Ugh.....Silas Mariner is right up there with Beowolf and the other boring boring epics.
Beowulf boring ??? Such disrespect for the academic work of JRR Tolkien ! He as an Anglo-Saxon scholar rescued Beowulf from the dustbin of history and got it declared the foundation stone of all English literature. That’s why you read it in HS. Without Beowulf there would be no Lord of the Rings ! The names, the imagery, the heroes, villains and story line are deeply indebted to Tolkien’s Anglo-Saxon scholarship and to the Beowulf story.