Obviously The Odyssey by Homer is one of the oldest and best known books in all of history. It was even one of the foundational books for the ancient Greek religion. I had all of this in mind when I started reading this book, and I really wasn't disappointed. This book was very captivating and it had a much more complicated plot than I had ever heard. I would not, obviously, have chosen to read this book before the Iliad, but one of my classes in college required me to read the Odyssey. This is the story of a man, named Odysseus, trying to get home from the Trajan war and his son back home attempting to become a man without him. Odysseus takes many years to get home because the gods are preventing his return and in that time, he is believed to be dead. Half of this story is his son's attempts to grow up and take care of his family without Odysseus, and the other half is about Odysseus's adventures as he tries to come home.
The two major themes I see through this book are courage in the face of adversity and the importance of growing up and taking responsibility for the things going on around you. Odysseus faces dozens of challenges across this book, but his courage nearly always holds as he dreams of returning home. This is a great (although, not altogether uncommon in many of these books) image of courage. The other theme is shown through Telemachus (Odysseus's son) as he takes possession of his home and his life. For years, he allowed other people to run his life, but just before his father returned, he began to grow up. We can all learn a lot from Telemachus's example and begin to take responsibility for our own lives.
Now the important question is what exactly to say about this fascination book. As I said, it was extremely interesting and I quite enjoyed reading it, but that does not necessarily mean that it is okay for everyone to read. First of all, it is a relatively hard book to get through and some of the language is pretty hard (depending on which translation you choose to read). I would definitely not recommend this book for someone will a low reading level. The other issue that I see in this book is that of its religion. I would caution anyone in carelessly reading a book about anything that was believed for centuries. People really did believe that these gods were real and that seems to give them slightly more power than characters in other books. I would just suggest some caution when reading this book and definitely wouldn't recommend it for younger teens who don't have their faith well founded yet.
