Category Archives: Must Be Digitized!

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I, Claudia — digitized!

I’m doing a happy dance here, because, finally, finally, the first of the Claudia Seferius mysteries is available as an e-book. Now they just have to digitize the rest of the series!

Have you read any of Marilyn Todd‘s Claudia mysteries? If not, run to your computer, download the first book — I, Claudia — and prepare for a great read.

The novels are set in the Rome of Augustus, and the plots center around Claudia, the noble wife of wine merchant Gaius Seferius. The secondary lead is usually Marcus Orbilio, a patrician who has chosen to work as an investigator for the Imperial Security Police, on his way to a Senate seat and to falling for Claudia. Doesn’t sound exciting? Oh, read on.

Spoilers ahead for the major storyline of I, Claudia so read no further if you don’t want your enjoyment of the first book to be spoiled:

Our heroine, Claudia Seferius, is, on the surface, a proper Roman matron. Prior to the novel, she lost her first husband, a judge, and her three children to a plague which also sickened her. When she recovered, she traveled to Rome in an attempt to escape her grief, and now is married to Gaius Seferius, a rich wine merchant in the equestrian class — what we would probably call the upper middle class.

She is quite a bit younger than Gaius; it’s a second marriage for him as well. However, Claudia is doing her best to live up to her marital and social obligations. She plans parties and entertainments to further her husband’s business. She steps into her role as stepmother to Gaius’ nervous daughter and prepares her for an upcoming arranged marriage. Okay, so she does some of these things very, very grudgingly, and maybe she has a little gambling problem but really, her life as a rich noble matron of Rome should be good.

Except she’s not a noblewoman. Claudia came from so far on the wrong side of the Roman road that you can’t even see it from the top of the Coliseum — unless you’re a Roman man who’s interested in the naughtier side of life. You see, the original Claudia died of the same plague that killed the rest of her family. Our Claudia, who started her professional life as a ‘dancer’ in the provinces, took the identity of the dying Claudia and came to Rome to make her fortune.

Claudia is determined to end up with a son in the Senate. It just takes one million sesterces. Which would possibly be achievable – if she didn’t have that little gambling problem.

Who am I kidding — it would be more accurate to say that Claudia has a major, life-ravaging gambling problem. If there’s something to bet on, she’s betting on it. And in Rome, there’s always something going on which involves a betting pool. Normal Romans track the year by major religious holidays. Claudia tracks the year by the games, races and entertainments associated with those holidays and the other celebrations of Rome’s upper-crust.

As the book starts, Claudia has ended up in debt to a thoroughly unpleasant moneylender, and to recover, she’s slipped back into her earlier profession – you could call her an upper-level prostitute-dominatrix who specializes in indulging the peccadillos of Rome’s elite. It’s a fine line balancing between her gambling losses and her naughty income stream – and then someone begins killing off seemingly unconnected upper-class Romans. Only Claudia sees the connection – all of the victims are her customers.

Enter Marcus Orbilio, who’s been assigned to track down the killer. Marcus is a shrewd person – and he quickly determines that these men are connected in some way with Claudia. (The fact that she travels in a litter with a very distinctive orange canopy doesn’t help to hide her whereabouts.)

Needless to say, Claudia solves the murders, with Marcus hard on her heels. But there’s more to solving the murders than just protecting her new identity. And that’s where Claudia really begins to develop into a person you can root for – the moment she discovers she has, all gods help her, developed a conscience.

On first acquaintance, Claudia strikes you as an abrasive, self-absorbed character interested only in her own future, someone who can’t really be bothered with other people’s problems. She’s sarcastic, impatient, and tends to verbally abuse and threaten when she’s unhappy or feels in danger. And let’s face it, she’s probably committed every crime in the book and then some during her life. Claudia, shall we say, does not hesitate to take any actions necessary to protect herself and further her goals.

But while she is all of that, mixed in is the fact that, while she might not want to admit it, Claudia does care about other people. And she will protect and avenge those people that belong to her, or that she identifies with in some way – and preferably in a way that furthers her goals.

For example, in this first book, Gaius ends up dead. Allegedly, he committed suicide because he was the one murdering men who were infatuated with or interested in his wife. In reality, he was murdered for an reason unrelated to the serial murders (not going to give you more than that!). Humiliatingly, while she plans a magnificent funeral for him, no one attends, by order of the Senate. So Claudia digs into his death, and makes certain that her husband’s killer is satisfactorily dealt with by Claudia herself. And then, she solves the series of murders in such a way to both remove Orbilio from her surroundings (she thinks!) and clear her husband (and herself).

