Documenting every book or book series I’ve read since I re-adopted reading in my adulthood due to a concussion, however many titles I want to list at a time.
Le Morte Darthur - The Winchester Manuscript
— Sir Thomas Mallory / Helen Cooper (1998)
Given its Old English writing, this is the most challenging read I’ve had since The Argonautica. But like with The Argonautica, the challenge is the reward.
The characters here aren’t written with the same depth as they would be in T.H. White’s Arthurian saga; heck, unlike how Arthur does whatever he can to avoid war there, Arthur here eventually wages a vengeful skirmish. Of course, it’s this quest for vengeance that leads him to his tragic fate, and the denouement in general sticks the landing way better than T.H. White does.
The Sangrail quest here plays out more sublimely, too, even if it indicates an apocryphal familial tie between Jesus and Joseph of Arimathea.
I probably wouldn’t have been able to follow this version as well as I did if I hadn’t read T.H. White first, and it never got me as emotionally invested, but I overall admire it more. If one is up to the challenge, this is the Arthurian legend.
Also made me glad to have read this when the “Jimmy Akin’s Mysterious World” episode about the Questing Beast cites both Sir Thomas Mallory and certain scholars in its conclusion that the beast is not a chimera but a giraffe!
The Iliad
— Homer / Robert Fitzgerald (1974)
I said that Bernard Evslin’s The Trojan War didn’t make me want to read The Iliad, but after I found out about The Aeneid and how much that one’s tied to Troy’s lore, I finally decided… Well, I wouldn’t be so credible if I never read The Iliad.
It threw me in for quite a loop that the most iconic writing on the Trojan War covers only a specific chunk of it, leaving iconic moments like Achilles’s death and the Trojan Horse to oral tradition. It makes me appreciate Evslin’s writing on it more given how that covers the entire war, and how it gave me a frame of reference to help me follow The Iliad given Homer’s overabundance of characters. It’s like Homer read The Epic of Gilgamesh and said, “Epic? I’ll show you epic!”
My favorite moment in Greek mythology is now when Hera snatches Artemis’s bow from her hands, starts firing at her, and sends her running back to Mount Olympus crying. And while there is one Homer I would have expected to write a poop joke, I wouldn’t have expected it from the author of this serious epic.
Given The Odyssey’s less ambiguous nature, both morally and contextually, I can safely say I’m still an Odyssey guy. But, there’s a reason why The Iliad is still being studied, even if it would probably be lambasted as one of the most indulgent stories ever told if it weren’t one of the first stories ever recorded.
The Aeneid
— Virgil / Allen Mandelbaum (1971)
Interesting to see Troy’s fallout from the Trojans’ perspective. If this counts as an official spinoff, it offers the climax to the whole war that The Iliad doesn’t.
Tonally, it’s like a middle ground between Homer’s two epics, with the seafaring adventure of The Odyssey—even revisiting some of its locations, except Odysseus / Ulysses here is viewed as a villain—and the grand, brutal battles of The Iliad.
Granted, due to its derivativeness, I can see why The Aeneid doesn’t seem to have as high a place in culture as its predecessors do, but it’s still well worth a read.
The Children’s Homer: The Adventures of Odysseus and the Tale of Troy (1918)
— Padraic Colum
Turns out my folks had this in their house this whole time.
It cuts out a lot of the gods’ roles during the Trojan War, so we don’t get Diomedes wounding Ares and Aphrodite nor that aforementioned moment between Hera and Artemis, but it also cuts out some of the Greeks’ less merciless moments, so on that level, this is my favorite version of the Trojan War I’ve read.
Alas, The Odyssey’s vengeance theme is carried over from the original text here, so on that level, The Adventures of Ulysses is still my favorite version of The Odyssey I’ve read. Plus, this version doesn’t recount the journey to the underworld.
Still a pretty enjoyable version of a foundational saga, but still more mature than I’d want to introduce an impressionable youngster to.
Thanks for reading T.’s Take! Subscribe for free to receive new reviews and creative project updates!