#340

Books

This week I read:

• The Iliad, translated by Emily Wilson

  The Iliad and the Odyssey have been on my radar for a while—how could they not?—but I never read them because I wasn’t sure what translation to pick up. Emily Wilson’s is recent and generally considered quite good, so I picked it up, and indeed it is. I was surprised by the scope of the Iliad: there’s no Judgement of Paris, no Trojan Horse, no death of Achilles! It seems what I thought of as the Iliad has more Aeneid to it, so I suppose that one will have to go on the list too.

  The translation is in unrhymed iambic pentameter, but I found it really hard to read in rhythm. Generally I’m not a fan of poetry that doesn’t rhyme, and I wonder if my total lack of a sense of rhythm (seriously, see me try but fail at rhythm games) is the problem. I just get thrown if the words aren’t all two syllables long, e.g.:

  Beside the curving ships, the Greeks strapped on

  Which I think is to be read:

  be SIDE the CUR ving SHIPS the GREEKS strapt ON

  But I have to really think about it, the “CUR ving” pair sounds awkward as I naturally want to read it “cur VING”.

  So I just read it as if it were “prose with weird line breaks”, which is how I feel about a lot of unrhymed poetry.

Roleplaying Games

No game this week, unfortunately, I had a prior arrangement—but that’s just given the players more time to scheme, I’m sure.

Miscellaneous

I took two days off this week and tried out a bunch of new Steam games. Some stuck, some didn’t.

Games that I didn’t get into, and refunded:

• Kingdom Come: Deliverance II
• Indiana Jones and the Great Circle
• Two Point Museum

Games I’m greatly enjoying:

• Nordhold
• 9 Kings (demo)

And games we’ll see about:

• Diplomacy is Not an Option
• Roman Triumph: Survival City Builder
• BLACKSHARD