Others: Overwhelmingly positive Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns driven time and again off course, once he had plundered the hallowed heights of Troy. So begins Robert Fagles's magnificent translation of the Odyssey. If The Iliad is the world's greatest war epic, The Odyssey is literature's grandest evocation of the everyman's journey through life. During his ten-year voyage home to Ithaca after the Trojan War, Odysseus relies on his wit and wiles for survival in his encounters with divine and natural forces. In the myths and legends retold here, Fagles has captured the energy and poetry of Homer's original in a bold, contemporary idiom. It's a version to read aloud, to savor, and to treasure for its sheer lyrical mastery. Renowned classicist Bernard Knox's superb Introduction and textual commentary provide new insights and background information for the general reader and scholar alike, intensifying the strength of Fagles's translation.
Genres: fantasy, classics, poetry
Lists: …
Homer
2023 · 848 pages · 3 reviews
Others: Overwhelmingly positiveThe greatest literary landmark of antiquity masterfully rendered by the most celebrated translator of our time. When Emily Wilson’s translation of The Odyssey appeared in 2017―revealing the ancient poem in a contemporary idiom that was “fresh, unpretentious and lean” (Madeline Miller, Washington Post)―critics lauded it as “a revelation” (Susan Chira, New York Times) and “a cultural landmark” (Charlotte Higgins, Guardian) that would forever change how Homer is read in English. Now Wilson has returned with an equally revelatory translation of Homer’s other great epic―the most revered war poem of all time. The Iliad roars with the clamor of arms, the bellowing boasts of victors, the fury and grief of loss, and the anguished cries of dying men. It sings, too, of the sublime magnitude of the world―the fierce beauty of nature and the gods’ grand schemes beyond the ken of mortals. In Wilson’s hands, this thrilling, magical, and often horrifying tale now gallops at a pace befitting its legendary battle scenes, in crisp but resonant language that evokes the poem’s deep pathos and reveals palpably real, even “complicated,” characters―both human and divine. The culmination of a decade of intense engagement with antiquity’s most surpassingly beautiful and emotionally complex poetry, Wilson’s Iliad now gives us a complete Homer for our generation.
What made the match, strongest first
Daniel Defoe
1686 · 276 pages · 1 review
Others: PositiveDuring one of his several adventurous voyages in the 1600's, an Englishman becomes the sole survivor of a shipwreck and lives for nearly thirty years on a deserted island.
What made the match, strongest first
Gawain Poet
2017 · 68 pages · 1 review
Others: PositiveThe Green Knight, a mysteriously powerful creature, tests the honor and courage of King Arthur's youngest knight.
What made the match, strongest first
Richard Adams
1972 · 478 pages · 1 review
Others: PositiveWatership Down is the compelling tale of a group of wild rabbits struggling to hold onto their place in the world—soon to be a BBC and Netflix animated miniseries starring James McAvoy, Nicholas Hoult, and Oscar and Grammy award-winning Sir Ben Kingsley. A phenomenal worldwide bestseller for more than forty years, Richard Adams's Watership Down is a timeless classic and one of the most beloved novels of all time. Set in England's Downs, a once idyllic rural landscape, this stirring tale of adventure, courage and survival follows a band of very special creatures on their flight from the intrusion of man and the certain destruction of their home. Led by a stouthearted pair of brothers, they journey forth from their native Sandleford Warren through the harrowing trials posed by predators and adversaries, to a mysterious promised land and a more perfect society.
What made the match, strongest first
Charlotte Brontë
1847 · 489 pages · 37 reviews
Others: Overwhelmingly positiveThe novel is set somewhere in the north of England. Jane's childhood at Gateshead Hall, where she is emotionally and physically abused by her aunt and cousins; her education at Lowood School, where she acquires friends and role models but also suffers privations and oppression; her time as the governess of Thornfield Hall, where she falls in love with her Byronic employer, Edward Rochester; her time with the Rivers family, during which her earnest but cold clergyman cousin, St John Rivers, proposes to her. Will she or will she not marry him?
What made the match, strongest first
Emily Brontë
1846 · 312 pages · 32 reviews
Others: Mostly positiveWuthering Heights is an 1847 novel by Emily Brontë, initially published under the pseudonym Ellis Bell. It concerns two families of the landed gentry living on the West Yorkshire moors, the Earnshaws and the Lintons, and their turbulent relationships with Earnshaw's adopted son, Heathcliff. The novel was influenced by Romanticism and Gothic fiction.
What made the match, strongest first
Loved itSo it's written with the intention that you don't have to have read the Odyssey to read this book or to dip in and out of this book, although of course I would highly encourage you to because it's a phenomenal piece of literature.
Loved itI am also a big fan of Homer's The Odyssey because Greek mythology is something I grew up with. I love Odysseus as a character, the journey he goes on, and I am fascinated by everything and everyone he encounters along the way.
Loved itby my favorite Homer after Homer Simpson. Just phenomenal. We are going on 'Odyssey' to the top.
