Cleopatra discussion

I found it to have too many words that I needed to look up. I thought this would be a good book and it probably is but I just don't want to have my dictionary on hand to use all the time.
Okay, I'm going to try this book one more time. Talked to a few instructors and they told me to just skim over them and go on and I'll do that.

I read this with my book club and we all felt the same way! Out of twelve of us only 1 was able to finish the book.

There were only a few words I needed to look up, so that didn't put me off too much.

It was a relatively long book with information jam-packed inside; I found putting it down every couple of chapters helped with understanding. My main issue was the end of it- there were so many things happening that it was very challenging trying to keep up.

I to thought it was packed with information, but I did learn some things. Since I read the book, I've watched the movie with Liz Taylor. I was able to enjoy & understand movie better due to my recent reading of book.

I really enjoyed this book and the writing style. I appreciated how the author challenged the traditional view of Cleopatra and Rome in general. Funny how many of our assumptions of history come from Shakespeare haha.

I guess I will end my part of the discussion of this book even though I started it and by the looks of things is getting rather "heavy". I never said it was a bad book, just that having to look up words took the enjoyment out of reading it and never said it had too much information. But everyone is different in their opinions and we are entitled to them even though the author may be a Pulitzer Prize winner or not. I am reading it and will finish it but without the dictionary and will guess at meanings.

I guess I will end my part of the discussion of this book even though I started it and by the looks of things is getting rather "heavy". I never said it was a bad book, just that having to look up words took the enjoyment out of reading it and never said it had too much information. But everyone is different in their opinions and we are entitled to them even though the author may be a Pulitzer Prize winner or not. I am reading it and will finish it but without the dictionary and will guess at meanings.

Sue wrote: "I guess I will end my part of the discussion of this book even though I started it and by the looks of things is getting rather "heavy". I never said it was a bad book, just that having to look up ..."

Oh I totally agree about author being Pulitzer Prize winner,doesnt always make them a super author-all opinion of whoever on group to choose book. Same as Newberry award there have been many books chosen to be best young reader chapter book for year, but students do not like them & will not read them.

Have you guys read any good nonfiction books lately? I'm trying to make my self read more nonfiction books.

What criticism? Is it difference of opinion or criticism?

I certainly enjoyed Schiff's take on Cleopatra. I didn't feel she was damning Plutarch et als, but brought out how they would be naturally biased. I felt she tried to be as fair as possible in presenting the facts as we know them, and making logical suppositions from same.

History, all history is written by the victorious in war. Augustus had no love for either Antony or Cleopatra, and wanted to besmirch their names beyond all recognition.

Another excellent source for the era is Augustus: The Life of Rome's First Emperor. It chronicles the era that Augustus and Antony co-ruled Rome. Most informative.

I thought Schiff did an excellent job of dispelling many myths and stereotypes. This is one of the best contemporary writings of a historical personage you can find.

I really didn't worry about a perceived bias. It was good history and history is biased. To be fair, read more than one source and balance the information. That's where it gets tricky though because then you add your own bias.
So, have some fun. Don't criticize because the author has a better vocabulary than you do,(certainly better than mine) and you'll be able to enjoy some revelations if you're lucky.

it was just ok...

Sue wrote: "I found it to have too many words that I needed to look up. I thought this would be a good book and it probably is but I just don't want to have my dictionary on hand to use all the time.
Okay, I'm..."

This is one of the reasons I love my Kindle - built in dictionary for quick and easy look-ups.

Robin wrote: "Sue wrote: "I found it to have too many words that I needed to look up. I thought this would be a good book and it probably is but I just don't want to have my dictionary on hand to use all the tim..."

I agree, but I didn't have it on my NOOK, maybe later.

I am surprised so many people had trouble with this book. I loved it and found the history fascinating.

I thought it was a pretty good book overall, full of information people don't know, but in the middle it had too many useless stuff that I didn't enjoy reading (too many politics) and got me really bored. It took me a while to get off those pages and get a bit excited again, but at least I finished =) I'd totally recommend it :)

I really liked this book but would hesitate to recommend it for my book club. This is a book for people who like history and who want to learn. My favorite genre is history and historical fiction. I like a good mystery once in awhile or other fictional novels, but everyone has a different take on what they want out of a book. Working people often want to relax and read something easy. Very understandable. This book isn't easy, but it wasn't difficult. I agree with others who have said that she was trying to put balance to the Roman point of view.

