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: Great Translation
Review: Firstly, some of the reviews have given poor ratings to this epic poem because they did not like the story of the Odyssey and not because it was a bad translation. In fact it is the best I've ever read. Pope's translation of course is more poetic but it is not at all accessible. Fagles does a wonderful job in updating the language to modern English so that we can understand the story. Also at the back of the book are notes and a short glossary so that if you are not familiar with any of the references to Gods for example you can look it up and learn more about Greek mythology. Finally Fagles has a great introduction (with maps) that gives you background into the world of Homer.
Rating: 
Summary: HOPE
Review: That you never give up and he fight with people to be with his girlfriend........
Rating: 
Summary: An excellent book.
Review: As noted on earlier reviews these two, the first "The Iliad", and now "The Odyssey" have become the translations read for pure enjoyment. No longer does one `know' of the classics but never read them, now we read them too. Thankfully, Robert Fagles has produced a translation worthy of the original sense of Homer's great poem. It captures well the suffering and tragedy Odysseus went through in his journey full of trials and tribulations from the great ogre, the Cyclops, to the beautiful Calypso and finally one of his greatest tests, the suitors seeking his wife's approval after 20 years absence from his homeland. As usual the introduction by Bernard Knox (NB my earlier mistake in the review on The Iliad) is highly informative and shows real depth of understanding of Homeric poetry, an invaluable aid in the full comprehension of the poem. In addition the extra maps of the Homeric word as well as a glossary of terms and a section detailing some of the characters in more depth provide an excellent background which may be missing in a non-classical education. Certainly this is the transaltion to use when teaching of classic poetry in schools since the child is captivated by the flow of the story and the fast pace which keeps one glued to the book, although not as pacy as The Iliad it is a different sort of story. Unlike the Iliad which is replete with battles and war, The Odyssey is the story of a journey and is of a different tune. I once tried to read an earlier translation of The Odyssey a few years ago and found it stuffy and staid, this is no longer true of Fagles work, were it only the case of other great classics. I felt throughout that Fagles kept to the aura of the original even when substituting more modern expressions for the older ones eg "holding nothing back" is obviously a modern phrase but it captures what the poem is saying and that is what is important ie capturing the poem as a whole. This has been ably achieved. An excellent book.
Rating:
Summary: No omnipotent Gods
Review: Many students look back in disgust on the compulsory literature they had to swallow in school, mostly (partly) in the original language.
For Homer's Odyssey (and the Iliad) this is an error.
The epic contains everything a book needs to make it an everlasting bestseller: sex sorceresses, lascivous temptresses, one-eyed ogres, innocent young maidens, flattering suitors and a model wife.
The story evolves with such eternal characters as the virtuous Penelope, the ingenious Odysseus, the innocent Nausikaa, Calypso's sex-appeaL, the man-eating Cyclops, Circe's sexual spells or the brash temptations of Scylla and Charybdis.
As in the Iliad, the only 'ancient' ingredient is the presence of the Gods, who intervene every time a disaster is going to happen.
But there is a big difference between the Iliad and the Odyssey. While in the Iliad the Gods are omnipotent, in the Odyssey 'they cannot prevent that those who are mortal die' and 'human catastrophies are man-made, not the faults of the Gods'.
Compared with the Iliad, the Odyssey is more a story-telling than a poetic epic with few Homeric comparisons or lenghty enumerations. It is also a more optimistic human tale.
A must read.
Rating:
Summary: A Romantic Adventure Story from Ancient Greece
Review: The Odyssey is a famous epic poem centering around the adventures of Odysseus, hero of the Trojan War. As the story begins there is a crisis in the royal palace at Ithaca. With Odysseus having been gone for nearly twenty years, his wife, Penelope, is besieged with suitors. They've moved into the palace and for three years have consumed much of the resources of the young prince, Telemachus. Unknown to all is that Odysseus is alive but being held prisoner by Calypso on the island of Ogygia. We do not hear what happened to Odysseus until Book 5 when he's released from Ogygia with the help of Athena, only to lose his craft from Poseidon's storm. Barely surviving the storm, he washed up on the island of Phaeacia. There we learn of his incredible adventure since leaving Troy. Battling monsters, giants, and angry gods and goddesses, Odysseus used courage, cunning, and guile to get out of one jam after another, but he was unable to save his crew. When he finally made it to Ithaca he would be faced with the biggest challenge of all-saving his kingdom. Such was Homer's tale which must have both thrilled and terrorized the young Greeks when they first heard it some 2500 years ago. While today's youth may be a bit desensitized to Odysseus' terrors we can be moved by his courage and devotion to his family. Penelope is also a heroine in this story. Her devotion to her lost husband and awareness that her son's inheritance must be protected tore her apart; and Telemachus, only a baby when his father left, had to grow up on his own and be prepared to give his life for the kingdom. I think you'll enjoy the story.
Rating:
Summary: I dont remember nothing
Review: I liked this book because I think that this book has a lot of action and is contains some adventure too. And I recommend this because it make you think a lot about how wonderful life is.
Rating:
Summary: THE ODYSSEY IS FANTASY OR REALITY
Review: The odyssey is a story that talks about the gods greeks and the life of Odysseus. Odysseus is sent to the war but he did want to go to war. He pretended he was crazy to stay with his family, but they threaten his son and he decided to go. The Odyssey teacher courage, love, and teacher how to deal with all the trouble you can think of.
Rating:
Summary: the ancient greek epic story
Review: i think that this book is a very interesting one because it has a lot of fiction and this book will give you a very interesting idea of what the ancient greeks where one time or how they look like. for example some of the temples it still exists in ruins but they exist so if you read this wonderful book it wopuld tell you how they look like.
Rating:
Summary: The Great Odyssey
Review: The Odyssey's book is interesting and beautiful book.And my reason is that this book is a real story, and when I star to think about it,I think is not imposible, but is sad,because Odyssey was separate of his wife,when Calypso capture him for a long time.He suffered by years and years besides his figth with the Cyclopes.I think that, this story is besides beautiful,is sad and somethimes wierd.
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