Reading list. Item #25
I’ve read this book on a trip to the Greek Dodecanese archipelago. How appropriate.
You can find references to Greek mythology pretty much everywhere in Greece: names of islands, cities, restaurants, drinks, hotels, temples. Even the world renowned Greek hospitality has been interpreted as an Olympian sacred rule, any breach of which is punished by Zeus with mighty thunderbolt attacks.
If you wanna learn (or refresh your memory of) the sequence of events that led from chaos to the basic elements of nature and from there to Titans, Olympian Gods, countless other kinds of immortals and finally to human beings, and you don’t feel like reading Homer, Hesiod, Ovid or some boring handbook for lazy students or shallow tourists, you might want to give Stephen Fry’s book a try.
What is more fascinating about the Gods of the Greek mythology - as compared to the almighty God of the main monotheistic religions or the elusive Asian divinities - is how similar they are to us: jealous, vengeful, vane, narcissistic, even pathetic at times.
Stephen Fry doesn’t try to interpret, explain, or shed light on Greek myths: he just tells them. And his book reads like an engaging novel. Enjoy it.
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