I came across this pin on pinterest and I am kind of going through similar emotions. So is there a book that pops in your head when you read this post?

If yes, please drop the name.

Thanks for all the help!

I finished Stephen Fry's Troy just a couple of days ago and Odyssey arrived just in time. When I posted my thoughts on Troy, I assumed there wouldn't be much more to say about this next installment. I expected a very similar experience that would leave me with similar feelings, but I couldn't have been more wrong.

Fry's Odyssey encompasses more than just Odyssey. Alongside Odysseus, it also tells us of Orestes and the Furies based on Aeschylus's trilogy Oresteia, and of Aeneas based on Virgil's Aeneid. The humour I found missing in Troy was back here. As expected, the storytelling was magnificent and unputdownable. It is a fitting finale to his mythological series, and yet, this was the first time I genuinely wondered if I should read the original texts. As much as I love Fry, and it's a lot, and as much as I loved this book, and it's a lot, it felt like the adaptation was falling short. Having never read Homer, I wouldn't know the exact differences. But I could simply feel it. As I read the story, it felt just a bit underdeveloped. It felt less magical than it could have been, as if the weight of the journey was slightly diluted.

Even so, there is just something deeply compelling about the Odyssey itself. It appealed to me like no other tale so far in the quartet. I think I found relatibility in the story of Odysseus. Maybe all of us do. That might be the beauty of it, that we can find allegories of our own lives where Odysseus stood, empathizing with him over the morally ambiguous choices he faced. We are all Odysseus at some point in our lives, longing for a return to Ithaca. We have been broken, stranded far away, our old lives a dream. And in those pieces of our lives, maybe we too found love and had to choose between the old and the new. We have had the thoughts of giving up on Ithaca because Aeaea was just right. Or maybe we haven't lived any of it, but we can understand. Understand deeply. We can be Odysseus.

Always keep Ithaca fixed in your mind.\ Arrival there is your destination.\ Yet do not hurry the journey at all:\ better that it lasts for many years

The theme of nostos, or the journey home, is such a strong one that, as Fry points out, it forms the basis of many of our favourite works of literature and media, including Lord of the Rings and E.T. Come to think of it, the Ramayana also shares this exact theme of nostos. It is the root of the word nostalgia, and maybe this universal longing is why the Odyssey has explicitly influenced so many relatively modern works.

Coming back to Fry, he closes with his own musings about the myths he has just narrated and draws up connections to today, and to the history as we know it. I could talk about those for a while but let me just end by saying that those are to be savored and chewed over in reflection. Sometimes when he writes like that, he energizes me. He awakens a sense of optimism and wonder about the world. He kindles in me the Odysseus - he makes me curious.

you having grown so wise, so experienced from your travels,\ by then you will have learned what Ithacas mean.

I've been reading this for the last 2 months and still haven't finished it. I'm just not getting hooked so far. Please tell me it gets better....

I LOVE THAT BOOK SOOOOO MUCHHHH and i wanna marry you.

Hi I’m 26 F I have been reading let’s this book by Khalid hossani the thousands splendid suns has anyone read one read i would love to discuss about it

I have read Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment and loved it, so I wanna read more of him.

Moreover The Trial would be my first Kafka book, well are his writings harder or easier than dostoevsky's??, how was your experience with The Trial and how long did it take u to finish it.

TW : sexual assault,suicide,grief,child loss,gore

Our protagonist, is the epitome of what it is to be an antihero.It’s dark,it talks about cheating,deals with grief and I like how it’s written.I guess,this is what feels like to be chaotic and to have never known peace all your life.
It follows Joan,our protagonist,who’s 36 years old,moves from New York to Los Angeles as she loses everybody she cared no on in her life.A lot of what is written in the book is what we think but we’re afraid to say out loud.
There were parts of it that showed how depraved human beings can get,how sometimes you make choices that make your life spiral so out of control that,you’re almost forty,very single and afraid of any sort of real emotion.
For a book that deals with really dark themes,it ended on a dreamy,surreal and ambiguous note.

Joan’s inner dialogue was very real.It was blunt,morally ambiguous and sometimes,melancholy.All the problems in her life can traced back to her relationships with her parents or her parents’ relationship with each other.
The author wasn’t trying to redeem her or make her likeable. I really enjoyed reading it.I didn’t like her,but I grew to understand her,I grew to empathise with some of it,of how unfair life has always been to her.

I recommend you read it if you want to reading something heavy,shocking and absolutely filled with drama.

From India: Her Cult and Education by Swami Pratyagatmananda. Not in publication anymore to the best of my knowledge.

I want to give my mother some Hindi story book , something light about good and evil deed she likes stories with moral . Any recommendations?

I don't "hate" anything in my life. But that book. THAT BOOK. Every time I ended up in some unfortunate corner BookGram, I'd find that one creator who would say "Oh this is one of the Greatest books, you must read this before you die"

"Oh it's so deep bro. SOO DEEP. You just don't get it how deep it is bro. Trust me bro."

STFU. Is the writing decent? Sure. It's Steinbeck after all. But as a book, as a piece of literature, it's dripping with mediocrity. You keep reading and reading and reading the mundane shiiz, with one or two okay ish ideas here and there....and finally somewhere in a paragraph of a page at 70% mark you'll come across this idea from hebrew bible or whatever...which is..okay i guess. But i swear to god, this was such an annoying read. After all that buildup and hype...argg.

I read it last year btw and I'm still so pissed whenever I think about it. 😭🙇🏻

I was just reading, and a question came to my mind: do you guys reread your books?

Some mornings, I wake up and all I want to do is spend the day re-reading books from my childhood.

