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The Odyssey
Homer
Emily Wilson
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A New York Times Notable Book of 2018.
“Wilson’s language is fresh, unpretentious and lean…It is rare to find a translation that is at once so effortlessly easy to read and so rigorously considered.” —Madeline Miller, author of Circe
Composed at the rosy-fingered dawn of world literature almost three millennia ago, The Odyssey is a poem about violence and the aftermath of war; about wealth, poverty and power; about marriage and family; about travelers, hospitality, and the yearning for home.
This fresh, authoritative translation captures the beauty of this ancient poem as well as the drama of its narrative. Its characters are unforgettable, none more so than the “complicated” hero himself, a man of many disguises, many tricks, and many moods, who emerges in this version as a more fully rounded human being than ever before.
Written in iambic pentameter verse and a vivid, contemporary idiom, Emily Wilson’s Odyssey sings with a voice that echoes Homer’s music; matching the number of lines in the Greek original, the poem sails along at Homer’s swift, smooth pace.
A fascinating, informative introduction explores the Bronze Age milieu that produced the epic, the poem’s major themes, the controversies about its origins, and the unparalleled scope of its impact and influence.
Maps drawn especially for this volume, a pronunciation glossary, and extensive notes and summaries of each book make this is an Odyssey that will be treasured by a new generation of readers.
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Posts about this title from The Inky Phoenix
The Inky Phoenix\ \ Kathryn Budig\ \ • Jul 18
In celebration of The Odyssey hitting theaters ...
here’s a recommended reading list to keep you going!
11 books
7
The Inky Phoenix\ \ Kathryn Budig\ \ • Sep 17 2023
Unroll your mat and venture into the Greek underworld to face the three-headed hound of Hades: Cerberus! Access our Moving Mythology library in our Discord group!
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Posts about this book from across Bindery
Kist Reads\ \ Kist\ \ • Jul 27
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[SICKOOOOOOOS! Let me know the books you plan on reading this week in the comments and I'll share with you everything I got planned. Let's boogie!\ \ READING\ \ REVIEW\ \ DEFIANCE: A MEMOIR OF AWAKENING, REBELLION, AND SURVIVAL IN SYRIA by LOUBNA MRIE (nonfiction memoir)\ \ Progress: Finished\ \ I feel like I've spent a month with this one with the stops and starts, but again, that was my fault starting too many books at the same time. The final half of this is A LOT, I mean there's some super heartbreaking stuff in here. There's so many angles to this one and I credit Mrie for exploring all of them without losing any of the energy it carried throughout. I kept a running log of notes so hopefully my full review will be coherent but one fact I'll highlight here is that apparently they put corn on pizza in Syria? What do y'all think of that?\ \ STREETS OF LAREDO by LARRY MCMURTRY [Lonesome Dove - Pub Order #2/Chronological Order #4] (western fiction)\ \ Progress: 427/538\ \ Another bite taken out of this puppy and while most of the qualms I noted last week still stand, I am finding the story taking a path that is more gripping than it was in the first half. It's still not going to touch the genius of Lonesome Dove but that's a crazy bar to hit.\ \ 1177 B.C.: THE YEAR CIVILIZATION COLLAPSED by ERIC H. CLINE (nonfiction history)\ \ Progress: 51/179\ \ It lost out in the History Sickos vote but it's one I was gonna read anyway. I read this a long time ago but after having watched The Odyssey, I was pulled back to it for reasons that will become clear with this snippet from Barry Strauss' introduction:\ \ \ \ PREVIEW/AUGUST BOOK CLUB PICKS\ \ It'll be all about the book clubs for my next reads, and the winners are:\ \ FICTION SICKOS BOOK CLUB: The Odyssey by Homer(any translation)\ \ HISTORY SICKOS BOOK CLUB: Black Flag, Blue Waters: The Epic History of America's Most Notorious Pirates by Eric Jay Dolin\ \ EVERYTHING ELSE\ \
- Publishing News: No formal announcement yet for our second acquisition but I can tell you that the other was revealed in our Discord like a Scooby Doo villain last week!\ \
- Game of the Week: I'm fully addicted to Assassin's Creed Odyssey for the fourth time (playing as Kassandra, of course). I'm up to level 17 and am starting to hunt down these doggone cultists.\ \
- Show of the Week: No idea tbh. Maybe Frieren S2?!\ \
- Movie of the Week: We gotta figure out a Jurassic Park watch-along in the Discord I think.\ \
- Content News: New YouTube is up! In this one I'm ranking the books the Fiction Sickos have read this year.\ \
- I'll be on vacation next week so there won't be an update. It's the week before the wee emperor starts school again so I wanted to spend more quality time with him. I do have plenty of stuff to film (or clip out from YT) so you may not even notice other than the missing update.\ \ \ Upgrade for $5 or login](https://kistreadsbooks.binderybooks.com/item/NiJ1z6UNGppT9AKoem1J/)
Weekly Checkpoint + August Book Club Winners!
