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Thursday, March 17, 2011

The Histories (Herodotus)

I was hemming and hawing over reading this for a long time.  I knew I wanted to read Thucydides for the Peloponnesian War, but I didn't want to get bogged down in long, boring histories instead of getting to the literature at the base of the project.  But this is the time for it, and I had to get some Greek drama out of the library anyway, so I picked this up to give it a shot.

As it turns out, Herodotus is really fun!  This particular translation seems to be really informal in its use of idioms, so its really easy to read.  And the action is actually fast-moving so far, jumping from one interesting episode to the next.  I'm enjoying it enough to finish the whole thing.

So this is the longest book on the list by far up to now.  Ironically, thanks to dragging my feet on the Montesquieu, I've got a week-and-a-half to finish it before it's due back at the library.  Gotta fly now.

The other thing I know is that, due to its length and level of detail packed into that length, good notes are going to be virtually impossible to keep.  Don't know what I'm going to do about that yet.

Update, 3/18: Yup, writing notes is impossible.  If you want to know what happens, just read the outline at the beginning of the book.  I shall plow through.

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