Today my Sunday essay is a Sunday Note.

I’m seeing lots of comments on social media about Christopher Nolan’s new film his take on Homer’s Odyssey. One friend posted a plea to people who haven’t read this epic of western literature not to watch the film first and then read the Odyssey afterwards. Another friend who read Homer’s Odyssey as a child said that they enjoyed the film and reading Homer sparked a deep love of literature in them.

I agree with the second friend because if watching the Odyssey gets people into reading Greek literature and the greats of the western literary canon surely that’s a good thing.

However, I have to confess that I’m actually in the category that the first friend talked about in that I haven’t read Homer’s Odyssey or his Iliad. So I thought I had better remedy that and buy the Penguin Classics edition of Homer’s Odyssey which arrived yesterday.

I’m a fan of both Penguin Classics and Loeb Classics. I only started collecting Loebs in MMXIV when I bought the Loeb edition of Claudius Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblos. Since then I have got several more Loebs including the two volumes of Augustine of Hilpo’s Confessions.

I also own a few Penguin Classics my first Penguin Classic was Alfred the Great which includes Asser’s Life of King Alfred and other works that Alfred commissioned for translation into Old English. I bought this Penguin Classic in 1988. In the shelfie it’s on the bookshelf with my other Penguin Classics next to Dante’s Divine Comedy Volume 1 Inferno.

Today I’m going to start reading the Odyssey and then I will probably get the Penguin Classics edition of Homer’s Iliad followed by Virgil’s Aeneid. I also have to read The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky for the Athenaeum Book Club of which I’m a member. Then there’s also my Faganfest’ I’m still reading Brian Fagan’s The Little Ice Age How Climate Made History 1300-1850.

So I’ve got some reading to do not that I’m complaining! 📚📚📚📚📚📚📚📚📚📚

Happy Sunday