Brad McKenna's Reviews > The Hero With a Thousand Faces

This book joins Atlas Shrugged as the only books I've ever had to put down.

I love mythology. The myths are not only grand examples of storytelling, but they also shed light on their civilizations' way of thinking. From the doomed-to-die Norse Gods to the plagiarist Romans simply renaming Greek Gods, the mythologies across the globe are fascinating on many levels. So a book that traces the similarities between all mythological cannons sounds like a stroke of genius. Too bad Freud's psychoanalytical theories proved to be the thread that wove the tapestry of the story together.

The first chapter begins by presenting dreams as the ultimate source of truth. Ok, fine, I can deal the fact that there's far more going on in dreams than I care to admit. I've never liked dreams, I groan when a character has a dream in a book I'm reading. I shake my head when a movie includes a psychedelic dream sequence. I'm sure the fact that I hardly ever remember my dreams plays a role in my animosity. But that's not the point. The point is, I picked up a book on mythologies and found it was about dreams. So now I've put it down.