Xerxes Invades Greece, supposedly narrated by Herodotus. I bought this book a few days after the "high" we all felt from watching 300, the movie. I wanted ---needed---to know more about the story of King Leonidas and his 300 Spartan warriors. The movie pretty much immortalized Leonidas and the kind of men (and women, hehehe) from the Greek state of Sparta.To my utter disappointment, this book failed to deliver. I guess I should have known that the scenes that I was looking for were going to be skimmed over. After all, this book is one in a series of several books (20 extracts from The Histories!!!) that is published by Penguin Epics.
Anyhoo, I waded through mindless descriptions of King Xerxes and his army and navy --- commanders of which were thoroughly NAMED by Herodotus. I mean really, if the reader wanted a story and not a history text, you'd drop this book like a hot potato! But silly, stubborn me, wanted to find the part where Leonidas fought to the death.
I found it on page 72. For about 4 whole pages. That was it. And to think that I read this book for what seemed the loooooongest time ever for an itsy-bitsy 113-page book! Sigh! Onward to the next book, I say. And no, I will NOT be picking up any more extracts from The Histories, that's for sure! I don't need to know endless names of Greek and Persian generals or captains.
Word of the day today is EXTIRPATE. to destroy totally; to exterminate. In the context of this book: King Xerxes set out to extirpate Greece with his Persian army.
Oh well. At the very least, the book allowed me to use the WOD today, hehehe.
On to my journey......I will be staying with the classics and I picked out a compilation of Shakespeare :)
Happy reading!
2 comments:
Love the "Word of the Day" and your working it into the post! :)
I must say that I won't be adding that to my "must read" list of books! Love the word of the day, wounder if I can use it today.
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