So I do.
I've been reading for a long time. This project probably started with The Water Margin, a classical Chinese novel about a band of outlaws, on the run from a corrupt government, who band together to fight tyranny. Like Robin Hood, you might say.
Only this is China, and the scale is immense. The band numbers nine dozen heroes, each with their own story sequence, who end up leading a vast army against their enemies. The book is collation of several threads of folk tales, and it's full of violence and nobility and bad behaviour and crude jokes and drunkenness and heroism and dueling and...
...and it's awesome.
From there I went naturally to the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, another Chinese classic: a fourteenth century novelisation of a third century war.
This was the best book I've ever read.
From fairly modest beginnings of skirmishes and intrigue and adventure, it builds to a thundering centrepiece battle involving vast armadas and cunning strategems and desperate heroism, and moves into a series of struggles between master strategists and glorious heroes as they struggle to control the mightiest empire in the world.
It is glorious stuff.
As I read I started posting flippant little sketches to social media - exchanges between the heroes summarising tiny portions of the story through a modern, western eye:
"Tian Feng! Yuan Shao ignored your wise advice, and has been defeated by Cao Cao! Upon his return he will surely pay greater heed to your counsel!"
"You ... don't know many Chinese warlords, do you?"
They were well recieved. I had enormous fun. So I kept doing it.
Hence: The Mythic Read.
I'll pull out ancient classics as the whim takes me. I'll read them. I'll talk about them.
It shall be glorious!
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