The Odyssey

So after the Illiad, we come to the Odyssey. I had always wondered about the name of the illiad, the odyssey seems obvious enough because its about the journey of Ullyssess, written and refereed to as Odysseus in the books. The illiad is called thus because Troy is known as Illium. So the illiad is the story of Troy, although not very much of it, rather 4 odd days spread out over a couple of hundred pages of really small writing.

So back to the Odyssey, really I had to read the illiad before it because some of the main characters of the odyssey are in it. Odysseus is one of the best characters in the illiad. But the Odyssey is by far the more readable book.
Where the illiad is a drudgery the Odyssey is a delight. There is less of the adventure on the high seas than I imagined. It starts out with his son on the island of Ithaca awaiting his much delayed return from the Trojan war, at this stage hes ten years late. Back in ithica, where he was king there are now a heap of jokers trying to get it on with the queen, they are a gang of about 60 odd of these "suitors" laying about waiting for the queen to give up hope of odysseus coming home and to choose one of them as her next king, mean while they're eating them out of house and home.
In any event, the son goes off to get help or word of his dad, that doesn't work out, so he hangs about on some of his dads war buddies islands. Meanwhile we hear the story of Odyessus, which is very good, but he arrives home say about 3/4 of the way through the book and the rest of it is spent coming up with a plan to get rid of the pesky suitors.

So all in all a good read, drags a bit at the end and a little slow to start but I don't see why anyone couldn't read it

cheers