Norse Mythology - Gaiman

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Norse Mythology
Neil Gaiman

Combining Gaiman and Norse Mythology into an incredibly digestible history is like combining chocolate and peanut butter. It's just enhanced by the other.

The Norse myths are fascinating and just different enough to grab your attention. Loki is the obvious choice of the most interesting god, but there are great characters everywhere. Utgarda-Loki, THiazi and his daughter, Baldur and the master builder are fascinating characters in their own right.

I don't want to see things in ancient tales that aren't there, but it's hard not to see similarities that seem so universal that point my head into directions that are probably erroneous and definitely heretical. Apples, why are there always apples? Mass catastrophe with only two survivors left to repopulate the world always seem to come up. Ragnarok is an odd eschatological view, but Baldur plays a bit of a Christlike role and comes back to life at the end of time. The death and the resurrection of a god brings about a rebirth that has a familiarity to it. My question at this juncture is whether Baldur takes on a Christlike flavor because of my personal vantage point, because there is something foundational about the god who dies and his resurrection causing renewal to the religious experience of humanity or because the later writers have woven, consciously or not, Christian motifs into Pagan mythology? The similarities between all of humanity's myths and their variations of each other have always fascinated me.

1491

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1491: New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus
Charles C. Mann

I think that this is one of the better history books that I have read in awhile. No history books can be absolutely objective, but I feel as though Mann does enough to present both sides fairly, even if he has a particular leaning in any of the controversies surrounding Mesoamerican history. I prefer reading "pop" history much more than researching history and his overarching approach to a massive subject was an enjoyable read. It's a great overview into a history that is less well known than it ought to be.

What really stood out to me in this book was how interestingly connected the history and the theoretical framework the history of the Americas is presented is intertwined with so many other subjects. The tribalism and otherness that permeates the actual history plays out in the understanding of the history in a way that mirrors it, if the mirroring was done in a funhouse. Each discovery and theory takes on new and intriguing distortions as we gaze back at it from new angles, just as our own reflection gets distorted in a funhouse mirror as we look at it from different angles. It's clearly us, but not as distinct as the real us. In some mirrors the closer you get the less distorted the reflection appears. But, in other mirrors in the same funhouse the opposite is true. As you wind through a mirror maze the chimera of clarity is grasped and lost with each progressive step. Mann's overall thought is probably a truer reflection of history writers than those a century ago, but not as accurate as original firsthand accounts. Yet, those early accounts are distorted differently because those accounts looked at the history from a different angle and contain truer impressions of parts of their subject matter that later historians will never see or will somehow overlook. In an hundred years I'll read another book on precolumbian America and come to the same conclusion, having been enlightened and deceived in new ways by the reflections.

Bhagavad Gita

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Bhagavad Gita
Translated by Barbara Stoler Miller

I've been on a bit of a mythology kick. This led me to the path of the Mahabharata. While interesting and philosophically impressive, I was expecting something less Scriptural and more action packed. It felt a lot like reading Proverbs when I was expecting Genesis. I understand that this is the fault of the reader and not a reflection of the writer, but had this been a longer text it might have kicked the mythology bug right out of me.

Bulfinch's Mythology

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Greek and Roman Mythology: The Age of Fable
Thomas Bulfinch

While Bulfinch is certainly more thorough in his treatment of mythology I find I personally enjoyed Edith Hamilton more. Don't get me wrong; this book is great. It gets you good and immersed into mythology. I especially enjoyed his Wagner chapter.

The Oresteia

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The Oresteia: Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, The Eumenides
Aeschylus

I think I enjoyed this more than the Oedipus cycle. However, just like Oedipus, the third part just leaves me wanting. I don't know if it is my lack of understanding but the endings just aren't satisfying. It's like it wraps up too neatly for such messy affairs.

Mythology - Edith Hamilton

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Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes
Edith Hamilton

I love mythology and history. Edith Hamilton does a great job of making the myths easily digestible without dumbing it down. Although she's a little too harsh on Ovid in my opinion.