Do NOT base your civilization on this book!

The Odyssey by Homer: I hope this Homer hasn’t written anything else besides The Odyssey. This book is one tired cliché after another, with a tired old theme (guess what it is – an odyssey! Duh.) and characters that behave as if they weren’t all human.

Cliches: Beautiful enticing women are called “Sirens”. Come on. A one-eyed giant is – what else? – a “Cyclops”. But the worse thing is that Homer names his main character “Odysseus”. Yep - a guy on an odyssey is named Odyesseus. It’d be like if Mark Twain named his runaway boy “Rafty”, or if Tolkein called his hero “Ringo”. We get it – he’s on an odyssey! No need to name the character after the plot!

So what of this eponymous journey? Well, it takes up only three of 23 chapters (or “Books”, as the author ostentatiously calls them), and even then they’re not really happening. They’re merely related, after the fact, by Odysseus as he’s eating dinner. It’s like that terrible Forrest Gump movie, about a guy sitting on a bus bench, who ruins the story by rambling on and on about stuff that happened years before. Big deal, Odysseus – a six headed dog with 12 feet ate your crew a few years ago. Ancient history! Who cares?

So dude gets home and it turns out every guy in town is hanging out at his place because they all want to marry his wife. Okay – he’s been gone 20 years, so she’s what? Let’s be generous and say 38. On this whole island, there’s no woman anyone wants except a 38 year old mother of a 20 year old whose fierce warrior husband may or may not still be alive and coming home?

Right.

Odysseus comes home, spends a few chapters planning to brutally murder the suitors, and then does so. Not only that, but as one chapter – excuse me, “book” -- heading so succinctly puts it: “The maids who have misconducted themselves are made to cleanse the cloisters, and then are hanged”.

Yeah, there’s a guy worth waiting for. Domestic abuse potential? Nah!

There are other characters running around, most notably “Athena”, who is sometimes a bird, sometimes an old man, sometimes a beautiful woman; and Poseidon, who evidently controls the sea, like Lilo’s fish in Lilo and Stitch controls the weather.

What can you say about The Odyssey?