the_odyssey

THE ODYSSEY by Homer

1991. Penguin Yellow Classics. Paperback.

"A Classic is something that everyone wants to have read, but
 nobody wants to read" - Mark Twain.

I've never been able to read books of great antiquity although I did
struggle through "Voyage of the Argo" a few years ago. It's a matter
of guilt and shame that I've never read the Odyssey until now, but
this year I've made the effort and struggled through it; sometimes
forcing myself to read a chapter a day. It wasn't too bad a read,
actually.

This book is famous as the first of the Penguin Classics, from
1946. Paperback penguins had been around since the 1930s and were
publishing modern authors such as Agatha Christie, P.G. Wodehouse and
Graham Greene but the Greek and Latin classics were only available to
University scholars or in very expensive hardback editions, and pretty
dull editions at that. I used to own two small Latin hardbacks and
they were dry as toast. They were part of the "Loeb Classical Library"
and even the name Loeb seems calculated to send the reader to sleep.

This book is a beautiful object and the pages were yellowed to just
the right degree. The introduction had an excellent chronological
summary; chapter by chapter where possible, which was easy to refer to
during the reading. There's a full index that I didn't use that much.

Now I've finally read the Odyssey. I still have a few great
classics that I've never managed to read; Divine Comedy, Canterbury
Tales, The Decameron and The Iliad. I'll read more modern books for a
few months but I do feel a sense of achievement and knowledge having
read the Odyssey. As Mark Twain said, I wanted to have read this book
and now I finally have.

                                             14th March 2023

My book reviews are at https://github.com/stucooper/booksiveread