#56

Sad that I have so little time these days. To read a 300-page novel takes weeks instead of a couple days.

After Butcher's Crossing I bought Augustus and it is an excellent novel about Rome--not quite up to the high bar of I, Claudius, but close. I enjoyed the epistolary approach, and the shifting views of Augustus from a variety of persons. I liked particularly the wonderful journal of his nursemaid Hirstia. We don't hear from Octavius himself until the end.

Soon I'll read Williams' other famous novel, Stoner. And then there will be no more from him. Sad.