Spartacus Road plus?
I'm told that On the Spartacus Road is out in paperback today - in the handsome brown HarperPress jacket that I saw before leaving for Egypt.
Moreover, it is in some places not just available on its own but in a three-for-two offer.
Since it seems churlish - almost a challenge to fate not to buy one myself today (to go with the American hardback from Barnes and Noble Fifth Avenue, the British hardback from a shelf in Oxford Street, and the ipad and kindle versions from a cybercloud somewhere) I can now choose two other paperbacks without guilt at adding to my bookpile.
So what will they be? If there were justice across the millennia it would be a selection of Martial epigrams, including the poem that praises, for the first time I think, the portability, convenience and modesty of the then new 'book' over the old-fashioned inconvenient and grandiose papyrus scroll.
Lest anyone thinks that paperback writers on ancient Rome are unclassically keen to promote their wares, Martial even gives the name of his local bookseller and stockist.
Martial's poems make several appearances in On the Spartacus Road. So it would be a double thankyou to buy him if, by any chance, he were on a three-for-two offer when I arrive in Oxford this afternoon.


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