Rebecca Reads

I thought reading The Iliad by Homer (translated by Robert Fagles) would be a chore. Even after I reviewed four different translations and chose one I felt was “best,” I told myself I would have to read at least one chapter a day, just to get through it before it was due at the library. [...]

When I decided to read The Iliad, I knew essentially nothing about it.
All I knew was that it was Greek, it was written by Homer, and that it was somehow a precursor to The Odyssey (which I read in high school). Having read The Iliad, I can say now that while it certainly is Greek, [...]

I thought I’d participate in Weekly Geeks this week. In the wake of rethinking my “book blog goals,” as I talked about yesterday, I’ve decided I’m going to not do these weekly memes unless I already was going to post something like this anyway. (I haven’t been participating for weeks anyway; I have had so [...]

What am I looking for when I read the Iliad this month? I’ve been wondering that, especially now that I have four translations before me. As I mentioned when I wrote about Aesop’s writers last week, a translation can make a big difference in how a story is portrayed.
I’m not against a literal translation, but [...]

What would a young man say or do if he learned that his step-mother had fallen in love with him?
In the play Hippolytus by Euripides, Hippolytus finds out that his step-mother has fallen for him. But what he doesn’t know is that the goddess Aphrodite has had her hand in these matters.

A few months ago, I read a version of Aesop’s Fables that I found online at Project Gutenberg, written and published in the early 1900s. I thought I’d read Aesop’s Fables.
I was interested, then, to read in chapter two (”Ingenuity and Authority”) of Seth Lerer’s Children’s Literature: A Reader’s History from Aesop to Harry Potter [...]

In his first chapter (”Speak, Child”) of Children’s Literature: A Reader’s History from Aesop to Harry Potter, Seth Lerer discusses the “infancy” of children’s literature. Such a study requires a review of children’s education, as that is the basis for children’s literature. Lerer discusses the classics (the “really old classics,” as I’ve dubbed them on [...]

I’m excited to delve into the world of Really Old Classics. By the end of next July, I hope to read five works. I don’t know what the others will be, but I intend for three of them to be:

The Illiad by Homer
The Odyssey by Homer
The Aeneid by Virgil

Yes, the basics.
Want to read some too? [...]

If you would like to share your reviews for the Really Old Classics Challenge, please leave a link to your post in the comments to this post.
If you do not have a blog, feel free to share your thoughts to the works you’ve read in the comments as well.
Thanks, and enjoy!

Children 2,000 years ago read and memorized Virgil and Homer, and Aesop’s Fables were common knowledge. Even 200 years ago these classics were widely read. Now, there are thousands of new books published each year. But what about those really old ones? Have we read those yet? Any of them?
That’s why I’ve decided to host [...]