, the war strategy and the battlefields as if you were there yourself.