"1001 Nights," "Book I of the Odyssey," "The Pillow Book"

I started off my reading with The Odyssey. I had read it before and I thought it would be a breeze to fly through it having been assigned to read it so many times. However, our discussions about what literature is really made me appreciate the beauty and the longevity of The Odyssey. I think that The Odyssey is still widely read and studied is because of both its awe-inspiring lyrical rhythm and the idea of the process this piece of literature had to take to become the written word, being that it was passed down orally and had so many chances to change. The Odyssey is like the literary version of the game telephone. 1001 Nights is interesting in that way too, being as old as it is and being a collection of many different authors. Apparently some of the best known tales of Aladdin and Ali baba were not even a part of the original Arabic collections, but were added later by Europeans. That just shows how literature can change with the times. The Pillow Book is also very old and has been translated like The Odyssey and 1001 Nights. It is interesting to think about how much does "get lost in translation."