Cleopatra

Makenzie enjoys reading "The Royal Diaries" and wanted me to read one of them, too. So today I finished reading Cleopatra VII: Daughter of the Nile. I'm NOT generally interested in history (I think I got a score of about SIX out of thirty-something on the history portion of the high school ACT), but this was actually a pretty good book. Apparently, there aren't very accurate records about this queen because of fires, wars, etc. Since I really don't care much what really happened, though, I enjoyed the story :-) What stuck with me the most was the incredible lack of loyalty. I'm sure this flaw applies to people in power today, too, but I was disturbed by the ease with which people were overthrown or executed even if they were family members. Another disturbing point of the book was the barbarism of that time period. Again, the world hasn't exactly become a better place to live since then; but at least there is some idea of a stable "right and wrong" about physically harming people.

So now I can move on to my stack of books I just got in the mail last week. I made the mistake of signing up for a book club, thinking it was a good deal -- five books for only about $7. What they failed to mention until the deal was done was that they would be charging over $15 to ship the books to me. I'm saying NO FAIR to that one, but I'll enjoy the books anyway.