Question 4

"The best of a book is not the thought which it contains, but the thought which it suggests; just as the charm of music dwells not in the tones, but in the echoes of our hearts."-Oliver Wendell Holmes

This quote seems to suggest that what makes a book great is not what you are truly reading, but what you can imagine that is connected to that book. In any book, and especially in trilogies, in my opinion, there are spaces of time that are skipped over. Why not imagine what happened to the character then? You can make any experience as interesting as you think it needs to be. Also, don't forget that you can insert extra details into even the events fully described by the author.

This applies to Bulfinch's Mythology quite well. If there can be so many legends from just Roman and Greek mythology to fill that book, imagine how many more must exist. There must be many that were left out of the book, or shortened hugely, and then there are even more myths from other civilizations (though the term may be arguable).