the song of achilles – Cannonball Read 17

Fanfic — Classics Edition

The Song of Achilles: A Novel by Madeline Miller

September 27, 2020 by ElCicco Leave a Comment

Cbr12bingo Gateway BINGO horizontal (Gateway to Shelfie) I first read The Song of Achilles for CBR4, and for me, it is the gateway to a genre that I will call “reimagined classics” or perhaps “fanfic: classics edition.” This is the first book I can remember reading that is based on a classic story, in this case The Iliad, expanding on a part of it and telling it from the perspective of a minor character. Re-imagined classics allow authors to go into more detail on aspects […]

A (not so) funny thing happened on the way to writing this review

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

May 5, 2019 by Dusty Highway 2 Comments

I was finally caught up with my reviews at the end of March, and then everything went to hell. I spent a week in Paris (yay!) but came home to what I thought was a simple but nasty case of jetlag + airplane cold but which turned out to be . . . THE FLU. And let me just say that jetlag and three days of crazy-loud home repairs and several days of high fever/chills/aches/lungs-filled-with-pure-evil are not conducive to being productive. Moral of the story: […]

I came for the fighting, but stayed for the sweet, sweet love

The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller

April 8, 2019 by ingres77 3 Comments

I’m closer to 40 than I am 30, and I’ve never read The Iliad. I did, however, read The Odyssey in middle school, and quite liked it – though poetry has never been my thing, and the archaic formatting of the translation I read bothered me. Still. It was a good story, and I was in the florescence of my love for heroic fantasy, so The Odyssey kind of felt like the genesis for the types of stories I was reading at the time. So […]

Books I Want to Talk About with my Friend, the Classics Professor

December 18, 2018 by Jenny S Leave a Comment

Thanks to all the Cannonball Read folks who raved about Madeline Miller this year. Because of the accolades, I read The Song of Achilles back in May and Circe in November and both were books that engaged and transported me. Thanks to my procrastinating ways, I decided to review both books together and because they’ve been reviewed by a lot of folks already, I thought I’d talk more about my experience reading them and spare you the plot summary. I read Song of Achilles on my […]

There is No Law that Gods Must be Fair

April 18, 2018 by Lisa Bee 7 Comments

In anticipation of Madeline Miller’s new novel, Circe, being released (it just arrived in the mail!) I decided to do a reread of The Song of Achilles, which was one of my favorite reads from the past couple of years. And I will say, it was just as good the second time around, if not a little more painful in seeing more of the foreshadowing and understanding the deeper meaning of certain lines earlier in the novel before the course of action takes place. Okay, […]

“Name one hero who was happy.”

February 21, 2018 by narfna Leave a Comment

This isn’t going to be a long review. Sometimes I read books and I just want to sit with them and not talk about them at all. This book felt like that, like a little gift I’d been given and I just want to keep it to myself for a while. But I haven’t been behind in reviews at all in 2018 and I want to keep it that way. I’m so proud of my little self. So I will try to bust something out. […]

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