A Year in Books/Day 9: The Greek Myths: 1

  • Leighton depicts Hermes helping Persephone to ...

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    Title: The Greek Myths: 1

  • Author: Robert Graves
  • Year Published: First Published 1955/Reprinted 1969 (Penguin Books)
  • Year Purchased: 2009
  • Source: Goodwill
  • About: This detailed and highly readable re-telling of various Greek myths almost reads like a compelling biographical dictionary.
  • Motivation: As a child, I fell in love with Greek mythology. The adventures of the gods and goddesses, and the mortals (un)lucky enough to be consumed by their passions, seemed the natural next step along from fairy tales. Also: Robert Graves. I’m always happy to read anything he wrote. With nearly 150 published texts to his credit, I regularly stumble over ‘new’ works by this long-dead master.
  • Times Read: 1
  • Random Excerpt/Page 131: “Enraged because Zeus had confined their brothers, the Titans, in Tartarus, certain tall and terrible giants, with long locks and beards, and serpent-tails for feet, plotted an assault on Heaven. They had been born from Mother Earth at Thracian Phlegra, twenty-four in number.”
  • Happiness Scale: 10 (for warm, fuzzy childhood memories and because mythology is better than any soap opera or reality program)

Project 366: A Year in Books

My goal for A Small Press Life’s version of Project 365 366 is a simple one: to catalogue the vital statistics of one book per day from my collection. I have long been openly fascinated by the psychology of book buying. My own history is full of a long list of complex motivations; I have never, to the best of my memory, chosen a book due to boredom or indifference. As a life-long passionate reader, a sense of excitement has accompanied every ring of the cash register. As the year wears on, I hope to occasionally spotlight others’ books as well. Each entry will show basic information, a random excerpt and a photograph.