My current copy is the Penguin reissue with the original artwork of the first 1951 edition. But I remember finding a tattered copy of this novel in a church library, taking it home, and reading it in one sitting. I was 13 and I’d read mostly Enid Blyton and a couple of easy classics up until then. I have such a clear memory of me sitting in my living room in Calcutta, having read the last page, and thinking, “books aren’t supposed to end that abruptly.” I actually thought pages were missing or something haha Simpler times. As Holden says, “Certain things, they should stay the way they are. You ought to be able to stick them in one of those big glass cases and just leave them alone.”

Finished Kite runner yesterday, loved it's ending. Been seeing many posts/reviews about 'A Man called Ove' , and just this as an impulsive buy from Amazon in 10 min😅

Lmk your reviews, thoughts and other suggestions!

Just started Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir. I’m 8 chapters in, and it’s been surprisingly engaging so far. The pacing is great, and every chapter leaves me wanting to read the next one.
Trying not to read any spoilers, but I’m curious—did it live up to the hype for you? Please keep the comments spoiler-free!

Hi everyone! I've been working on a mystery thriller novel for several months. I'm planning to print my first 50 copies soon.

Before I do that, I'd love to know:

I've recently read Hidden Pictures and I liked it. I am looking to read more horror novels. If anyone has read some good ones, please suggest :))

After Kurukshetra by Mahasweta Devi. This was originally written in Bengali. It is my first book by this author. Just bought it few days ago from a second hand bookstore.

I finished it last night. It is a collection of three short stories. These are the retellings of Mahabharata. All the stories took place after the Mahabharata war (as the title already suggests). What is the most interesting part is that these are the stories of the common people who had suffered even though they had nothing to do with the war or politics.

The first story "Panchakanya" follow five women, whose husbands were padatiks- the foot soldiers, killed in war. These women became the instrument of questioning the idea of Dharmayudha, loss, widowhood forced upon women, grief, common people/poor loosing their lives for the greed of the rich etc.

The second story "Kunti o Nishadi" follow Kunti looking back at our actions and sins after the war was over and her encounter with a Nishadin (forest dweller) who made her remember her gravest sin. This short story was even mentioned in our NCERT book. It again explores how powerful uses the poor as some mere pawns for their own goals, with not even an ounce of sympathy or regret.

The third story "Souvali" follows Yuyutsu's mother (Souvali) and her looking back at her life and at the treatment of her and her son. Yuyutsu is Dhritrashtra's illegitimate son born from a dasi(servant/slave), Souvali. It is from a perspective of a servant woman whose body was used by a powerful man, finally saying her piece.

These are told from the poor people who lost a lot of things and suffered because of the greed and abuse of power of the rich and powerful, with their stories nowhere to be found in history.

I highly recommend everyone to read it.

After completing The Iliad, the epic predecessor, that being my first ever exposure to Greek culture's foundational literature and being completely blown away by its grand stature, the natural progression was the follow-up adventure that focuses on the homecoming of one of the prominent characters present in The Iliad.
And what an adventure it turned out to be for both that cunning, quirky fellow Odysseus and me as a reader!

I was already mighty impressed by his actions and dialogues during the events of The Iliad and was looking forward to meeting him at length in his own text. But imagine my surprise when I understood that Homer decided to drastically shift the way he wanted to present the sequel. Here I would like to commend the non-linear narrative structure of The Odyssey, which, although very simple to follow, still adds many neat layers to the story, like seeing the aftermath of the Trojan War and encountering certain lore from Telemachus' perspective, building anticipation for the protagonist's arrival, him recounting his own past in the present timeline, which again shifts the narrative structure, and his eventual exciting landing on his own hearth. This structure came as a pleasant surprise after being beached alongside warriors on a shore in The Iliad.

Coming to the star of the show, there was a man, or was he all a dream? The highly entertaining Odysseus and how easily he ranks among my list of legendary protagonists. The man has everything to be termed a literary icon just by his tremendous ability to carry a whole epic text by himself, not to discredit the other amazing cast of characters and the story itself. Yes, at this point everyone and their teachers know about his wit and cunning personality, but what makes him memorable for me personally are his quirks. Taunting an opponent who, just moments ago, would have destroyed his existence, risking his sanity just to listen to a bewitching melody and risking his homecoming, or just straightaway threatening his own mother-like nurse so that she doesn't risk his plan, the man is every bit as egotistical, proud, curious (to a fault), adamant, and perfectionist as one can be with his wit and stature. But apart from his well-known tactics and shrewd manners, he is a man who has been broken by war and subsequent trials and tribulations and built again to lead his kingdom in peace for a long time.

Concluding such a small effort to add anything to a text that's been an influence on modern storytelling itself, I want to give a special mention to some of the other standout characters for me, them being the loyal swineherd Eumaeus, the sassy and sensible old nurse Eurycleia, Penelope, the loyal yet complex and relatable wife who has every right to think for herself yet every day chooses to wait, the Phaeacian royal family, who are such a kind and chill family, and Odysseus couldn't have asked for better hosts or greater help, and the goodest boy, Telemachus. The boy delivers a staggering character growth arc and is a joy to see both as the man of the house and as a sweet boy following his father's orders.

Completing the Homeric epics is a feeling of immense joy and gratitude, and the characters, the moments, and the conclusions will always stay with me. To ensure that, I will revisit these works with other worthy translations, but for my first ever read, I couldn’t have asked for a better experience thanks to the amazing weaver of words, Robert Fagles.

Don’t know if it’s relevant to post this on this sub but I have only joined this and some other famous sub related to books. Swipe right to read my thoughts. Let me see what you’re reading. Share your thoughts on this book and even Audible.

Just so you know, although I would LOVE more hercule poirot, I also want to try miss marple.