When I was in high school they had us read The Odyssey by Homer. This is one of the few books I actually enjoyed reading for school. I’m a big buff when it comes to Greek Mythology. I like reading books about it since I was very young. This is an iconic poem that Homer wrote during his life. It has survived the ages for people to read thousands of years later. This book is actually part of a trilogy technically. The three books together are Troy, The Odyssey, and The Iliad. They go over the battle of Troy where the foolish young Trogian Prince Paris seduces and convinces Helen, the wife of Menelaus, to run away with him back to Troy which caused the biggest army of Greek ships to cross the waters of the Mediterranean Sea. This is where the saying “The face that launched a thousand ships.” came from. The Odyssey goes over Odysseus’s story which I will detail more below. The Iliad is from Odysseus’s wife Penelope’s point of view. It goes on about the struggles Penelope and Telemachus had to endure during the 10 years that Odysseus was away.
The three books go over many life lessons and harsh truths about the world. I think the books convey it’s lessons very well especially since it was based during a time when the woes of men and women were not as bound as they came to be in the later years. The Odyssey was about Odysseus, King of Ithaca, who is forced to a 10-year punishment by the gods because he defied Poseidon. After, going through the 10-year punishment Odysseus finally made it back home only to not be recognized by anyone because the curse that made him look like an old man had been placed on him. He found out that Menelaus and Nestor had tried to take of Ithaca. Everybody thought he was dead, other than his wife, Penelope. She never doubted he was alive and stayed faithful during the whole time that the multiple suitors who wanted to marry her harassed her constantly. In the end, Odysseus breaks the curse and kills all the suitors and the servants that had openly fraternized with the suitors. He was finally able to be with his wife and son, Telemachus who was a grown man by the time he returned home.
If you truly love Greek Mythology then I would suggest you read all three poems. It’s one of the best stories that have been written. During, Homer’s time these stories would be considered as fiction to the other greeks. It was similar to Jane Austen’s books by them telling fictional stories of their own time period. It’s one of the oldest poems that has survived the times which is still considered a work of art by most scholars. There is speculation that the places in the poems could actually be real. Though no one knows for sure if that is true or not. There are articles about supposedly finding a structure in Turkey that resembles the layout of Troy. Who knows, if Troy is real then how many other fictional cities that Homer wrote about were true? The questions are still unanswered to this day. Here is an article talking about the city of Troy. Do you believe it? What do you think of the poems? Did you read this in school as well? What book did you consider the best book to read during school?
https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-history-archaeology/city-troy-0012483
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I’d have to say the best book I read for school had to be either “Stranger” or “Catcher in the Rye”
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Yeah, those two are pretty good books! It’s been awhile since I read Catcher in the Rye. There was also this one book in I think it was either junior or senior year. It was about soldiers in one of the wars. I can’t believe I am blanking on it’s name. It was a compilation of journal entries of different soldiers. I really liked the book but since I can’t remember the name I didn’t write about it. It was either world war 2, Korean war, or Vietnam war. I honestly can’t remember it right now.
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too bad. If you’d like I can attempt looking for it.
My country also had a war book considering it’s such a small country. I remeber liking it as a kid. It was about the Serbo-Croatian war and how she had to hide in the basement as the war went on. It was called “My dad sleeps with angles” I think and the other name for it was “My little war diary” or something like it.
The other name was given after the kid who the girl asked where her dad was she replied with “My dad sleeps with angels” becuase that’s how her mother broke to her that he’s dead.
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Oh okay, sounds like an interesting book. You could give it a try if you want too? I read during 2010-2012 depending on which year it was. I think it might have said father in the title or soldiers of something. Sorry, it’s not much to go on sadly.
maybe that was the same book, what country do you live in?
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then there’s no way a Croatian book about a war you never even heard of came to you
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Yep, that doesn’t sound familiar to me.
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I do vaguely remeber a long time I’ve been prasing a short story of some kind. I don’t even remeber it well enough since I read it as a literal child. It only was a couple of pages in a collection of short stories. All I remeber is a guy with a not so common name hating how there isn’t many mentions of his name in crosswords and he got happily surprised when it was. One day his name started appearing there too often and he got suspicious and then realised a group of people was making those crosswords to schedule robberies and he waited for the next crossword to catch them in the act and the police finally managed to capture them thanks to him.
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Wow, that is a pretty cool story. I have never heard of it though.
yeah, most of people in my country don’t remeber this story, but I stumbled upon it while reading the required literature because we had to write the book report about at least 3 short stories from one collection to make it count and I read the first three even though I was supposed to read them all. And this was in the first 3 and I loved it. Not many people actually remeber the book collection since it’s not as famous as other books from our authors.
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Yeah, it reminds me of some of the short stories we would read for our papers as well. We read a lot of books for school so I can’t remember most of them.
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Of mice and men and Noughts and crosses.
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I really liked “The Stranger” by Albert Camus.
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Best book would always be Wonder.
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Mice and Men was not my favorite book but it had a great storyline. I just was not into it as most were.
I remember this book but I can’t remember if I read it or not right now. I kind of skipped some of the books during school because I couldn’t get into them.
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I have never heard of this book. What is it about?
I have read Of Mice and Men but my favorite book was this
The Tempest
by William Shakespeare
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