5 books
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Kist Reads\ \ Kist\ \ • Jul 21
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[It's time to vote on what the Fiction & History Sickos Book Clubs will be reading in August! I'll have the polls up later this evening in our Discord and those will run for 3 days. Bribery and bullying is expected and encouraged. Below are the four books for each club that will be put up in the vote with a back cover blurb for each. \ \ A quick reminder that to participate in the voting/discussions, you'll need a membership at the Sicko or above tier, that unlocks those channels in our Discord.\ \ Here they the options:\ \ FICTION SICKOS BOOK CLUB OPTIONS \ \ THE ODYSSEY by HOMER (any translation)\ \ We all know what this is and why it's here, right? Cool. Moving on.\ \ THE MOUNTAINS SING by NGUYỄN PHAN QUẾ MAI\ \
"With the epic sweep of Min Jin Lee’s Pachinko or Yaa Gyasi’s Homegoing and the lyrical beauty of Vaddey Ratner’s In the Shadow of the Banyan, The Mountains Sing tells an enveloping, multigenerational tale of the Trần family, set against the backdrop of the Việt Nam War. Trần Diệu Lan, who was born in 1920, was forced to flee her family farm with her six children during the Land Reform as the Communist government rose in the North. Years later in Hà Nội, her young granddaughter, Hương, comes of age as her parents and uncles head off down the Hồ Chí Minh Trail to fight in a conflict that tore apart not just her beloved country, but also her family."\ \ JAWS by PETER BENCHLEY\ \ "A great white shark terrorizes the beautiful summer getaway of Amity Island, and a motley group of men take to the water to do battle with the beast. A heart-pounding novel of suspense and a brilliant meditation on the nature of humanity, Jaws is one of the most iconic thrillers ever written."\ \ BUTCHER'S CROSSING by JOHN WILLIAMS\ \ "It is the 1870s, and Will Andrews, fired up by Emerson to seek “an original relation to nature,” drops out of Harvard and heads west. He washes up in Butcher’s Crossing, a small Kansas town on the outskirts of nowhere. Butcher’s Crossing is full of restless men looking for ways to make money and ways to waste it. Before long Andrews strikes up a friendship with one of them, a man who regales Andrews with tales of immense herds of buffalo, ready for the taking, hidden away in a beautiful valley deep in the Colorado Rockies. He convinces Andrews to join in an expedition to track the animals down. The journey out is grueling, but at the end is a place of paradisal richness. Once there, however, the three men abandon themselves to an orgy of slaughter, so caught up in killing buffalo that they lose all sense of time. Winter soon overtakes them: they are snowed in. Next spring, half-insane with cabin fever, cold, and hunger, they stagger back to Butcher’s Crossing to find a world as irremediably changed as they have been."\ \ HISTORY SICKOS BOOK CLUB OPTIONS \ \ 1177 BC: THE YEAR CIVILIZATION COLLAPSED by ERIC H. CLINE\ \ "In 1177 B.C., marauding groups known only as the "Sea Peoples" invaded Egypt. The pharaoh's army and navy managed to defeat them, but the victory so weakened Egypt that it soon slid into decline, as did most of the surrounding civilizations. After centuries of brilliance, the civilized world of the Bronze Age came to an abrupt and cataclysmic end. Kingdoms fell like dominoes over the course of just a few decades. No more Minoans or Mycenaeans. No more Trojans, Hittites, or Babylonians... A compelling combination of narrative and the latest scholarship, 1177 B.C. sheds new light on the complex ties that gave rise to, and ultimately destroyed, the flourishing civilizations of the Late Bronze Age―and that set the stage for the emergence of classical Greece."\ \ THE SIXTH EXTINCTION: AN UNNATURAL HISTORY by ELIZABETH KOLBERT\ \ "Over the last half a billion years, there have been five mass extinctions, when the diversity of life on earth suddenly and dramatically contracted. Scientists around the world are currently monitoring the Sixth Extinction, predicted to be the most devastating extinction event since the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs. This time around, the cataclysm is us... provides a moving account of the disappearances occurring all around us and traces the evolution of extinction as concept, from its first articulation by Georges Cuvier in revolutionary Paris up through the present day. In the ten years since the book was originally published, evidence of the Sixth Extinction has continued to mount, making its message more urgent than ever..."\ \ HOW TO HIDE AN EMPIRE: A HISTORY OF THE GREATER UNITED STATES by DANIEL IMMERWAHR\ \ "A pathbreaking history of the United States’ overseas possessions and the true meaning of its empire... tells the fascinating story of the United States outside the United States. In crackling, fast-paced prose, he reveals forgotten episodes that cast American history in a new light... Rich with absorbing vignettes, full of surprises, and driven by an original conception of what empire and globalization mean today, How to Hide an Empire is a major and fully enjoyable work of history."\ \ BLACK FLAGS, BLUE WATERS: THE EPIC HISTORY OF AMERICA'S MOST NOTORIOUS PIRATES by ERIC JAY DOLIN\ \ "Set against the backdrop of the Age of Exploration, Black Flags, Blue Waters reveals the surprising history of American piracy’s “Golden Age” - spanning the late 1600s through the early 1700s - when lawless pirates plied the coastal waters of North America and beyond... depicts the star pirates of this period, among them the towering Blackbeard, the ill-fated Captain Kidd, and sadistic Edward Low, who delighted in torturing his prey. Upending popular misconceptions and cartoonish stereotypes..."](https://kistreadsbooks.binderybooks.com/item/0F4fCT8iZc0fJTFoH93O/)
Fiction/History Sickos August Book Options! (polls go live tonight!)
