The Odyssey

by Homer
348 pgs

This was another bucket-list book for me--one that I think everybody should read during their lifetime. Having read part of it while in high school, and because I knew a lot of Odysseus's story, I was looking forward to reading The Odyssey.

It's the story of Odysseus and the twenty years it took him to return to his home and wife Penelope on the island of Ithaca following the Trojan War. It begins ten years after the war had ended. Odysseus has been the captive of Calypso who had fallen in love with Odysseus and refused to let him off her island. It takes the assistance of the goddess Athena, Odysseus's protectress, who takes the form of various people throughout The Odyssey, to help Odysseus finally get off Calypso's island and begin his journey home.

On his journey Odysseus deals with sirens, a cyclops, having half is men turned into pigs, losing most of his ships, an aggravated Poseidon, and other roadblocks on his path back to Ithaca. Once he arrive there he has a hundred or so suitors, who had been trying to convince Penelope to marry them for the past twenty years, to deal with as well.

It's a classic story, and again, one that everyone should read a some point in their life.

★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

The Iliad

The Iliad by Homer

When my sister asked me what I was reading and I told her it was The Iliad, her response was "Why?" The only answer I could give her I borrowed from Mallory when asked why he'd want to climb Everest - "Because it's there." The Iliad falls into that group of books I wanted to read before I died. Done.

Obviously it's not a casual read. For me, with the exception of Achilles, Odysseus, and Agamemnon, it was a little bit problematic keeping track of the different characters. I had to go back and refresh my memory whether they were Trojans or Greeks far too many times. But that might just indicate a deficiency with the reader.

It takes place during the Trojan War, but if you read it expecting to find the story of the Trojan Horse like I did, you'll be disappointed. (Serves me right for thinking I was learning something from watching a Brad Pitt movie.) Historically that event took place in between The Iliad and The Odyssey and Homer never wrote about it. It's in Virgil's The Aeneid. Who knew?

I feel a little guilty giving The Iliad fewer stars than I give most books written by authors like Steve Berry, James Rollins, and Jeffery Deaver, but that's the way it goes. It's an indication of how much I enjoyed reading it and not its historic or cultural significance.

★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