I’ve heard of Mary Beard for quite a few years, and have always intended to read her books, but as you know, my TBR list is long and I haven’t quite gotten around to all of them. But when I saw a copy of Confronting the Classics at an extremely reasonable price, I decided that I had procrastinated long enough and promptly got myself a copy of read.

And wow, have I been missing out.

Confronting the Classics is a fun and engaging read that takes the reader through various issues in the study of classics, from the humour of the Greeks to the appeal of Asterix. Each chapter is adapted from a book review that Beard has written, but you definitely do not have to have had read a library’s worth of books to appreciate this. Beard’s reviews put the book in context and introduce the relevant background information before discussing its merits and demerits, which means that you can read the review and come away learning something new (instead of needing to know, for instance, the basics of Greek humour in order to read the review). All the essays are accessible to the average reader and do a great job of showing that classic scholarship is an ongoing conversation.

The only thing I wish the book had was a slightly more globalised outlook. While I understand that the classic studies refers mostly to Greek and Latin studies, it seems like the book is written mostly for a Western audience. What benefit would someone in Singapore, China, Japan, Vietnam, etc have if they read up about the classics? There is a brief mention of how Asterix has performed across the world, but by and large the issue of whether classical studies has global worth (as opposed to being for an audience with a Western heritage) is not discussed. The most we get is about how Britain related to the classics and Greece as a country (other European thinkers, especially Eastern European ones, aren’t even mentioned that much, come to think of it).

Plus, I checked and the era of the Roman empire lasted till the fifth century, which means that it overlaps with the Qin and Han dynasties. If Wikipedia can have a page on Sino-Roman relations, surely there could have been a book about the issue which was reviewed?

Of course, this is me being picky. Confronting the Classics does a fantastic job of showing that the study of the classics is a worthwhile pursuit – me asking for the argument to be extended past the Western literary frontier may be pushing it; although another part of me wonders why, in our globalised world, can’t the study of classics adapt and take a slightly more globalised outlook. After all, this book shows that the study of the Classics is still ongoing and being debated about. Perhaps this is an issue that could be studied as well.

The last chapter of this book is about reviewing books and I found Beard’s discussion on book reviews to be fascinating. It’s not a personal reaction to the book (as most of my reviews are) but a way of performing basic quality control and “a crucial part of the ongoing debate that makes a book worth writing and publishing; and they are a way of opening up the conversation that it provokes to a much wider audience.” It does make me think if I should be relooking my reviews, particularly my nonfiction reviews.