8 books
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The Inky Phoenix\ \ Kathryn Budig\ \ • Jul 18
In celebration of The Odyssey hitting theaters ...
here’s a recommended reading list to keep you going!
11 books
7
Books Right Now\ \ Rashi Dembi\ \ • May 30
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Some quick reviews of my recent reads!
I've had a record number of 5 star reads this year!
6 books
2
Kist Reads\ \ Kist\ \ • Aug 22 2025
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(VIDEO) Best History Books 📚 to Learn Ancient Greek History (in Order!)
Want to learn about Greek history? Here's a stack of history books that will take you chronologically through the early days of Greece, the Persian/Peloponnesian Wars, the rise of Thebes and Macedonia, and the Wars of the Diadochi!
7 books
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Children of Diaspora\ \ Rae the Reviewer\ \ • Jul 19 2025
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yapping about my 2025 reads | Midyear Freakout Tag
Since recording this, I've finished 3 more books (if that's any indication of how long this took to edit).
Check me out on:
Bindery: https://children-of-diaspora.binderybooks.com/ Bookshop Affiliate: https://bookshop.org/shop/raethereviewer Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/raethereviewer/ Tik Tok: https://www.tiktok.com/@raethereviewer Storygraph: https://app.thestorygraph.com/profile/raethereviewer Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/20898931-rae-the-reviewer My Website: https://raethereviewer.com/ and services (sensitivity reading, freelance writing, copywriting, case studies) https://raethereviewer.com/services/
Tags: books, 2025 reads, physical tbr, reader, bookstagram, booktube, booktok, influencer, diverse books, young adult, adult books, middle grade, fiction, literary fiction, science fiction, poetry, black reader, book recommendations, reading recommendations, book nerd
00:00 Intro 00:16 Best read of 2025 (so far) 01:36 Favorite sequel 02:11 2025 release that you're excited to read 03:05 Most anticipated release for the second half of 2025 04:37 Biggest disappointment 05:34 Biggest surprise 06:49 New favorite author 08:31 Fave new (book) crush 09:21 Fave new character 09:51 Book that made you cry 11:54 Prettiest books you've bought this year 12:32 Book that made you happy 14:15 TBR for the rest of the year 17:38 Outro
25 books
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Children of Diaspora\ \ Rae the Reviewer\ \ • Jul 16 2025
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\ \ Upgrade for $5 or login](https://children-of-diaspora.binderybooks.com/item/4B1iymDxPyw7P40cWA5T/)
*Early Access* yapping about my 2025 reads | Midyear Freakout Tag
Since recording this, I've finished 3 more books (if that's any indication of how long this took to edit).
Check me out on:
21 books
1
Children of Diaspora\ \ Rae the Reviewer\ \ • Jun 13 2025
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I've bought a few new books and I've been sent even more so here's my latest book haul (as far as I can remember)
KATABASIS: spoiler-free review & reading guide (new favorite r.f. kuang book!!) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vsQUGwBpYI&t=5s
Check me out on:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/raethereviewer/ Tik Tok: https://www.tiktok.com/@raethereviewer Storygraph: https://app.thestorygraph.com/profile/raethereviewer Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/20898931-rae-the-reviewer My Website: https://raethereviewer.com/ and services (sensitivity reading, freelance writing, copywriting, case studies) https://raethereviewer.com/services/ Bookshop Affiliate: https://bookshop.org/shop/raethereviewer
Tags: book haul, to be read, physical tbr, books, reader, bookstagram, booktube, booktok, influencer, diverse books, poetry, fiction, graphic novel, young adult, middle grade, adult books, black reader, book recommendations, reading recommendations, book nerd
14 books
3
The Inky Phoenix\ \ Kathryn Budig\ \ • Sep 17 2023
\ \ Upgrade for $25 or login](https://inkyphoenix.binderybooks.com/item/msYi32uvYF6cbn7yRxqZ/)
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