Imperium: A Novel of Ancient Rome by Robert HarrisMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
I found it hard to get into this book. It's hard to put my figure on it, since there parts of it I really liked. But maybe it was just too passive. The pretense is that this is memoir of Cicero's political life written years later by Cicero's slave/secretary. I think that made the story telling too passive; a bit of this happened and then this happened. So rather than feeling like I was in Rome or in the Senate, it often felt distant. There were exciting and interesting moments but overall the book fell sort of flat for me. There is a lot of political machinations (which makes sense given the story, but still), but I would have liked more philosophy from Cicero. You do get a some sense of how Roman politics work, from the inside, and that was interesting.
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