Does what it says, the tales were interesting, the drawings great.

Finished this audio on Friday during a drive. It was so fun. I didn't realize that it was a lot of King Arthur stories when I began it, but was delighted to find it out. I had originally intended 2024 to be a year of Arthur - and I have read Pyle's, some Faerie Queene, and surprisingly the Mabinogian. Maybe it still can be :)

Seriously, delighted to make acquaintance with the stories. Might be a good one to listen and read together as the names are unfamiliar and the pronunciations, too. The stories were generally interesting and fun. The repetitions within them, the way people spoke and trusted the words of others spoke to a culture lost: between oral tradition of the tales, the "man I love best in the world," and the way someone would promise and immediately be taken at their word were distinct to this 21st century listener.

Definitely will revisit; (maybe not the introductory essay although it helped with orienting on the first listen). I read this for the Literary Life 2024 Book of Centuries reading challenge.

Used mainly as a reference in a course. Would have liked footnotes instead of end notes but the information was helpful. I've found more modern translations to be more easily understood as some of the arcane word patterns here made reading comprehension challenging in some parts.

Omg I finished! I thought when I got it I would just read stories from it between other books i was reading, but that didn't work out like that. I was also somewhat intimidated by the language and format of these very old stories, but once I got started in earnest I fell into the rhythm of them.

I got this as the beginning of a long list of books related to Arthurian legend, the Mabinogion having some of the earliest Welsh stories related to King Arthur. I wish I had worked harder to find an annotated edition because I had to look stuff up a lot. A lot of the names are early Welsh versions of familiar Arthurian names, and a lot of times it was difficult to understand the overall point of a story that is so long and seemingly meandering. Many are repetitive and there are many that use the power of the number three, I noticed.

The beginning stories are all early Welsh stories unrelated to king Arthur but still interesting. I was particularly interested in learning about Rhiannon. The last four or so stories are King Arthur adjacent, as he isn't really the point of any of them, he just is there and it's his knights that make up the story. Peredur seemed the nicest to women and sought out vengeance because of the ill treatment of two dwarves. Violence is a big trend in these stories, with most knights being considered strong and important by their ability to murder people.

Anyway, I'm proud of myself for finally getting through the Mabinogion and I'm looking forward to the rest of my Arthurian legend list!

It was really interesting reading Arthurian legend in its Welsh orgins. I do with the boom was formatted differently. I can't stand it when lines of dialouge from different characters are in the same paragraph.

A good translation of one of the most important extant European mythological texts.