The Iliad - Homer

This December through January, I read The Iliad for Ancient History. Now, while I have read lots of kid versions of Homer's works (Rosemary Sutcliff's are the best), reading the original was a whole new experience. This was not the first time I had read an exact translation of an ancient text (last fall I read The Epic of Gilgamesh, which is the oldest written story in the world), but this was on a whole new scale.

The version of the Iliad I read, the Robert Fagels edition, is about 500 odd pages, all told. That length would have been no problem to me if it were a modern prose story. But, it's not. It is an ancient war story that is mainly about who killed who is what terrible way, and who each of those men's grandfathers were, and what kind of farm they used to have. Seriously. Also, it is in verse. Not rhyming verse, just... verse.

Yeah, all of that made it a tricky, though not entirely uninteresting read. Because, while I did not enjoy it most of the time, it was a challenge. It was something very new and different for me. As hard as it was, and as much as I complained, when I was done, I felt an immense sense of accomplishment. I really did something.

I also know that this is not the last hard book I will ever be assigned to read. Far from it. Now that I have fought this and beat it, all those other books (the Odyssey next month for instance) will seem just a little less hopeless, and a little more beatable.

I guess this is not so much a book review as a book triumph. I don't see any reason to tell you whether or not you should read it. There is no point with a book like this. I just told you why I read it, and why I don't regret all the hours I spent reading a book I did not really enjoy.