do not be intimidated by the homeric classics... seriously

Honestly there is no reason to be intimidated by the Homeric classics. I've just finished reading the Iliad that I started sometime in July. It's been a while because I got burnt out a bit. I was grinding through it a bit too eagerly, but I made it to the end. Do I reccomend it? For sure. In one moment you have beautiful prose: an ancient commentary on the inner world of these characters, sometimes godlike, sometimes mere people who happen to be caught up in an endless war. And on the tail of that, they are now having some sort of race, and one of them trips and falls, and Homer gives us a few lines describing how he literally ate shit. Then he pulls us back into some idyllic scene. Surf lapping up against the deep-sea-going ships, heavy and dark, like whales, beached, slumbering, and then suddenly it's a scene of the gods up in Ida having a cat fight about some nonsense, like a camera switch in a trashy reality TV show. Artemis gets slapped on the ears, she runs crying to Papa Zeus,…