“I try to fight this lamentable tendency,” he says, but now reads more nonfiction than fiction. “Odyssey” is the fourth in his series on Greek mythology.

Greek mythology ’s Hecabe (Hecuba) and Polyxena by Merry-Joseph Blondel. Credit: Merry-Joseph Blondel (France, Paris, 1781-1853), Wikimedia Commons, Public Domain Ancient Greek mythology is one of the ...