In later books, Claudia travels widely throughout the Roman world. She escorts a Vestal Virgin home after her thirty-year term of service, vacations at an exclusive resort that experiences some unfortunate circumstances, and visits/is lured to Gaul and other provinces while running her wine business. In each book, she extracts a rough form of justice for crimes against her and her ‘people’. I sometimes found myself rooting for her form of judgment, especially in circumstances where Roman justice bowed to those in a position of power and money and ignored those who were poor and unimportant.

The books are incredibly detailed – from the furnishings of the houses to the clothes worn by different strata of society to the everyday life in Augustinian Rome. You really can form a picture in your mind of what the settings were like, and how it would feel to wend your way through the crowded noisy streets filled with all kinds of people and activities. The characters in each book are never cookie-cutter, always interesting, and frequently contain multiple hidden layers underneath the polite veneer they exhibit to society.

There are a few drawbacks – for example, sometimes the language includes what seems to be more modern slang, and on occasion, unless you’re paying attention, the minor characters in some of the books can become confusing, especially when their names are similar or only mentioned once or twice. However, Todd does get past this by having Claudia, or another character, reference them along with some identifying detail, and then they snap back into focus.

Overall, though, I absolutely loved this series – I read books 1-5 (the list is below) when I found them at a now-defunct mystery-specialty bookstore in Bryn Mawr. And I was able to find the latter four books in my local library. I’ve yet to read the middle books, because, unfortunately, the books themselves tend to sell for high prices, depending on the websites.

I really don’t understand why Steven Saylor’s Roman novels were such a hit, and Claudia didn’t catch on. I would say it’s the heroine, but frankly I find Saylor’s main character much more annoying and unlikeable. Marilyn Todd has a second series of books now, the Ilona mysteries, dealing with a priestess in a temple in Greece. Unfortunately, they just don’t hold the charm for me that Claudia does.

Ah well, each to his or her own tastes.

As I said, read these books. I’ve already downloaded I, Claudia, and I’m now going to visit Amazon and harangue the publisher to please, please, please digitize the rest of the series.

Meanwhile, I’m hoping to find the books, somewhere, at a reasonable price (early books were paperback only, later books hardback only). This is a series I’ll want in both digital and paper format.

The Claudia Seferius Mysteries

I, Claudia
Virgin Territory
Man Eater
Jail Bait
Black Salamander
Wolf Whistle
Dream Boat
Dark Horse
Second Act
Widow’s Pique
Stone Cold
Sour Grapes
Scorpion Rising

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Monstrous Thursdays

I love TCM’s Monstrous Thursdays. Tonight’s features are just what I needed after this crazy week, although one still has to be digitized!

I just finished watching the original Godzilla. The Americanized version, with Raymond Burr, not the Japanese classic of Gojira. I’ve seen this movie so very many times (I’m a bit of a Godzilla fanatic) — and in fact, I can (and did tonight) recite the dialogue by heart for most of the scenes. As usual, when watching the film, I found myself contrasting the American version with the Japanese original and speculating what the lost scenes, cut from the Japanese film, might have looked like and what they might have added to the story. Or would they have have slowed down the pacing, and ruined the film? Since the cuts have never been found, we’ll probably never know.

The second feature has just started — The Creature from the Black Lagoon. I positively love this film. Yes, the opening is a bit hokey. Yes, as the commentator pointed out, I, you, and the audiences of the 1950’s all know that the monster is nothing more than a man in a good rubber suit. And yet, it’s a truly scary movie — a combination of clever lighting, eerie music and an almost-Hitchcockian suspense in the timing of the creature’s attacks.

The water of the lagoon always seems to be murky, yet the innocent swimmers weave their way through the fronds of seaweed. They swim along, and nothing happens, They go back in the water and nothing happens. And then, suddenly, with no warning, the creature strikes.

Reminds me of scenes from Jaws, and makes me wonder if the creators of Jaws were inspired by Creature?

Later tonight, we get the third movie — It Came From Beneath the Sea. A giant octopus attacks San Francisco. A Ray Harryhausen monster — an octopus with only six arms, well, six that can move, thanks to the limitations the budget imposed on Mr. Harryhausen. And you get a bit of comedy in the movie as well, watching a woman scientist shoot down her interested suitor because he’s interfering with her ability to do Science!

Perfect movies to watch on a stormy night and relax from the week’s stresses! All three being shown on TCM are available digitally, too, and ultimately I’ll add them to my collection. However, the Japanese Gojira is not digitally released — and that one should, and must be, digitized!

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Bambi’s Children

Bambi’s children are named Geno and Gurri.  Geno is his son, Gurri his daughter.

