The Odyssey

I read it because Christopher Nolan's Odyssey film was coming up, and I wanted to catch up on it. I read Robert Fagles' Penguin translation, and it was beautiful — truly a masterpiece. What surprised me most was how cinematic it was; it felt performative, like watching a movie.

The other thing that surprised me was the experience of reading through it. It's a fairly small book, close to 350 pages, but once you finish it feels like an eternity has passed. So many events and so much information are condensed into so few pages, and that was fascinating.

The fact that this was the first written piece of literature made it really special. That gave me a very special feeling and attachment to the book.

And lastly, the idea of a man just trying to return to his family and his home hits hard — it hits home. He's not a perfect man; he's full of imperfections and failures, and that makes him relatable. Even though this was written 2,500 years ago and set in an alien land of monsters and gods, it still feels deeply relatable. I think that's the power of storytelling.