Due to the lack of good books that I can find that have been printed in recent memory, I've decided instead to do a review of a very well done classic. For the uninformed, Homer was a rhapsode who lived, at the earliest, around 850 B.C. He is one of the earliest known writers of true novels, and his two most famous books are The Iliad, and its sequel, The Odyssey. I would have done a review of "The Iliad", but I'm doing my book report on The Odyssey and it is fresher in my mind, so I would rather review the latter for the sake of accurate description and article quality. All introductions aside, I'll start the actual review part of the review now.
In short, The Iliad is about the story of the Trojan War, which many of you will know from the story of the Trojan Horse. I'll explain anyway. Odysseus, the main character of The Odyssey, along with many other Trojan-era heroes, such as Achilles and Menelaus, hide inside of a gigantic horse made of wood that was shown as a present of peace to the warriors of Troy. The warriors take the bait, and the giant horse, full of Odysseus' soldiers, gets taken into the city. Under cover of darkness, the soldiers sneak out of the horse and massacre the warriors of Troy, winning the Trojan war. The Odyssey is the sequel to that story, chronicling Odysseus' journey back home to his kingdom of Ithaca.
At the beginning of the book, Odysseus doesn't pay his proper respects to the gods and is punished as a result. He becomes trapped on the island of Calypso, a nymph who is dead-set on making Odysseus her immortal husband. Odysseus only wishes to return home and be reunited with his wife Penelope and son Telemachus, who he has only seen as a baby. Through many misadventures, Odysseus eventually is able to return to Ithaca and his family, although it requires outsmarting gods, swimming for nearly three days straight, and using words of deception to trick young and old alike.
In essence, this book is mostly only rhetoric. When characters are conversing, they will always describe the other person with an adjective or title in front of them. For example, whenever a character mentions Odysseus, they usually refer to him as 'the man of many masquerades', which, for the amount of times Odysseus is mentioned, probably adds about 20 pages to the book. Seriously. All the other characters have titles as well, as do cities, gods, boats, landmarks, oceans, events, etc. The plot of the book can be generally summarized in about five or six pages, even though the book is several hundred pages long. Besides that, much of the book is entirely off-topic, and much of the story often degrades into something sexually related or heavily inferred innuendo. Apparently that was a popular kind of writing style about 2800 years ago. It also seems to be quite appreciated now, considering this book is often required reading for higher-educated English courses, be they in high-school or university.
Anyhow, I would say that even with the odd little rhetoric style of writing and the lack of real substance, this is a great example of literature. It's a good, entertaining read that doesn't ever leave one bored. That is, as long as one is willing to engage themselves to the book. Take it, read it, understand it. It'll be one of the greatest reads you've ever had the honour of laying your hands on.
5/5 Stars.