I know this rather obscure fact because I spent the morning reading a beloved book from my childhood — Bambi’s Children, The Story of a Forest Family.  Yes, Felix Salten wrote a sequel to his famous book Bambi.  I had read it, over and over, when I was young, but then I moved, and I was never able to find another library with a copy that could be checked out and read.  Until last week, that is.  I was picking up two of Albert Payson Terhune’s Sunnybank books from the historical collection of my library system.  The librarian and I began discussing classic children’s books from the turn of the last century, and out of nowhere, she asked if I’d ever read Bambi (the real Bambi, not the shortened version that accompanied the Disney movie) and its sequel.  Wait, the library had a circulating copy of Bambi’s Children?  When she answered yes, I promptly requested it.

 

Bambi book

A much-loved, much-read book

 

I grew up in a small ‘patch town’ in northeasterm Pennsylvania.  My friends lived in other patch towns, and while we would meet often, we simply couldn’t spend every day together.  My parents, like my friends’ parents, both worked — even then, in those small towns, you needed two incomes in order to maintain a household.  Our parents simply couldn’t drive us, every day, to each others’ homes for what we’d call ‘playdates’ today.  Bus service between the towns was sporadic, and not always available at a convenient time for a child to go home.  And so, to pass the time, I dove into reading.

I devoured books.  Our library, while small, had a ever-expanding and varied children’s collection.   Although my mother worked evenings, every other Saturday we would run errands, and at some point, we’d end up at the library.  My mother, who loved to read as much as I did, would browse through the latest histories and historical novels (she was partial to the American Revolution, the Civil War and the kings and queens of Europe), and I would search through the shelves for new books on my favorites topics — mysteries, fantasies, historical stories and most importantly, animal tales.

Horses and dogs.  Dogs and horses.  While I diligently read my way through Nancy Drew and Cherry Ames, Tom Swift and tales from ancient Greece and Rome and Egypt, I kept coming back to the animal tales.  Sunnybank collies and Jim Kjelgaard’s Irish Setters.  The Black Stallion and his rival, the Island Stallion.  Kazan and Baree, wild dogs of the far North.  Marguerite Henry’s ponies and trotters and the King of the Wind.  I read them all, repeatedly.  Then one day, the libarian (and oh, I wish I could remember her name!) asked me if I’d read Bambi.  I explained that I’d seen the movie, and had the Disney books, and the coloring books.  Ah, she replied, but had I read the sequel?

There was a sequel?

And so I met Geno and Gurri, while renewing my acquaintance with Faline and Bambi, the great King of the Forest.  I followed the fawns as they grew up, facing threats from both nature and man.  I poured over the illustrations, because all of these books — Bambi and the Black Stallion and Big Red — contained lovely black and white (pen and ink?) drawings, or multi-color plates, that were interspersed throughout the book.

 

Bambi drawing

Bambi, Faline and Geno searching for Gurri

 

And I wondered whether our deer had conversations like the deer in Salten’s books.  My house was built on the edge of a forest.  In the autumn and winter, whitetail deer would wander into our backyard to eat the fallen apples from our trees.  I would sit in the window and watch the herd throughout the evening, giving names to the more distinctive animals.  I can still see Blaze in my mind — the deer had a streak of white running down its side.  Natural coloring, or a scar, I wonder today.

Second obscure fact — Bambi and his family are not whitetail deer, as portrayed in the Disney movie.  They are roe deer, native to Europe.  Similar to whitetails, but from what I understand, roe deer are smaller, alter color through the seasons and have virtually invisible tails.  However, they, like their American cousins, are rapidly increasing in numbers, especially in Britain.

I’ve read hundreds of books to my friend’s children over the years, and yet very few of these modern ‘classics’ compare to the simple beauty of books like Bambi and Bambi’s Children.  These books were not simplistic — Geno and Gurri lost friends to both man and beast, experienced hardships, learned difficult lessons about ‘adulthood’ — but somehow, they seem more entertaining than so many of the books available today.

Bambi’s Children was just as enchanting as I remembered it, and I’ve decided that, while I’m winnowing down my books in favor of digital editions, I have to find a good hardback copy to add to my collection.  Certain books are meant to be held and treasured.

Of course, I also want a digital copy, so I can read it whenever I want.  A digital copy that includes the wonderful drawings.  Digitize this book, please!  Bambi is already available, its sequel should be as well.

Coming home this evening, I passed two herds of deer, standing in the fields, watching alertly as my car drove by them.  The second group had 17 deer that I could see (I stopped and counted, while they studied me warily, prepared to run if I moved toward them).  The first herd had at least twice that number.

Geno and Gurri called their humans “Brown He” and other similar descriptive names.  I wonder what my deer would call me, if I could hear their thoughts?