Rating: 
Summary: A fantastic translation for the modern reader
Review: Robert Fagles has done an outstanding job of brining the Homeric verse to life in English. His translation is extremely readable and makes a great introduction to ancient texts. I found the Odyssey quite a page turner. It beats the 19th century translation I fought my way through in high school. This is a must read for everyone.
Rating:
Summary: Epic achievement
Review: Since you ask me, you word-hungry Amazonians,
How I came solate in life to the end of a tale
That schoolchildren read in comicbooks,
A tale that is one of the sturdy legs
Of the table on which our culture rests
Since you ask, I will tell you, and gladly, too.My journey started, though you grin in disbelief,
In ninth-grade Latin class, where "Ulysses"
Duped the cyclops by calling himself "Nemo."
Then a deep sleep fell over me,
And I knew no more Homer, not in Greek or Latin
Or English or even the strange tongue
Of the network miniseries, while Sun
Drove his blazing chariot round Earth
One hundred hundred times. In this sleep I wandered the world of letters,
Homerless but unable to avoid the homeric:
Achilles' heel, the Sirens' song,
Calypso, the Trojan Horse, and swinemaking Circe--
Crouched like Scylla, aswirl like Charybdis,
Threatening cultural death to epic ignorance. At last I found my literary Tiresias,
The New York Times Book Review.
I shook from this seer the name Fagles,
And so guided, I made my way home at last,
Through a translation that rings of a heroic time,
A time when men were stronger and grander than we,
When women were more beautiful,
And when, granted, sexual equality wanted
A few millennia's labor;
But even so, a rendering as modern
As anything DeLillo, new god of the underworld,
Or the infinitely jesting Wallace
Can lay before us. The best, in fine, of both worlds, an epic worthy
Of the blind bard and of his heroes, his heroines,
And the deathless denizens of Olympus.
Rating:
Summary: Albeit poetic, Odysseus is still a man.
Review: After hearing the new version, my husband commented: Just likea man: Odysseus is away 16 years, never calls home, has affairs withwomen he's not married to, and the first thing he wants to know when he gets home is "was my wife faithful to me while I was away?"
Rating: 
Summary: Good but dull
Review: I feel like I heard this story many times before. Not cutting edge. Lots of interesting characters though. Unreallistic platitudes as they relate to the human condition. Homer has a lot of growing up to do.
Rating:
Summary: The Odyssey beats soap operas by a mile.
Review: Anyone who is intrigued by stories of action and adventure will love The Odyssey. Robert Fagles translation keeps the poetry of the original Greek while rendering the story of Odysseus wandering journey home from the Trojan war and his son Telemachus' desperate search for his father into modern English. The wholesale slaughter that reunited father and son do to the suitors who have attempted to steal Odysseus' wife in his absence is far more exciting than any video or made for TV movie. The language is beautiful and brutal at the same time. The plot is vivid and exciting. The moral judgement rendered by Homer on men acting in selfish exploitation of others is the reward for taking the journey home with Odysseus
Rating:
Summary: I was surprised at how much I really liked it!
Review: I was surprised at how much I really enjoed this book. Thiswas the first time I had ever read Homer's Odyssey and I have to admitthat I was hesitant to buy it because I wasn't sure if I would be able to follow the story. But once I started reading it it I found it be very readable. I would reccomend it to anyone!
Rating:
Summary: Odyssey never fails to excite
Review: Once again The Odyssey comes to life, in an athletic and supple new translation. While one might feel that a new translation could hardly change the book much, one should compare Fagles' translation to, say, William Bryant's. It is cleaner and fleeter of foot. One could also compare it to Alexander Pope's translation. Pope's meter and rhyming quatrains make it a slightly absurd and comic story.
But it is the story that truly carries through in each version. Odysseus' long trials at the hands of Poseidon are a cautionary tale of the dangers of hubris, as well as a testament to the power of perseverance. Odysseus' refusal to surrender, despite temptations and obstacles, is a powerful evocation of the power home and family have over a person. Even after twenty years apart, he yearns for Persephone, Ithaca, and his son. In this age of temporary marriages, constant relocations, and diminishing rootedness in community, such a tale comes as a shock, a glimpse of another way of living. Yet the shock awakens rather than pains, energizes rather than drains.
Also recommended: Omeros by Derek Walcott, The Iliad (trans. by Fagles), The Aeneid.
Rating:
Summary: Vivid new translation makes a classic story come alive.
Review: Thanks to this translation of the Odyssey, I'm able to experience the story in an entirely new way. I particularly like the fresh manner in which Prof. Fagles uses active verbs, instead of passive constructions (such as previous translations that I read in college). The text is also more vivid: I find it to be evocative of Old English verse construction, but with a very clean modernist inflection. Reads with an immediacy that makes the narrative jump off the page, and heightens the lyricism of the poetry at the same time
Rating:
Summary: Do not read the novel. Read the Story. Read the notes.
Review: It must be said that for obvious reasons it can not be done. The translation of the massive POEM into English simply looses whatever feel it has when rendered into the english language. Hence, all versions of The Odyssey are very hard to read. Hard in that the conversion is really whatever the translators did this time to it. There are so many versions of this text and none of them work, but some are better than others for obvious reasons.
To be honest maybe direct translation of some of the better parts should be leared but you are much better off just KNOWING THE ODYSSEY which is X 100 more important than READING THE ODYSSEY.
This book is best left not read simply because it is in ENGLISH. You would do better to hear someone tell you story if they know it well.
Rating:
Summary: I hope they make a sequel to TROY!!!
Review: This is an awesome book, and I think it would be an even better movie. Troy I think, is the best movie I have ever seen. My English Teacher made us watch Troy, and read the Illyiad, and I loved the movie and the book. Although it was not accurate I already knew the story so I dont mind seeing some new twists and turns in the story. But this is also a good book and I would like to see what it would look like as a movie.
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