@مجدي كامل المنياوي صاحب هذا الكتاب سارق رسمي...
ينسخ عن النت والمنتديات وويكيبيديا بالحرف...
طبعا خلال 5 سنوات طبع في دار الكوبي-بيست العربي-القاهرة...وأعني ما يسمى دار الكتاب العربي ما يقارب المائة كتاب...بحسبة بسيطة فإنه يؤلف كتاب كل 18 يوم و 6 ساعات....
طبعا هذا لا يعقل ولا يمر إلا على الأغبياء...
فهو وفريقه مجرد مرتزقة كتب لا يقرأون حتى ما ينسخون من ويكيبيديا والمنتديات..فتجدها بنفس الأخطاء المطبعية....
في معرض الكتاب في الشارقة 2013 وجدت لهم قسم كبير...من الواضح أنهم يحسنون صنعا من ناحية البزنيس....وتعرفت على الشخص الموجود وقال أنه ابن صاحب الدار....وأفرغت له ما في جعبتي من أنهم مجرد دار نشر تخدع القراء وتستغفلهم ...وقلت له أن مجدي كامل لا يسوى 5 قروش في عالم التأليف...فقال لي أن هذا غريب ﻷن الكتب تدقق مرتين قبل الطباعة...وانه يدفع فلوس جيدا لمجدي كامل ﻷن "سعره غالي"....

فقط اقرأوا ماذا يقول عنكم القراء في موقع goodreads...
أنتم مجرد ##### طباعين....
ووعدته أن أحضر له كتاب "سقوط دولة الفيزا كارد" للسارق المدعو مجدي كامل حتى يرى بنفسه الكوبي بيست لصفحات بالعشرات من ويكيبيديا ومنتديات ومواقع إخبارية مع تكرارات مخزية لصفحات كاملة فهم لا يكلفون نفسهم قراءة ما ينسخون.....
لكل زمان مرتزقته وتجاره ..

I’ve finished The Iliad only. I’m saving The Odyssey for another time. I thought the translation and narration were very good. There are so many characters in these stories, it was sometimes difficult for me to remember the backgrounds of all of the players and to follow the timeline. I’m the one deficient in this regard. I need to increase my knowledge of all of these Greek myths and the participants. Part of my sometimes confusion was probably because I binge listened to this while traveling. This is an important part of our literature and the world’s culture. I need to spend more time reading about it.

Just finished The Iliad at this stage, will go back and listen to the balance shortly - very enjoyable translation well read!

Well, after hearing of the Iliad and the Odyssey for my entire life through the miasma of culture, media, and that one primary school teacher who, to my memory, taught me nothing but greek myth (big up Miss Fahey), I finally got around to reading them.

Well, kind of.
Reading stories this old is like saying you finally heard Bohemian Rhapsody, but it was played by some guy in a pub who heard another guy describe it (admitantly, really well) on the radio from the time his dad played it for him after hearing a woman sing it in a talent show after she heard it from etc. etc. etc. etc.


Homer Looking at His Writing Credits


We call the author 'Homer', but from the original story, how much of Homer's work is actually Homer? How much of Homer was the OG Homer? Do we even know if any of Homer's words even survived the subsequent changes the other Homers added to the text? And what about the text? Do we count the person who first put it to paper as a 'Homer'? Or are they just counted as translators? And what about translators??

These are too many questions to sift through and I'm no where near qualified enough to answer any of them so I'm not getting involved in that whole nebulous "oral tradition" malarky, it's irrelevant as I can only judge what I have read in this here collection of words that made up two long (but brilliant) poems. All the points I have about these epics, positive and negative, stem from the literary collection that I imbibed.

So here is what I think of that pysical thing that I bought which had two epic poems called The Iliad and The Odyssey, which were both written down onto the page by some guy other than Homer, then Translated by another dude who also wasn't Homer, and read by a guy who really isn't Homer. I'm talking about that.


Oh! And to make it even more confusing, I listened to them via audiobook. Yeah, this review is already a mess...

The Iliad: Hot Take
"Like a girl, a baby running after her mother, begging to be picked up, and she tugs on her skirts, holding her back as she tries to hurry off—all tears, fawning up at her, till she takes her in her arms… That’s how you look, Patroclus, streaming live tears."

