Ever read the Odyssey by Homer? Marvelous epic poem (but a bit long at about 500 pages) of the travels and travails of Odysseus as he sails home to Greece after being victorious in the Trojan War. My son, Jake, a junior at Gold Beach High School, is reading it as part of an Honors English class.

It is one of the great adventure stories of all time. The last two nights, my wife, who still reads to the kids almost every night even though they are aged 16, 14, and 12, read them Edith Hamilton’s 26-page summary of the Odyssey from her 1942 book, Mythology. I listened too because it has been so many years since I read it.

Few kids nowadays read great ancient literature like this. Of course, as with Shakespeare, it helps to have a teacher to help you understand it. GBHS happens to have an enlightened teacher, Alan Lee, who understands the importance of exposing his students to the great literary works of the past.

I assume someone has made a movie of the Odyssey, just as they did of Homer’s other great work, the Iliad (the Trojan War), but I don’t know since I’m not much of a movie goer. But it is much more important to read the book itself, for only then can you get a feel for the complexity of an ancient society. The real world and the world of gods were seamless in those days, just as they were in most ancient cultures. People passed from one into the other, then back again, on a regular basis. There are so many gods named in the Odyssey you can barely keep track of them. But once you are finished reading the book, you have an appreciation of a great civilization (the foundation of Western civilization) with its heroes and villains. It gives you an understanding into who we are today with our distant modern culture. Great literature essentially allows you to time travel into our past.

The Odyssey is only one of many books Mr. Lee has required Jake to read. He keeps me rushing to my own bookshelf looking for old copies of Rand and Steinbeck and Fitzgerald. I try and expound on the history and philosophical principles behind the books. Until Mr. Lee, Jake, like so many kids today, has concentrated his reading on fantasy, such as Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, and the Redwall series of novels (Jake has read 19 of them) by Brian Jacques. I’m not sure how valuable that is. It’s entertaining for sure. But what about history and ideas? Isn’t that how we learn to proceed into the future?

I have a fondness for Greek and Roman mythology. Lenie will begin reading Edith Hamilton’s entire Mythology book to the boys tonight. Hamilton had the ability to condense the ancient stories down, adding her own explanations, so the stories are easier for we moderns to understand. Hamilton herself has been dead for 45 years, her book is 65 years old, but her book’s treatment of ancient Greek and Roman myths is probably still the best ever written. I highly recommend you read it to your own children. There are copies of the book all over the internet for as little as a few cents.