Liz wrote: "I really liked this book but would hesitate to recommend it for my book club. This is a book for people who like history and who want to learn. My favorite genre is history and historical fiction..."

Liz, I agree. Probably people that have a frame of reference for the period would do best with Cleopatra, but also, perhaps it could serve as a gateway for them. So, I guess it depends on the person.

This book was very dry, and I really had to labor through it. It wasn't difficult to read for me, and it wasn't confusing. I love history and reading about the historical figures, but this book was just lacking creative flair. The information was good but the presentation was lacking.

I couldn't put it down and I am not a big history reader. I have alwawy been fascinated with Cleopatra and I enjoyed reading about her from a feminist point of view.

This was one of my favourite books that I read last year. I do enjoy non-fiction but I love it when it reads like fiction which this book does. That all being said, I am sort of a Classics geek (I have studies both Latin and Greek) and I have an interest in Near Eastern Studies which Egypt definitely falls under. I was glad that the author spent so much time explaining who all of her children were and where they ended up after all was said and done. Cleopatra (like Egypt itself) was a force to be reckoned with.

Monique wrote: "This was one of my favourite books that I read last year. I do enjoy non-fiction but I love it when it reads like fiction which this book does. That all being said, I am sort of a Classics geek (I ..."

I agree re: her children. I also enjoyed the description of her sailing with the incense and garlands adorning her vessel - it gave me a vision of her that I didn't have before.

Well I was really disappointed with the book. I loved the idea of reading about Cleopatra. The book was super hard for me to follow since it didn't really go in a specific chronological order. I was so confused after reading it. We did go see Stacy speak when she was she was here in Pittsburgh and she was very interesting to hear speak. When we heard her speak about the book in person it was very interesting and easy to follow.

I stumbled upon this book for a writing job I had to complete, and the reviews for this book were really amazing. So when I started reading its e-book version, it provided good settings of the time, and the challenges Cleopatra was facing as its leader, the thin line between political struggles and how to manage the entire empire. As much as it's very insightful, the book is well-written but it is too scholarly for me. There are just some events that jump from one time frame to the next.

Excellent historical novel. I got it from Audible and thoroughly enjoyed it.

Saman wrote: "Excellent historical novel. I got it from Audible and thoroughly enjoyed it."

It's non-fiction, not a novel.

I think it's really hard to probably write something about something so long ago so I think it was a really good job of doing it. I learned a lot.

I am glad I read it. I learned much from this book – not sure where I received what little information I had on Cleopatra before. However, there remains a serious dearth of information about her and almost everything that was written firsthand seems to have been done so by the Romans, all of whom had their own political agendas. I often wonder what all was lost when the library at Alexandria burned, and how much the information there would have further rounded out our knowledge of her.

Once I finished this book I appreciated it more. In my opinion it was dry, but I feel I learned a lot from it. I did have to give up reading it and switched to listening to it while I commuted to work.

Liked it, but not an easy read.

Sue wrote: "I guess I will end my part of the discussion of this book even though I started it and by the looks of things is getting rather "heavy". I never said it was a bad book, just that having to look up ..."

I found that the one and only thing I like about reading on the kindle is the built in dictionary feature. If it weren't for that, I dont think I would be reading any ebooks.

And you are right, from the first page I needed a dictionary for this book... and a pencil for the margins (GASP, yes, I wrote in it). Back to my high school days of taking notes on passages so that I could reference them easily later. While it isn't my favorite method for reading a book, I do, certainly prefer a faster, easier read, I find myself ultimately rewarded for having made it through such a book.

I'm also sort of a classics geek, so I enjoyed reading about the story of Cleopatra from her perspective. It also filled in a lot of gaps for me.

