The Odyssey in Never too Late to Read Classics

Feb 14, 2020 Antonomasia rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: 2019, epic-poems-and-novels-in-verse, 2020, poetry, mythology, classical-antiquity, scribd, ancient-world-texts, audio, greece

It's the Odyssey read by Ian McKellen, of course it's awesome.

Listening, I would often imagine it dramatised, the old bearded man sitting in a hall of an evening telling his story to feasters by the glow of a fire, the scene sometimes fading into others showing the action of the poem.

It felt so much more alive and enjoyable just listening to it than I found the Iliad, also in Fagles' translation, when I read it several years ago - or even compared with some of the times when I read the text of t ...more

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Feb 14, 2014 Cleo rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: greek-history, classics, greek-literature, poetry, 2014-pre-printing-press-challenge, 2014-52-books-in-52-weeks, 2014-mount-tbr-challenge, 2014-around-the-world-challenge, 2014-read-dead-writers

This was my fourth read and it just gets better every time. A concept of xenia is mandatory. So happy to once again step into the world of the ancient Greeks!

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Nov 17, 2024 Shirley (stampartiste) rated it really liked it

Shelves: read-date-unknown, read-classics, published-1899-and-earlier, classics-500-plus-pages, to-read-in-2023, to-read-in-2024, challenge-bingo-2024

I am so glad that I have finally taken the time to read Homer’s The Odyssey. I thoroughly enjoyed Robert Flagles’ English translation. He kept the same epic poem style and made it very readable. One of my favorite expressions, which Homer repeated again and again was describing sunrise as “Dawn with her rose-red fingers”. That left an indelible impression in my mind of what the sky looks like when the Sun first rises in the morning.

Having heard disjointedly all of my life about Ulysses, the Cycl ...more

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Nov 14, 2014 Nancy rated it really liked it · review of another edition

I had vague memories of reading The Odyssey for an English class. The various adventures came back to me as I read. I must not have read this very closely the first time around. I probably shimmed a lot of it way back when. I listened to the book this time, and I got into the story more. I especially enjoyed the last chapters of the book. There are so many different Gods mentioned in The Odyssey. It's hard to keep track of all of them. I kept wondering how all the suitors would be defeated, whic ...more

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