  

So, when I finished the Iliad I made a joke that what Homer had written really was the foundation of storytelling because he wrote the Iliad before endings were invented. *ba-dum-tiss*
For those who don't understand, the Iliad does not include the fall of Troy, the wooden horse, nor even the death of Achilles. They're all (save for the wooden horse) alluded to, foreshadowed, and set up throughout the poem, but they're not described or shown. Long story short; no pay off. The poem ends before any of that occurs.
Now I hear you say, "but Tom, that's not what the Iliad was about! It was about Achilles, his argument with Agamemnon, and his rage at the death of Patroclus. Everyone knows all of that is going to happen anyhow, you don't need to show it."
Yes, granted, Achilles' plot is integral to the story, and all of those points are valid.
BUT
The structure and time given to the overarching plot of the war, its soldiers and its greater surroundings, not to mention the battle between the gods, is left unfinished. For HUGE swathes of the poem, we were brought inside battles, raids, plans for tearing down walls, loss of naval escape routes, people's families back home and debts that are forever left unpaid and crimes that are left unresolved due to the actions and the bloodshed of the trojan war. This story arc takes up a greater proportion of the poem than Achilles' arc does, and it's left unresovled.
Hell, I'd even argue Achilles' arc is left unresolved. The poem ends with him recieving the glory deserved to him from gods, enacting his revenge on Hector, giving a funeral for Patroclus, and giving Hector's body back to his father, the king. But what it doesn't show is him paying for all of these great deeds with his own death, a death that every immortal being, including Achilles' own mother, won't stop talking about.
It would be like ending the play 'Dr. Faustus' with him becoming the greatest magician in the world, and as the punters are leaving the theatre telling them, "Oh obviously he goes to hell after this. Everyone could see that coming!"

Many will disagree, and that's fair, but in my view that's a poorly structured pay-off and it hindered my enjoyment of the poem, hence my rating it 2/5 stars.


The Odyssey: the Comeback of the Millennia



Aw man, what a recovery. What. A. Recovery. Both for Odysseus, and for Homer. This poem has everything, non-linear storytelling, cyclopses, dead mothers, unrelenting suitors, domestic abuse, a thirsty goddess stuck on paradise island, Odysseus crying like all the time and as soon as he gets home he tells his son not to be such a woman.
What a ride, what a change in the quality of structure, everything is remembered and tied off with a neat bow. Whichever Homer that was in charge of taking care of the Odyssey did a stellar job. I actually have no complaints - save for the rampant woman hating in the poem, obviously. I mean Odysseus had all of his female servants who slept/ were raped by the suitors lynched at the end, which has NOT aged well.
Then again, this story is older than the written word so you can't blame it for being outdated at times.

5/5 stars

Conclusion

Despite my faults found with the Iliad, I'd still suggest reading it. It's a brilliant poem and so many turns of phrase have stemmed from its writing, not only that, the descriptions of the battles are of mid 2000s anime levels of scale and hype proportions. At one point Achilles fights a fucking RIVER and WINS.
I will say that the Iliad is an unfinished text, and you need to read both together for a completion. To me, they're two sides to the same aegean coin, and you NEED the Odyssey to pick up the slack that the Iliad drops.

Overall: 4/5 stars

-

I am reading this to two sets of students and it never gets old. My only complaint is that the Provensons left out Argos. I do believe it is the best children's Homer I have read. I love the chapter breakdowns which are almost parallel to the poems. The Provensons never disappoint, do they?

Couldn't finish it, that's a pity! Lost track of the story as the time gap grew larger... But I may reread it one day as I enjoyed it pretty much.

This review is presented in both English and Arabic:

الإلياذة:
استمتعت بقراءة هذا الجزء كثيراً. وكان من السهل تتبع الأحداث والشخصيات من خلال البحث واستنادي على كتاب Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes لـ Edith Hamilton، حتى تكون الحبكة واضحة لي.
الأوديسة:
مع أنّي كنت أتوق لقراءة هذا الجزء بشدّة بعد قراءتي للكتاب الرائع Circe لـ Madeline Miller لاكتشف القصة الأصلية من مصدرها الأساسي، ولكن مع الأسف لم يلّم بهذه القصّة واضطررت بأن أتخطى معظم الصفحات بسبب عدم وضوحها وجاذبيتها. باختصار، كنت تائهة.

