An Odyssey - Daniel Mendelsohn

This book is clever in that it works at telling many same stories at the same time.  Primarily it is about Daniel Mendelsohn a Professor who teaches his young students about Homers Classic - The Odyssey.  One year, his 81 year old father Jay, a Mathematician asks to sit in on the class and learn along with the young students, most of whom are a quarter of his age.  We start at the beginning with them, and it was interesting to learn about the journey of Odysseus in traveling to get back to his wife Penelope and his trials along the way.

We also learn about the strained relationship that the author has had in the past with his father, and how he is still learning to discover things about his father that he didn't know.  At the end of their study together father and son travel to Athens to take a cruise following in Odysseus's footsteps through Greece, the Greek Islands and along the modern Mediterranean. 

A year after the course ends his father becomes ill, and this leads us into another story of the father and son, leading onto the final journey.  Such a nice book about it never being too late for us to learn, to educate ourselves and about the relationships between our family and friends. 4/5