This book will hold a record for the title it took me the longest to complete, as I’ve been listening to it off and on since fall 2021, attracted by both the premise and (chiefly) the narrator, Stephen Fry — whose work I’ve loved so much in Blackadder and Jeeves and Wooster. Mythos is a collection and retelling of the foundational Greek myths, which begins chronologically before arriving at the Olympian age, at which point the stories are organized more thematically — stories of mortals and minor beings being punished for hubris, or stories of mortals being tested and found worthy or wanting. Although I’ve heard Fry voicing many characters before, I don’t know that someone can appreciate his sheer range without having experienced this, because he manages to convey a sense of imperious Zeus, a humiliated and pathetic Echo, mischievous old men and cocky young lads within the span of minutes. He probably displayed equal talents in his reading of the Harry Potter books, but we Americans had to settle for Jim Dale — no slouch, but surely not Stephen Fry. That said, this is not merely Stephen Fry reading a translation of the myths aloud: this is his own retelling, poignant and funny in its own right, and with frequent sidebars to make connections between the myths and our language, or human history more broadly. There’s also direct commentary: Fry does not approve of Alexander’s take on the Gordian knot. Although I’ve been distantly interested in Greek mythology all of my life, it’s been nearly twenty years since I read a full retelling of the myths proper — not since Edith Hamilton’s Mythology, perhaps. There were a great many tales here I’d forgotten or not heard before, and some I knew but only appreciated to a faint degree, like the many plights of King Midas. We speak of the Midas touch but without realizing what a tragedy that became! One new-to-me story was that of Arion, a musician who was thrown overboard so the crew could steal his goods: rescued by a dolphin, the boy showed up home early enough to tell his sale and commission a statue of the dolphin, which was used in a scene of marvelous comeuppance. The physical book, which I read from time to time, opens with useful family trees. Fry has recently produced Heroes, which covers lads like Heracles and Jason, and then Troy. I plan on trying those, and may do split-media like I did with this — doing some reading but more listening.