Iliad:
I truly enjoyed reading this part, and it was easier to follow the events and characters by searching and relying on Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes by Edith Hamilton, so the plot would be legible to me.
Odyssey:
Despite being agog to read this part so badly after reading the amazing Circe by Madeline Miller so that I can discover the true story from its fundamental source, but unfortunately it wasn’t related and I had to skip most of the pages due to its disruption and the lack of attraction. Substantially, I was lost.

read side by side with robert fagles and this completely ruined fagles for me, its so amazing

This is the war that started it all. The legend that became a culture, converted into fiction, comic books and movies. The most meaningless yet brutal war that took two decades, thousands of good men and gods wasted their everything to become a part of. This is the one and only: Iliad and Odyssey.

Iliad ⭐⭐⭐

“Any moment might be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we're doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again.”

Iliad was a confusing, brutal and unnecessary. It all started over Helen, who is abducted against her will and brought to Troy. Then hell broke, the armies of best men of the time are gathered while Gods gathered their strength and choose their sides. The battle was too weird to even to mention; when you think it’s about to end, a God or Goddess interferes and yet another day ends with a ceasefire, another chapter wasted on nothing.
The book opens with the conflict between Achilles and Agamemnon over trophy women taken from Troy. That is the point Greeks lose their champion warrior, who sit sulking until the end while the others try to survive. Everybody -both mortal and immortal- is too tense, stubborn and play tricks to win. They are often disguised as somebody else, burn thigh bones and create hecatombs to lure Gods in order to win this endless war that took 10 years. By the time they were done, everybody had already forgotten why they were there. The war is fought “one step forward, two step backs” thanks to all mighty immortals, who just cannot let mere humans deal with their own problems. Though sometimes frustrating, it was entertaining to watch how even the simplest of issues may lead to war and destruction; Gods acting like humans and cannot control emotions, everyone in power manipulating and stipulating while war is fought by mere foot soldiers.
The most disappointing part of this book was the ending and that there’s no mention of the wooden horse (The famous Trojan horse!). The best part is that now I can relate to most works of mythological fiction and many attributions to this ancient classic literature.

Odyssey ⭐⭐⭐⭐

“Man is the vainest of all creatures that have their being upon earth.”

Odyssey is yet another frustrating never-ending journey made Odyssey (Ulysses) regret surviving the Trojan War. Well, everybody either dead at war or on the road back home, Odyssey finds himself catapulting between islands with a bunch of men, who makes you question how the hell they did not manage to die in the battlefield. Gods, sirens, titans all fixate on our hero on his return journey; either helping him or trying to kill him. While at home the son and wife of Odyssey cry their eyes out waiting for him to return, which eventually takes about 10 years. This tale reminded me of the adventures of Sinbad from Arabian Tales, the misfortunes and lack of luck never cease to stop until he find a safe passage home. Yet another war waits for him at home, for tens of hundreds of suitors are camped outside to marry his wife Penelope and take the throne of Ithaca. I have to admit I enjoyed the return journey much better the war, the aftermath of Troy and how the survivors ended up. There’s only cursory, tiny little mention of the horse that sealed the fate of the war, which led to yet another disappointment on my side.

Overall, an overwhelming, exhausting and pain-in-the-arse kind of book yet an entertaining must-read, love-or-hate kind of classic literature.

Logan already knew some of these adventures from the excellent recorded reading by Benedict Flynn The Adventures of Odysseus. But I happened on this copy at a used-books shop in Cannon Beach and had to have it because in 1975, my mother gave me "Myths and Legends" Golden Treasury of Myths and Legends Adapted from the World's Great Classics illustrated by the same couple and I loved the pictures. Logan loved the stories and recommends it to "anyone who likes battles really, because there are lots and lots of them." Well, yes. Only too true. Luckily, only the "bad guys and mosters" die. Watson does a good job maintaining the antique sound of the language, while still making it understandable for younger readers.

It didn't take me long to figure out that I'm not a Homer girl. I think the problem was partly that after years of taking in entertaining, probably dumbed down versions of the stories, the reality ended up a bit of a let down. Another problem was I had trouble liking any of the characters. Achilles? Hector? Even Odysseus? Ugh! Whiney, deceitful, and not very likeable!

The Iliad was pretty painful to get through. I forced myself to finish and didn't even get a payoff in the end. What happened to Troy?! Andromache?! Priam?! The Iliad won't tell you! The sacking of Troy is alluded to in the Odyssey with a brief overview of the Trojan Horse and the men hiding in it. That's it!

The Odyssey was better than the Iliad, maybe 2 stars.

I have a bit of a complex now that I've read the books and not liked them. I consider myself a fairly intelligent person, but I just couldn't connect with these classic works of literature that have been read by, and enjoyed by countless people for centuries.