What I didn't like about this book was the way it was written. I thought the author was trying way too hard to be entertaining or to achieve some stylish effect. It needed a good editor to clean it up. The story itself was entertaining enough, the author's "style" got in the way. Instead of being able to get wrapped up in the narrative, I constantly felt the presence of the author and the author's struggle to be stylish.

The other problem I had, perhaps related to the style issue, was the excessive use of em dashes. It seemed as if the author produced a first draft, then went through and added lots of extra tidbits and quips. But instead of rewriting the appropriate sentences to incorporate those extra items, she just stuck them in somewhere in between em dashes. Very annoying. An em dash used effectively can be very powerful. This book is a good demonstration of ineffective and excessive use of em dashes.

Ken, perhaps you would've enjoyed it more if it had been written in Classic Geek. : )

I'm glad I don't know about em dashes and was not distracted by their inappropriateness.

I read this book shortly before traveling to Israel for the first time. Having read about Cleopatra's enmeity with Herod the Great added to my understanding of that part of the globe. I thought the book was excellent.

Kelly wrote: "Have you guys read any good nonfiction books lately? I'm trying to make my self read more nonfiction books."

I have read some excellent non-fiction over the past few months. Let me know if you are still looking for some books. Is there a particular area of non-fiction you are interested?

I recommend reading this on an e-reader so you can look words up easily as you go. This book got me started on a whole new genre, biographies of women and then into historical novels. It was a great jumping off point for me and has really changed what and how I choose to read.

Judi wrote: "I recommend reading this on an e-reader so you can look words up easily as you go. This book got me started on a whole new genre, biographies of women and then into historical novels. It was a grea..."

Yes, that's a great idea to use the e-reader for this book.

I loved this book, as there is such a paucity of information on this great woman, and what is available is laundered with (Roman, patriarchal, etc.) agendas. I enjoyed her scholarly research, piecing together and contrasting against other historical sources. Masterfully done. I was watching the BBC series "Rome" at the time, which added an exciting layer of unscholarly colour and vibrancy to the read.

I found it a bit tedious at times, but overall I was fascinated by a multitude of things regarding ancient Egyptian culture: the food, rituals, politics, decorative aspects, street life...

I did find the endless Roman references difficult to wade through, and a bit boring. Cleopatra's Egypt was so colorful and exciting, while the Roman men and the culture they inhabited was terribly misogynistic, and I just kept picturing ugly bald men, with huge egos, living in a society the color of mud.

I'm extremely glad I read it. It was quite the learning experience!

Kelly wrote: "Have you guys read any good nonfiction books lately? I'm trying to make my self read more nonfiction books."

I found "Cleopatra" too confusing at points because of the author's habit of jumping around (over and over) in time. It grew to be a struggle to read rather than a pleasure.

I was captivated by "Unbroken" by Laura Hillenbrand
and also "In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror and an American Family in Hitler's Berlin" by Erik Larson.

Overall I really liked this book. Sometimes it was a little like a history book, but it is full of so much great information about Cleopatra.

This was probably one of the most challenging books I've read this year. I found the authors style of writing a little hard to get into but if you can get past the first two or three chapters it improves quite a bit.

funny thing is that once i read the book i found that we know very little about her. And this book was very good at showing us how little we know. In fact once i put hte book down ithought how pointless it was to read the book...lol

It was a fascinating topic and I love that the reader got a different perspective on Cleopatra from other books written on the topic. In fact, she continuously explained what different authors shared on specific topics. But the book was so difficult book to slog through as others have suggested.

It's easy to see that there's not much out there about Cleopatra once you read this book. The question is why. Today, only the Roman view of that era exists.

I loved the book too. There were a few things I wasn't 100% pleased with, such as how detailed and conjecture she'd use when discussing one moment of her life, while in another leaving it up to our imaginations.

I'd recommend it to my friends who prefer non-fiction.

I really enjoyed this book. I didn't have any trouble with the writing style, as some have mentioned. I took my time with it, since I had a novel or two going on the side. I found it quite interesting and would recommend it. I thought it was a down to earth, well researched, historical non fiction account of Cleopatra that stripped away much of the hollywood perspective. There was still a lot of mystery left about her though, and I think that's good.

I was so excited to read this, but sadly disappointed. I couldnt even finish it..