Mythos by Stephen Fry

Mythos by Stephen Fry

Audiobook

Narrated delightfully by Stephen Fry!

Running length of around 15 hours but reduced by increasing the speed of narration without any change in diction or meaning!

It was an absolute delight to listen to Stephen Fry narrating the stories of the Greek Mythology! He gets into the characters and makes a lovely presentation!
The big book with its very interesting stories fill you up with joy and delight!
Most of the stories are known of course but Stephen has tried to add chronology to the story and this brings about a much needed order of things! He himself states in the end how this is only his attempt to add continuity to the stories and this makes it really easy to follow the chain of thoughts and flow of stories.

So the story begins with Chronos and then later on the new king of Gods; Zeus takes over and most part of the book are the stories involving Zeus and his escapades and his adventures! And how his extra marital adventures gives rise to so many great characters and how his jealous wife Hera takes revenge on the hapless victims of Zeus’s adventures!
There is a dialogue in the popular Hindi movie called PK; the hero says, “Your God is just like you! He gets jealous, he gives faster to rich and he gets angry!”
The book also follows the same theme! Just like humans they compete with each other, they get jealous, fall for their temptations, punish for small mistakes, don’t accept criticism of any kind and use their powers without thoughts!
The amount of sexual escapades and stories would give the script writer of Game of Thrones a run for his money!
Some stories are told in detail and some are narrated in a swift way! More or less the story is of the misadventure of a God or the Punishment of the mortal!
Curses flow around like sand in a desert!
People and Gods alike in this book are so vain and have no afterthought!
Stephen fry has made an earnest attempt to give us an entertaining extravaganza and he states his sources and of course in effect the source of the original stories which could be from places as far as India or China! Or even Africa! You can see the similarities in stories told to us in different forms in other religious books also.

This is not a religious book but just a compilation of the famous stories although many more stories are left out! I was eagerly waiting for Hercules and other stories but as Stephen mentioned that would have made the book so heavy that even Atlas would not be able to lift!
You have Stories about Zeus, Aries, Atlas, Hermes, Athena, Hera, Poseidon, Chronos, Aphrodite, Pandora and Midas! And many many more thrown in for good measure!
You also have lots of origin stories of so many names and so many animals or birds or flowers or trees and how they had that particular property! Those are the most interesting stories!
How Honey was discovered is also amazing and then abruptly it becomes a tragedy! The temper of Greek Gods is shorter than…their patience!

It’s a thoroughly enjoyable adventure with the quick wit of Stephen fry! You will not realise the time flying by just like Hermes!

Enjoy! God bless you!