Meditations by Marcus Aurelius

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

There's a lot of Stoicism, which I enjoyed because it strangely resembles Buddhism- and I like both. There were some great thoughts about coping with the idea of death, which he revisited throughout the book. There's also a lot of Marcus Aurelius's Hellenic religion, which I thought was really interesting because his relationship to paganism is so similar to the relationship a lot of Christians have with Christianity.

There was a lot of repetition which I enjoyed less, and at certain point, I started to lose some interest in his aphorisms. This might be my fault for reading this over five days, instead of just reading a few meditations a day for a longer period of time (as my husband suggested).

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The Aeneid by Virgil

The Aeneid by Virgil
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

We read portions of this in my Latin class over the course of two years, and I read this English translation mostly on my own at the same time. Nothing will make you love a book like pouring over it for multiple years. We also all used Latin names in class and I was Dido Elissa, which I liked because she was a powerful queen and an important character in The Aeneid. But I disliked having her name because I felt like the whole business with [spoiler alert] throwing herself on a pyre was kind of pathetic and definitely not feminist. Overall, it was such a gift to get to pour over this in Latin with a teacher to guide us through. (Thanks, Mrs. Simon.)

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The Odyssey by Homer

The Odyssey by Homer
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I think I've read this 2 or three times in high school and in college and I've always loved it. It's a great adventure, with wonderful language, and I've always thought that the real hero of the story is Penelope. She's more clever as her husband- able to keep her suitors at arms-length without starting a war, more loyal to Odysseus than he is to her, and not prone to violence as he is.

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