Post #4286336

2026-07-31 17:30 UTC

@mookie@sfba.social You've read #Beowulf multiple times? Really??? 😲 Frankly, I've never read it once. 🤷‍♂️ I'm a collector of books . . . #tsundoku is a habit of mine . . . but I seldom read any of them. 🤷‍♂️ It's not like I don't have the time but I usually only read a book while listening to music in front of one of my stereo systems & I haven't done much of that lately. 🤷‍♂️ The book that I've been trying to read for a 2nd time for the past year is #Shogun but still haven't gotten around to it & just keep avoiding it. 🤷‍♂️ LOL!!! 😉

Replies (1)

@mookie@weredreaming.com 2026-07-31 18:03

@sgt1372@sfba.social Yup! In multiple forms too -- including a reinterpretation. It's such a classic story -- and honestly, it's a short read so worth a read . The first time I read it was as a reinterpretation. A friend of author Michael Crichton (Jurassic Park) thought Beowulf was boring and challenged Crichton to make it exciting. Crichton wrote the book Eaters of the Dead based on the challenge and the book follows the story of Beowulf, but from the point of view of a third party. The book was later made into the movie 13th Warrior starring Antonio Banderas as that third party. In university, I took an English course where I read Beowulf in the original language, Old English (aka Anglo-Saxon) in its original format: Verse (aka a poem). It's great! Because Beowulf is written in Old English, it has many translations. The translation into verse by Burton Raffel is particularly good. But the best verse translation into Modern English is by Seamus Heaney the book contains the Old English version right next to the new English translation. I've read multiple prose translations. The best prose translation of Beowulf is Donaldson's and worth a read if it's your first time reading. Beowulf was also translated into prose by J.R.R. Tolkien. If you can't tell, I love this story and think everyone should read it at lease once. #books #reading #beowulf #poetry

Open ##4286335