BEDSIDE TABLE
“I like to travel with Christopher Logue’s version of Homer’s The Iliad. I took it with me on a trip to the Arctic; I needed something light that I could read many times and dip in and out of. I don’t like to read a book that I feel I have to finish.
“Logue is a poet, so the language has a real power to it. His translation jumps between rather contemporary figures of speech and the narrative of The Iliad. He doesn’t speak Greek, so he assembled other translations and came up with a version that he ran by classical scholars. I’ve read lots of different translations, but his is the most exciting—and in a way the most terrifying, because his language is so good. The section where Patroclus puts on Achilles’s armor is extraordinary.