Members, It Is Time To Think of The Roman Empire

Pondering the Roman Empire is ingrained in the traditional male's brain and his woman wonders why; today we begin the test launch of my book club

The day is here, the test launch of my book club.

We’re reading The Lives of the Caesars by Suetonius, the Tom Holland translation.

A few of you have begun. I’m beginning today (hopefully I start today, the new house keeps throwing projects at me out of the blue).

My Next Steps

Again, I’m hoping to begin the book today. I will certainly start reading it by tomorrow.

I do read the introductions of classics. They can offer important context, guidelines, and understanding. More on this below.

After I read the introduction, I’m going to try a live video on Substack to discuss what Tom Holland lays out for us. It will be my first time trying it, my office is still chaotic with boxes, and I’m clueless to how the livestream works, but I’ll only learn by doing it. And I hope some of you joining me on this endeavor can, and if you can, join me on that livestream.

In my members chat, under the Suetonius thread, I’ll start posting my musings, analysis, questions, brain farts, and other topics. If you’re in on this endeavor, I ask you to do the same. Converse with each other, ask questions, whatever it is, the best way we can get the most out of this book is good dialogue.

If you’ve begun, feel free to chime into the chat. I’ll be catching up shortly on it.

Below I’ll share some of my process on reading introductions in a book like this, and some influenced ruminations of this book.

Treating Introductions with Deliberation

Here, copy and pasted, is what I wrote in my members chat on how to handle introductions (with some minor edits):