More Reading Material

When I travel I always choose a couple of books to pack into my backpack so that I have something to read while waiting at the airport, on my flights, and before bedtime each night.  This trip was no exception.  However, the two novels that I had picked out will have to wait.  After passing through security at Cleveland Airport, I still had plenty of time before boarding my plane.  I browsed through one of the airport shops, and there was a book that caught my eye, "The Song of Achilles" by Madeline Miller.

The novel, published in 2011, is a retelling of the mythological story of the Greek warrior Achilles whose exploits were told in "The Iliad" by Homer.  The author graduated with a bachelor's and master's degrees in Classics, and was a high school Greek and Latin teacher.  "The Song of Achilles" was her first book, and it was #1 on the New York Times Bestsellers List. One reviewer wrote that the novel is "more poetic than almost any translation of Homer".

I have already read several chapters, and I am thoroughly enjoying it.  After doing a bit of research on the author, I discovered that she wrote a second novel "Circe".  It is a retelling of the story of the Greek enchantress in Homer's "The Odyssey" written from Circe's perspective.  I will have look for that one the next time I am in a bookstore back in Ohio.