pleased
lycantras, rao, and rhiannonstone: y'all rock. :) [Side note as to why this is geeky: the Mahabharata is the second or third longest poem in world literature (depending on who you ask; the U of Chicago says second, Wikipedia says third), and it's perhaps the epic of South Asia, long with the Ramayana. It's long, and dense, and lovely. The short version we read in class this past semester is 216 pages, not counting notes; the long version, with all the side stories, is eventually going to be ten volumes; the first, which I got today, is 431 pages + notes. It's a story about Life: right action, making the best choices you can under less than ideal circumstances, the role of kings and how to rule well (and what happens when you don't), how to make war, how to love, how to obey one's parents. It's history and myth and the two mixed up together [actually, one of the things we spent a very long time in class this semester doing was defining myth.] I'm not being terribly coherent, but it's lovely.]