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May. 6th, 2017 05:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
qatsiBook Review: Release Your Inner Roman by Marcus Sidonius Falx, by Jerry Toner
This was a random selection from a work book sale a while ago; it's supposed to be a satirical take on self-help books, written from a Roman perspective. In fact, although the satire is there, it's not as laugh-out-loud as I'd expected, and it is perhaps surprising how much of Falx's advice doesn't seem outrageous or unreasonable today, though of course in some areas we have moved on quite a lot. It seems to me that Toner has successfully captured the rhetorical style of Roman writing, as it does read quite like the translation of a classical text. But the other thing Toner has done, which reduces the laughter but also adds an educational aspect to the book, is to provide a commentary at the end of each chapter on what the Romans thought on the subjects under discussion, and to give sources for those keen to investigate further.
This was a random selection from a work book sale a while ago; it's supposed to be a satirical take on self-help books, written from a Roman perspective. In fact, although the satire is there, it's not as laugh-out-loud as I'd expected, and it is perhaps surprising how much of Falx's advice doesn't seem outrageous or unreasonable today, though of course in some areas we have moved on quite a lot. It seems to me that Toner has successfully captured the rhetorical style of Roman writing, as it does read quite like the translation of a classical text. But the other thing Toner has done, which reduces the laughter but also adds an educational aspect to the book, is to provide a commentary at the end of each chapter on what the Romans thought on the subjects under discussion, and to give sources for those keen to investigate further.