Self Isolation & Cabin Fever

Something's going on!

I'm in self-isolation due to the outbreak of COVID-19. As of this post, in Nova Scotia, there are nine confirmed cases, 12 potential cases, and 0 deaths in the province. A relative miracle, if we're being honest, as other parts of the country are being ravaged at the minute, not to mention the rest of the world.

I've just finished the first of two weeks of isolation, and am getting really bored already. So far, I've:

- gone on six walks of varying lengths from 6 to 14 kilometers
- read The Iliad
- learned how to make pizza
- reorganised my bookshelves
- cleaned
- drawn and coloured in my daytimer
- played some Pokemon
- baked cookies
- calculated my weekly working hours for employment insurance
- contacted my work to figure out whether i would be paid (nope) and when my ROE would be sent to the government (somewhere between the 27th - 31st)

I'm running out of things to do, and I'm bored. I plan to pick up a few more books, go for more walks, clear out my clothes again, reorganise my room again maybe, get a new bookshelf when I am out of isolation and reorganise my books again, and set up next month in my daytimer, I suppose. I have a whole week to kill before I can do anything, and even then, I'll not be able to do much because I don't want to be a factor that causes others to get sick (or get sick myself I suppose).

Another outlet I thought, might be to write. So here I am, how many years after making this blog? It's fairly quiet, and perhaps fewer people will see it, but here perhaps I can talk about the books I read at least, and get into the habit of writing something positive.

Self-Isolation Book 1: The Iliad, and a recent history of my non-reading life

One goal I set for myself for 2020 was to read one book a month that has been on my bookshelves for a long time. So far I have been sticking to that goal, and have read The Man Who Ate His Boots by Brandt, Tree: A Life Story by Suzuki and Grady, and most recently, and due to the self-isolation protocols and having nothing better to do, The Iliad by Homer.

This has been on my book since I took a high school course in Greek mythology, way back in 2001. It's been hanging around on my shelf in various forms for the last 20 years, more or less, and every once in a while I'd look at it, contemplatively, thinking perhaps today is the day, perhaps this is the year...



Needless to say, it never was the day, or the year. A bit of backstory: I spent a lot of high school reading Forgotten Realms and other Dungeons and Dragons fantasy series, which evolved into high fantasy and fairy tale retellings by Patricia McKillip (which i still love).

In university, I moved on to the grim-dark fantasy we all know (and I thoroughly despise) as Game of Thrones. After that broke me of any interest in fantasy whatsoever, and well into university, I started heavily reading non-fiction. I was taking a major in history, you see, and sometimes real life is stranger than fiction.

I moved to Italy and read whatever I could find, really, having only a small collection of books to choose from in English - along with my course material from my long-distance courses with university, mostly 19th Century English literature and the very massive Janson's History of Art textbook that surely has every piece of Western art in it since history became a thing.

When I finished all that, moved back to Canada, and settled in (2011/2012-ish), I started thinking about fantasy again, and read a few more grim-dark things (A Dance With Dragons just came out and I decided to torture myself with that, and the The Blade Itself trilogy or whatever it's called), then fell into the most massive reading slump I ever did experience. I didn't read anything for like three years, unless I had to. Didn't even think of Homer in all that time.

Went back to school for two years to get my B.Ed, and read as little as possible (although for one course I did, I read several real gems, like Monkey Beach by Eden Robinson and Green Grass, Running Water by Thomas King). I graduated in 2017. This brings The Slump up to five years.

Graduated, spent half a year working, and was still massively disinterested in reading. I tried to get back into the habit, because it is a habit that you have to build for yourself if you want to read a lot. I read Fahrenheit 451 which sparked quite a bit of interest in me, then got a fateful email from Goodreads in December.

This email gave me reading stats of celebrities for the year. Sarah Jessica Parker, star of Sex and the City and lots of other things I am sure, this email said, managed to read something like 25 books in one year. I was flabbergasted. Sarah Jessica Parker, who is a busy adult woman with an acting career and probably interests and philanthropic endeavours and all sorts of stuff, managed to find enough time to read regularly and I, who has just sort-of started a job and had no interests or hobbies besides playing video games, walking, and reading, can't find time to read books? I'm certainly not making movies or t.v. shows, or donating my time to charities. What is wrong with me?

