The Best Book I Read This Month: Agrippina by Emma Southon

I waffled about my choice for the best book I read this month. I couldn’t decide between the science fiction that made me cry (The Martian Contingency by Mary Robinette Kowal) or the history that ruffled my book club’s feathers (Agrippina by Emma Southon). Ultimately, I chose the latter.

The full title of Southon’s book is Agrippina: The Most Extraordinary Woman of the Roman World. Agrippina was the granddaughter of Rome’s first emperor (Augustus), the sister of an emperor (Caligula), the niece—and wife—of an emperor (Claudius), and the mother of an emperor (Nero). Every member of her immediate family predeceased her. For a time, she ruled the Roman Empire behind the scenes. All of this in a time and place in which women were expected to be invisible—not seen and definitely not heard. The label extraordinary fits.

Southon begins her biography with a historiographical note that won me over very quickly. Southon’s writing has personality. Like other historians of ancient Rome, she addressed the issues of the sources from the time (namely, their unreliability), but she did it with humor. Case in point: she described Suetonius’s writings as an “off-brand badly-cited wiki page.” History with humor? I’m in!

The humor continued through the biography. Southon’s tone had an irreverence to it and an earthiness. My book club was bothered by that. More than one member was bothered by Southon’s use of colorful language and discussion of sex in Rome, calling it vulgar and unnecessary. Clearly, they preferred a more serious approach.

My book club also took issue with the frequency of assumptions and inferences in Southon’s account. I’m not sure they realized or accepted that Southon had to read and work between the lines because of the dearth of sources from the time period. Women were just not written about, unless and until they did something scandalous. That did not bother me, and I appreciated Southon being honest and upfront about when she was assuming or inferring something, as well explaining why she drew the conclusions she did.

As a reader and a history nerd, I found the book enjoyable and satisfying.

The Best Book I Read This Month: How Fascism Works by Jason Stanley

The best book I read this month is the second book that I think is essential for understanding what is happening in the United States right now. (Wild Faith by Talia Lavin is the first.) Jason Stanley’s How Fascism Works explains, in plain language, the ten components of fascism. He cites historical examples and explains how each component manipulates the public to ensure support for, or at least a lack of resistance to, the fascist agenda.

Originally written early in Trump’s first administration, the edition I read was updated to include the COVID pandemic. And it’s all there: everything Trump tried to do the first time around and everything that he and his fellow kleptocrats are doing now to destroy American democracy. Stanley provides clear explanations for the methods and purposes of these actions, as well as their precedents in history. It’s chilling.

It’s no coincidence that Stanley and Timothy Snyder, two American experts in fascism, have left the country. (Both have accepted positions at the University of Toronto.) Their work threatens Trump’s power by exposing his goals and methods—and criticizing them in defense of democracy. Push comes to shove, I may delete this review too at some point. The emperor does not like being told he’s not wearing any clothes.

The Best Book I Read This Month: The Light of the Midnight Stars by Rena Rossner

The best book I read this month was an inspiring work of historical fiction. Set in Eastern Europe during the 14th century, Rena Rossner’s The Light of the Midnight Stars is a story of survival, perseverance, and magic.

Hannah, Sarah, and Levana live with their parents near the Hungarian woods. Each daughter has a magical gift, as do their parents. Their family is part of a magical Jewish sect called Solomonars, descendants of King Solomon and inheritors of his magic.

As the story opens, a darkness called the Black Mist is spreading across Eastern Europe and, as is often the case in European history, the Jews are blamed for it. A violent confrontation forces the three young women and their parents to flee into the woods and eventually to Wallachia, supposedly a haven of religious tolerance.

In Wallachia, the sisters deal with the trauma of the antisemitic violence they escaped while also hiding their identities as Jews. They each pursue a different path forward, and as they do, they find their way back to their magical selves. To say more would provide spoilers.

I loved the idea of magical Jewish women. I needed the story of perseverance and survival. At a time when I am exhausted by the world, this book fed my soul.

The Best Book I Read This Month: Micro Activism by Omkari L. Williams

The best book I read this month was short and powerful: Micro Activism by Omkari L. Williams.

Monday’s presidential inauguration left me feeling helpless. The subsequent executive orders overwhelmed me. I wanted to do something. I needed to do something. But what? I have limited time, finite resources, and no connections. How would I even begin?

Enter Omkari Williams’s Micro Activism. I’ve had it in my TBR pile for a while, and thank goodness I did. I pulled it out and read it in one night. It was just what I needed.

Micro Activism is an accessible, practical handbook for figuring out what each of us can do to improve our community, our country, our world. The idea is that we don’t have to do big things. We can make a difference by doing focused small things, as long as we do them consistently.

I found Williams’s advice very down-to-earth and her exercises very helpful in making my own plan. I discovered that things I’ve been doing for other reasons, like volunteering with a local animal rescue, are in fact activism. I found that discovery rather comforting. Equally comforting was Williams’s advice to take care of ourselves and to focus our efforts on one or two causes so we don’t burn out. There is a lot of work to do, and it’s going to take a long time to do it. We need to sustain ourselves so we can make it through the long haul.

I highly recommend this book. It’s helpful in finding a path to activism, and it’s validating for those who are already in the fight.

Eight Years Ago

Eight years ago, I spent Inauguration Day working on a short story. It was the first round of the 2017 NYC Midnight Short Story Challenge, and I was struggling mightily. I had a week to write a 2,500-word story—a story I could not find.

I was assigned Romance as my genre, but I couldn’t find any romance in my soul. I was angry, fuming about the new president. I didn’t want write happy ever after. I didn’t want to write happy of any kind at all. I wanted to write sad, mad, dark, spooky, scary—anything that wasn’t happy.

Eventually, I pulled together a 1600-word story about a middle aged woman who finds romance on her daily commute. I sent it in certain that my challenge was over. The story was too short, I told myself. It doesn’t have enough romance. It was too blah. It wasn’t my best work. Oh, well. There’s always next year.

A few months later, the results were announced. Much to my surprise, the judges liked my story, and I advanced to the next round. That next round is when I wrote the short story that eventually became my novella Greeks Bearing Gifts.

And that first story? You can read the competition version here. After the contest, I polished it, and it became the first short story I ever sold. You can find it in Smoking Pen Press’s anthology A Wink and a Smile (also available as an ebook and an audio book).

Since 2017, I’ve only participated in the NYC Short Story Challenge twice. I didn’t do very well either time, but I signed up again this year. The contest starts at the end of the week, and just like eight years ago, I want to write anything but happy.