Five Books I Was Obsessed with When I Was 21

At age 21, I was just as a prolific reader as I am now, and as I have always been. I have always loved reading, writing, reading other people's writing and sometimes, I have myself opened a Pandora's Box of reading when discovering something new. Once, when I was in university, I basically blurted out in class that I don't mind reading anyone's writing for any writing module they had, and feeding back information on what I thought, etc. Everyone ended up sending me their work, but I gotta say—I had a lot of reading for the next week or so. I was a happy little woman, for the time being.

When I was 21 though, I had this thing for reading old stuff. When I say old stuff, I say very old stuff. When I say very old stuff I mean things that are considered and categorised as "ancient." Why? Well, I was re-reading The Aeneid, and so after that, I started generally exploring Ancient Rome, and looking at various poets from the time. I was reading Catullus and Plautus, and other people with "us" at the end of their name. I was reading this stuff profusely and what I didn't know is by the end of the year, I would completely burn myself out.

It was one of my obsessive phases, and well, I really enjoyed myself while it lasted, but afterwards I was just tired. I'm glad I read them though, because my favourite podcast, literatureandhistory.com, is now on their "Ancient Rome" section, and it is absolutely amazing. I highly recommend it. If you would like to learn more about the podcast, then I recommend going to their website, because it's freaking awesome.

So, here we go. Here's the five books I read and re-read, over and over again, when I was 21 years old...

5. Civil War by Lucan

The most interesting thing about reading this book is not just that I found it whilst looking randomly through sites about revolutions in Ancient Rome (yes, tell me how boring I am one more time please...), but it was also because of who Lucan is. If you go online and look Lucan up, you can see who Lucan is, and what he did for a living and, ultimately, how he died. Lucan was a revolutionary, and well, you can see it for yourself.

4. Metamorphoses by Ovid

Metamorphoses is probably one of the most well-known pieces of literature to come out of Ancient Rome, and to say that I was obsessed with this book at 21 is an understatement. I never really got the chance to discuss it with my peers, because not only did I know that they hadn't read it, but they were more into YA and Fantasy and so, I would discuss that with them instead. It was just as fun. Ovid's tales of Gods was one of the best things I'd read in the year, and my (now lost) copy of it is covered with highlights of my favourite quotes. It got left on a train by accident, so if you're in Birmingham like me and find a copy of Ovid's book on a train, and it's covered with highlighting and post-it notes... it's mine.

3. The Decameron by Boccaccio

At the time of doing my undergraduate dissertation, I became so obsessed with Boccaccio's Decameron it was unreal. Yes, it was one of the books I was using, but it is also an amazing book with one of the greatest introductions in human history. The beginning of the book goes through the plague in incredible detail and description. You could only know this much if you were actually there at the time. Again, I got out my highlighter, and took note of all my favourite quotations from the book. The first five pages is just highlighting, of course!

2. The Homeric Hymns

Okay, so not a book from Ancient Rome; this one is from Ancient Greece instead. But they go hand in hand, don't they? I was searching through Ancient Roman poetry when someone online asked me if I had read the Greek Homeric Hymns. Stating that I had read some Homer in terms of Iliad and Odyssey, they state that the Hymns are much different, and just as mind-blowing in terms of language use. I'm not going to lie, I got immediately very excited and started looking for the book. The copy listed in the photo is the copy I had as well and so, it is to this day the best one I've read.

1. The Aeneid

One of my favourite books of all time, I spent a lot of time re-reading this book at 21 after reading it for the first time in my teens. I'm not gonna lie, this is better than both The Iliad and Odyssey in my humble opinion. I love this book so much because of the way it goes through the creation myth of Rome, and the way in which it describes the Hero's Journey, going through the massive adventure and then finishing somewhat abruptly. Yes, The Aeneid was never completed, but if you read to the end, then you'll realise that Virgil's book is probably better not completed—It gives this endurance to Rome. Rome will never really finish and so, the story of Rome is never really finished.