Okay, so two things:
1. I feel like an uncultured swine
2. I’m sort of unapologetic about it?
So, yeah: I never did much Classical stuff in ANY of my days at school. I think the most we did was a half-hearted attempt at Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar? So I never got indoctrinated into the Classical camp, and I’ve never read any of the Classical stories, either. I arbitrarily picked The Odyssey because I sort of remembered it had something to do with Odysseus, who I sort of remembered had something to do with maybe the Cyclops or something (I’m not really up on my Greek mythology, either). I didn’t know about how long it was, or really what it was about, and all I knew was that I had to get the Fagles translation because that one was the best one.
I got about 43% into it and then I just got bored. I was bored, y’all! I mean, I wasn’t bored because of the repetition, because I knew why it was there (oral tradition meant needing that sort of thing more than we’d need it today). I wasn’t bored because of the characters, necessarily– they were pretty fleshed-out people, with multiple dimensions and what not. And I wasn’t bored because of the story, either! Well, mostly.
To be honest, if I had been more into the story I would have forced myself to keep reading. But it was just okay. 
You know that thing, where you’re sometimes SO saturated with something, with secondary source-somethings, that by the time you get to the original source you’re sort of…wiped-out by it all? And it’s almost like you don’t NEED to read the original source unless you’re super into doing that sort of thing? So, like, that’s what’s going on with me. Even though I don’t know ALL the details re:Greek mythology, enough of it is familiar that, in reading the Odyssey, I just feel like I’m reading stuff I’m already familiar with. And that’s kind of boring.
It’s like eating carrot cake every day for a month, and then the next month switching to red velvet cake. The red velvet may be more expensive and better-made and all-around lovelier, but you’re still stuffed full from cake and the red velvet ends up tasting like carrot.
So there it is. I can’t really get into The Odyssey, at least not enough to make myself finish. Maybe later, when I feel like it, I’ll finish. But for now? It’s a DNF (great translation nonetheless).
Don’t forget to check out my Classics Circuit partner for today, fictional100, who is writing about Oedipus the King!
I’ve been rereading a good amount of books this year– way more than I did last year, anyway. And I’ve remembered something: rereading is fun! And I don’t just mean rereading something I’d read just the year before: going back to books I first read two+ years ago is almost a magical experience. It’s fun to revisit places and people and stories that I loved once upon a time. I tend to have a very good memory for books and their plots, but I don’t remember everything. Rediscovering why I loved a book in the first place is almost better than reading them for the first time! Plus, there’s always the chance that I’ll catch some new nuance or something that I missed before. Continue reading »
Lonely Werewolf Girl by 
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