Book Review: Homer's Iliad

Continuing with my journey through Ancient Greece in Historical Fiction, I moved to my fifth title, and the first that some may not consider historical fiction. The Iliad of Homer. Now, to be fair, unlike any of the other titles on the list I'm working through, The Iliad is attributed to Homer in the eighth century BCE, with the events portrayed occurring about four hundred years earlier.

My personal understanding of historical fiction is any story that takes place before the lifetime of the author telling/writing it. Using this definition, the Iliadcounts.

Unlike the other titles on the list however, The Iliad is written in Dactylic Hexameter (which you can read more about here), making it a little trickier to follow for the modern reader. Luckily, the story was originally an epic poem, so I went as close to that as I could by listening to an audiobook version (the poem takes roughly 9 hours to complete).

The story itself takes place during a few weeks in the final year of the ten-year siege of Troy and largely focuses on the characters of Achilles and Hector. The cast is huge, and the violence was shocking even for me (a pretty big fan of the horror genre). Also the gods of Ancient Greek mythology figure largely in the story and are often at odds with each other over who should win any given battle in the story.

For centuries, people have listed The Iliad as a must for anyone's reading lists, and although I got lost in the narrative and had to go back more than a few times, I found the experience rewarding and look forward to continuing my survey of Ancient Greece through historical novels.

Book Review: Aesop's Fables

Since February I've been finishing off each reading month with a classic of Western Literatures.  My goal is to simply get a better understanding of where our culture comes from and that's about it.  I don't have a degree in English, English Lit, or Classics (My degree is in Communications Studies (TV, Movies, Radio, Internet, etc.)) so you'll have to forgive me if I'm making connections which seem incredibly obvious to you.


So far I've read Homer's Iliad and Odyssey and found both to be interesting (if difficult) reads.  As a guy I enjoyed the constant blood and guts slaughter going on in the Iliad(seriously, a guy gets hit hard enough his "eyes fell into the dust at his feet" - and who says that horror is a new genre) as well as the many fantastic elements in the Odyssey (Sirens, Cyclops, Magical Imprisonment, etc.)


The list I'm working through can be found in Mortimer J. Adler's How to Read a Book (One of my all-time favourite books, btw), but I have made some additions.


This month for example, accruing to the original list, should be the Old Testament, but I thought that before I dive into it again (this will be my second time), I should start with Aesop.


I think that like all people I have a passing familiarity with Aesop's Fables, going in I remembered there was something about a Lion with a thorn in its paw and something about a crane and a fox being jerks to each other.  What I didn't realize was this selection of fables is actually where all sorts of modern animal-based sayings come from.  The city mouse and the country mouse was one of his, as was The boy who cried wolf.  It's from Aesop we get the saying, "Look before you leap" as well.


The edition I read was an Everyman Library Children's Classic edition, which is a 17th century translation by Roger L'Estrange.  Unlike the majority of the other classics of Western Lit I've been buying (currently through the Penguin Classics Imprint) I purchased this one through Everyman because the book looked so good - hardcover, nice feel, and was less than $20.


It was strange that every fable had an obvious Christianity-based reflection at the end (seeing as Aesop supposedly lived around 700 BCE, which puts his fables and morals well into Ancient Greek, rather than Christian morality - some of the stretches of logic to turn the understanding of his stories into a later belief structure seemed a little off to me.


Overall I'm quite glad I checked the book out, it was a lot of fun, pretty fast and continually gave me moments of "That was Aesop?  Holy cats!"  The Edition I got also includes a significant essay on the life of Aesop (which although not based on a lot of historical detail) was a very intriguing read.

Things I've Noticed: Classics and Genre Fiction

*A quick note – When I say Classics and Genre Fiction I’m not talking Classics of Genre Fiction (Asimov, Matheson, Tolkein) but am instead talking about Classics (Homer, The Bible, Plato) and modern genre fiction.

For years I’ve had the feeling that I should be reading classics of literature, but where to start? There are tonnes of books which can be considered classics and honestly, in my life I am not going to have the time to read them all. A few years ago I received a gift from my BFF Mike and his lovely wife Trish which ended up being one of my favourite books ever.

How To Read a Book by Mortimer Adler (1972). The book itself focuses on how you can take a skill the literate world takes for granted, reading, and how to do it more effectively. It covers how to read histories, fiction, school texts, science and mathematics books and a whole lot more. In the back of the book he gives a reading list that starts at the beginning of Western Civilization and moves forward to the 1960s.

So my current plan is to move through his list (you can see it here) at one book a month. February’s book is The Iliad and so far I really love it. The story is nearly 3000 years old and involves magic, gods, and the kind of violence I haven’t seen since reading Richard Laymon’s The Cellar. I’m reading the book a chapter a day and honestly I’m really enjoying it. The fact that the story is referred to in over and over again throughout classic and modern literature is just a bonus. Next month for me is The Oddessy, and after that I’ll be checking out Aesop’s Fables.

It’s just kind of cool, at the beginning of this project that when I step away from Horror, Fantasy and Science Fiction to read some stuff that is “good for me” I’m met with a significant amount of Horror and Fantasy.