Circe has been topping a lot of people’s Best Of books this year and for good reason. It is a well written, interesting take on several well known Greek myths but doesn’t require an extensive knowledge of Greek mythology to enjoy (although Madeline Miller is obviously a Greek mythology fan girl). Nymph-turned-witch Circe is the daughter of Helios; she is never meant to rule kingdoms because while she is immortal she is not a God. She finds happiness being a nanny to her siblings but […]
Books I Want to Talk About with my Friend, the Classics Professor
Thanks to all the Cannonball Read folks who raved about Madeline Miller this year. Because of the accolades, I read The Song of Achilles back in May and Circe in November and both were books that engaged and transported me. Thanks to my procrastinating ways, I decided to review both books together and because they’ve been reviewed by a lot of folks already, I thought I’d talk more about my experience reading them and spare you the plot summary. I read Song of Achilles on my […]
“Humbling women seems to me a chief pastime of poets. As if there can be no story unless we crawl and weep.”
The daughter of Helios, the god of the sun, a mighty Titan, Circe is a lesser god, or nymph. She does not hold the power of her parents and is often scorned for her odd voice and behaviour in the halls of the gods where she lives. Falling for a mortal, she discovers her own power lies in witchcraft, turning rivals into monsters. For this – and feeling threatened by her power – she is exiled to an island by Zeus. It is there that […]
All this, and Helen ends up back with her husband anyway
I should have read The Iliad in college. It was assigned for a first year seminar for which I did less than half the reading. I’ve long been embarrassed by this fact, yet not at all motivated to make up the deficit. When I came to Song of Achilles, I had no idea who the narrator was, or his relationship to Achilles. I wonder if that’s a not insignificant portion of how beautiful I found this book, that I came to it unspoiled. Just as […]