The Bookworm's Feast

 Release Date: November 2017
 Publisher: Penguin
 Genre: History, Non-Fiction, Mythology
 Page Count: 432 
 Goodreads Page
 Rating: ★★★★★ 

“It is enough to say that the Greeks thought it was Chaos who, with a massive heave, or a great shrug, or hiccup, vomit or cough, began the long chain of creation that has ended with pelicans and penicillin and toadstools and toads, sea-lions, lions, human beings and daffodils and murder and art and love and confusion and death and madness and biscuits.”

History books are boring, right? WRONG!

“Gaia visited her daughter Mnemosyne, who was busy being unpronounceable.”

Stephen Fry creates a completely captivating world in Mythos. I know he hasn’t created the myths, but he embellishes the tales slightly – providing personality and witticism – making them a joy to read. I also love that, here and there, he brings things back to how these mythical beings are still with us today. So much of our language can be shown to reflect the god’s name who represented or coveted a thing – it brings a feeling of enlightenment and learning to the book.

Mythos isn’t a big book, and rather than glazing over a lot of gods, Fry instead chooses to only cover so many – with the fact that Heroes has now been released (which I am definitely looking forward to diving into soon!) I really like and appreciate this approach. It allows you to form an opinion on the kinds of gods they were – and I guess spoiler, the Ancient Greek gods were a pretty messed up society. An example is Zeus was a character I thought I’d like, based on the limited knowledge and previous versions presented throughout film and TV, but oh my does he come across as just a spoilt child who cannot keep it in his pants.

I’ve both read and listened to this book as an audiobook now. In the book, the way Fry has written it really brings his personality through (I love Stephen Fry by the way, so this is a massive bonus!) – and then in the audiobook, he does the reading and his voice is so soothing! He also does voices! So depending on your reading preference, I’d definitely recommend reading it either way.