And all this time The Iliad is still on my shelf, untouched. That's not to say I haven't picked up books in all this time. My shelves are teeming with things to read, because I kept buying, but not reading. I even bought a newer copy of The Iliad during the Five Year Slump.



I got it at a thrift store. I saw some highlighting in it, and thought hmmm, perhaps the previous owner wrote some insightful commentary inside this copy... No such luck. Didn't matter anyway, as it simply replaced the older orange version on my shelf. I carried on not reading it, obviously.

After The Email, I made myself a goal: in 2019, I am going to read 25 books come hell or high water. Just like Sarah Jessica Parker. And I want to read The Iliad. So I started carrying books around with me again, and set time aside for at least an hour a day and read. I also got myself back to the library, a place I tend to shy away from because I dislike communal things: food, door handles, public washrooms, books... anything that might hang on to some nasty bug and pass it along to me. But I went anyway, and got some audiobooks from the library to help me on my quest to read 25 books, including The Iliad.

I read all sorts of things in 2019:
♥ The Silmarillion
♥ Frozen in Time
♥ Dombey and Son
♥ The Tenant of Wildfell Hall
♥ Rubicon
♥ The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs
♥ Far From the Madding Crowd

And re-read a bunch, too:
♥ Jurassic Park
♥ Good Omens
♥ The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit
♥ just about all of Jane Austen's books
♥ The Shipping News

In total I read some sixty books, blowing past the goal I set some time in May 2019.
Still, no Iliad.

I was quite proud of myself for reading 60 books, though. I haven't done that since probably 2001 or 2002, so I decided not to be mad at myself. I'd try again in 2020, and perhaps get through a few books that have been hanging around for a while.

So here we are in 2020, it's March, we're all being responsible and practicing social distancing, and my god I am bored. There is only so much one can do when they are not working, just hoping for good news.

About a week before the city shut down I was browsing the library waiting for my friend, when I happened upon the rather large collection of audiobooks they have stocked there, and lo, there was The Iliad, like a sign from on high. I took it, ripped it to my library, and this week I have split my time listening to it while I walk and reading it while at home from yet another paper copy I picked up (I just love the Oxford World's Classics, sue me).



The audio version I picked up is a rather plain English translation, which is nice because it made the story easy to follow while I did not have a copy to reference in front of me. The Oxford edition used somewhat more... complicated phrasing? I suppose, but while reading it I enjoyed that rather a lot. I guess the translation does count in some sense.

If you didn't already know, The Iliad recounts almost the last two or so weeks of the Trojan War. The poem itself does not even cover the events leading up to the war (the goddesses conning Paris into picking whose best between them; him 'winning' Helen, the prettiest lady, and pissing off the losers of this little competition; Paris making off with another man's wife and all her wealth, Menelaus; being really pissed about his wife taking off/being taken, raising a campaign to go after Helen (and her money); the ten year siege that ensues) or the events after Priam goes to beg for his son's body back (building the Trojan horse, ransacking Ilium, Achilles' death). It really mostly focuses on what is honourable and dishonourable in war, and the destructive power of humans (and the gods) - through all time.

How do you review a poem from the 6th century BCE? The Iliad describes, book after book, line after line, every spear thrust into an eye socket, bowel, jaw, or groin. The merciless ruin people are capable of, but also the great compassion and mercy they can be moved to, such the compassion Achilles felt for King Priam, who snuck into the enemy encampment to beg for Hector's body in order for him to have a proper funeral. I arbitrarily gave it five stars because it didn't disappoint me after 20 years of anticipation, but that may change when I get around to reading The Odyssey, which made it to my shelf at the same time as The Iliad.

Well. I just spent the last couple hours writing almost mindlessly, and it has been really fun. Perhaps I should try this more often, especially when I am bored of reading and walking.

TL;DR: I got really upset that my life was way less busy than Sarah Jessica Parker's and still she managed to read more than me, so I read The Iliad and liked it rather a lot.