Journeying...

I get lots of mails thanking me for writing here, and inspiring and 'helping' people in ways various (and thank you for them, I try and reply to everyone ), but I have to say that you all inspire me too. Your comments are like gold dust, and this week's thoughts you all so kindly shared on The Mighty Dead - Why Homer Matters by Adam Nicolson have launched me into Homer much sooner than I had planned.

I am still toiling slowly up The Magic Mountain, and I know I haven't written about it yet (sorry) but I will, though I'm going to bivvy and shelve it until the autumn for now, because having read the first book of The Odyssey in Emily Wilson's translation I realised this was the perfect summer excursion.

With that, she tied her sandals on her feet, 

the marvellous golden sandals that she wears 

to travel sea and land, as fast as wind.’

I'm tying on my virtual golden sandals and I'm off; a book a day (fifteen pages approx....maybe I'll manage two), a few pages of the introduction and the end notes alongside each book to see me through to and beyond the Longest Day, and I am ready for the jaunt.

Thank you too for the suggestion of Women's Work - The First 20,000 Years : Women, Cloth and Society in Early Times by Elizabeth Wayland Barber. As a companion read alongside this first translation of The Odyssey by a woman I can see it will be perfect. It's very much a 'me' book along the lines of The Subversive Stitch by Rozita Parker and others which unveil the anonymity of the fabric of women's lives in history.

'New discoveries about the textile arts reveal women's unexpectedly influential role in ancient societies. Twenty thousand years ago, women were making and wearing the first clothing created from spun fibres. In fact, right up to the Industrial Revolution the fibre arts were an enormous economic force, belonging primarily to women. Despite the great toil required in making cloth and clothing, most books on ancient history and economics have no information on them. Much of this gap results from the extreme perishability of what women produced, but it seems clear that until now descriptions of prehistoric and early historic cultures have omitted virtually half the picture. Elizabeth Wayland Barber has drawn from data gathered by the most sophisticated new archaeological methods-methods she herself helped to fashion. In a "brilliantly original book" (Katha Pollitt, Washington Post Book World), she argues that women were a powerful economic force in the ancient world, with their own industry: fabric.'

I've lined up a few more books too...

It's a very long time since I read The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood but I'm looking forward to it again. I remember it as the first in the Canongate Myths Series which would ask contemporary authors to reimagine a myth, and with the entire project set to last years I'm not sure how far it has reached now.

'Penelope. Immortalised in legend and myth as the devoted wife of the glorious Odysseus, silently weaving and unpicking and weaving again as she waits for her husband's return.

Now Penelope wanders the underworld, spinning a different kind of thread: her own side of the story - a tale of lust, greed and murder.'

And I also have Circe by Madeline Miller ready and waiting...

'In the house of Helios, god of the sun and mightiest of the Titans, a daughter is born. But Circe has neither the look nor the voice of divinity, and is scorned and rejected by her kin. Increasingly isolated, she turns to mortals for companionship, leading her to discover a power forbidden to the gods: witchcraft.

When love drives Circe to cast a dark spell, wrathful Zeus banishes her to the remote island of Aiaia. There she learns to harness her occult craft, drawing strength from nature. But she will not always be alone; many are destined to pass through Circe's place of exile, entwining their fates with hers. The messenger god, Hermes. The craftsman, Daedalus. A ship bearing a golden fleece. And wily Odysseus, on his epic voyage home.

There is danger for a solitary woman in this world, and Circe's independence draws the wrath of men and gods alike. To protect what she holds dear, Circe must decide whether she belongs with the deities she is born from, or the mortals she has come to love.'

And so Homer Summer begins. I am already struggling to set The Odyssey aside at the end of each book but am being disciplined, it's not a book to rush, more one to read aloud.

I've added these books to a 'Journeying' sidebar over here >>>>> along with another suggestion from those comments, An Odyssey - A Father, A Son and an Epic by Daniel Mendelsohn.  More suggestions very welcome.