MYTHOS by Stephen Fry

What was the last book you read that made you laugh out loud? This one will do it for you, the outrageous and gifted wordsmith Stephen Fry seamlessly weaving ancient story telling with modern commentary, a bit of naughtiness and some great word play. I loved it. We all know at least one Greek myth, many of our words derive from Ancient Greek and the stories of the gods,  as do many facets of our lives and how we live them. The collection in this book are only a handful of the thousands of myths and stories that have arisen out of Ancient Greece as a way of explaining the world. All societies and cultures have a creation story - here is the Greek one in all its violence, bizarreness, and strangeness giving us such characters as Zeus, Hera, Apollo, Artemis, Athena, Aphrodite, Poseidon and many others. The fun really starts when the human being is created, and interaction begins between the two. These gods sure knew how to have fun with us mortals! I loved the way the gods moved freely with the mortals, giving new meaning to the word interbreeding, but also producing a race of wonder people. I bet every single Greek person now lays claim to be descended from a god, but which one do you want to be descended from!

The stories are simply wonderful to read. Stephen Fry relates every single story to some facet of our modern day life or recent history. We are all aware of narcissism - read the story of Narcissus; Pandora's box of course is another one we all know about addressing temptation, disobedience.  I loved the story of how wine was made, such an important discovery that Zeus made Dionysus a god, putting a few noses out of joint at Mt Olympus. Fry makes the gods human in their behaviour, their petty jealousies, their desires. And they are so violent - punishment is dished out with horrible frequency for mad misdemeanours, obviously as examples to us mere mortals to behave ourselves otherwise we too could meet a similar fate.

Now I have Heroes on my radar - where he tells the stories of Jason, Oedipus, Theseus, Heracles and many others, again apparently in that easy, modern day relevant way. Maybe these books will lead to a revival of classics in the education system, because they are all such ripping, exciting, and informative rides.