SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome by Mary Beard

This is the story of how Rome grew, covering 1000 years of Roman history;
giving the reader a feel for what it was like to live in Rome at the different times.

A general history book of over 500 pages can be a slog, but SPQR is fast moving!

The book is instead a precise explication of what it is we know about specific selected events in Roman history, what it is we do not know, and why we do or do not know.

I enjoyed the book and the way it organised its topics in Chronology and the way dealt with political aspects of Rome and at the same time intergrated ordinary life for Romans and their subjects both rich and poor.  

The author also makes an interesting distinction between "learning from the Romans" vs. "engaging with the Romans history"
Rome was built. Mary Beard’s sweep of events goes beyond the consuls, senators, generals and emperors to cover the lives of their spouses, the middle class, the poor, and the slaves.

Adventures in Human Being by Gavin Francis

 

This is an anatomy book for a non-medical audience that talks about the human body in highly accessible manner, with minimal jargon and many medical stories.  It starts with your head and ends where else at your feet  
I loved the parts where Francis described his patients and the quirky facts about our organs and body parts that are "insider info" not common knowledge. 

He tried to combine other disciplines to the chapters which sometimes made the chapters feel disjointed. 

It is not a long book and some chapters left me wanting more detail.

My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante

This story isn't on the International Mann booker short-list but one of its prequels - however I thought I had better start with the first one!  It tells the story of intense friendship and rivalry between two girls growing up in the impoverished outskirts of Naples.

I really enjoyed the opening where suspense is created by the fact that the novel begins from the perspective of the story-teller as a sixty-something-year-old woman being told by her friend's son his mother has suddenly disappeared.

It feels vivid and authentic, more like an autobiography retold in the first person.

There are many characters -there are so many families in the neighbourhood, and everyone has nicknames that it was tough to remember who was who and who did what to which relative. (There is a cast of characters listed at the front of the book, but it's still confusing on a Kindle.)