Week 13: Reading Feedback

I don't know how it's possible, but somehow I have never noticed this extra credit assignment before. I wish I would have been posting my reading feedback throughout the semester, because I've really enjoyed a lot of these assignments!

This week I finished reading William Buck's retelling of the Mahabharata. In all honesty, the only reason I chose this book was because I had already purchased it at the beginning of the semester. Before school started, I went online to try to figure out which books I would need for this class. I noticed that all of the books were technically "optional", but I went ahead and bought one version of the Ramayana and one version of the Mahabharata on Amazon. Once I started the course, I realized that there were also many online options and books to check out at the library for the reading assignments. However, since the books had already been purchased, I went ahead and used them for two of my reading assignments.

Buck's retelling was very interesting, and was different in a lot of ways from other interpretations I read/watched. I spent a lot of my time in my Reading Diaries comparing and contrasting his versions to the other version I had experienced. Buck's retelling seemed more poetic to me, and included vivid imagery and lots of detail. Buck's version also included a lengthier ending with a long description of the Pandava brothers' lives after the war. The book in general was lengthy, so I was thankful that it could be split up to cover the span of four weeks. Another interesting detail about this book was the illustrations that were included. All in all, I enjoyed this assignment!

The Pandavas' nephew Abhimanyu battles the Kauravas and their allies,

Author: Unknown, Date: 1800-1900, Source: Wikimedia