37, 38, & 39

#37 The Iliad by Homer

#38 The Aeneid by Virgil

#39 Breakfast of Champions by Kurt Vonnegut

Done, done, DONE with epics, so done, I'm not going to bother to write about what I thought of them... come to think of it, that says a lot in itself.

Breakfast of Champions was amazing. I never expect less with a vonnegut novel and I have yet to be disappointed. Stylistically, it is the same as any of his other novels, but the narrative is anything but conventional. Here, the novels narrator is the novelist, who is a character in the book as well, actively shaping the events. Besides that, the normal eccentricity that exists in Vonnegut's work is here, perhaps in full force. I love this book.

35 & 36

The Odyssey by Homer, Translated by Alexander Pope

The Lost Books of the Odyssey by Zachary Mason

This was the second time I read The Odyssey, and as with the first time, I am amazed at how relavent the issues brought forth in the epic still are. The reader is engaged with a man trying to find home, himself, and atonement for his sins. It doesn't matter that The Odyssey is well over two thousand years old.

The Lost Books of the Odyssey was an interesting read. Zachary Mason wrote it as though the texts were discovered and he was translating them for a modern audience. The reader finds the same issues as with the original text, but with one difference, here there seems to be more of a sense of mortality. Often, Odysseus seems to accept his fate and growing age. A lot of the valor that was in the original is gone and replaced with more melancholy.