Having just finished reading the Iliad, I have had the convenient coincidence of starting the Odyssey with my Literature class in perfect timing. It's an incredible story that I'm enjoying more than any book I've read in a while. It's the beautiful tale of a man lost at sea, wandering , trying to get home while being waylaid for years upon years by storms, the gods, and Kyklops (Cyclops). It has all the aspects of an epic; extremely long, far off lands, a quest, etc.. and I highly recommend it to anyone. The Iliad is good as well and acts as an excellent primer for the Odyssey, complete with extremely detailed battle scenes, "and his head was cleaved in two and his brains spilled out like the innards of a freshly killed lamb", but also acts as a historical background to better understand the Odyssey. If this was what Homer had in mind, or whether it was just how history panned out, I don't know, but it works out nicely. Please read these books. They were written in the 4th century B.C., but they read with more developed and lyrically perfect tone than any modern work I've read. The translation by Robert Fitzgerald is the one I recommend; he seems to understand the humor as well as the beauty, incorporating less line-for-line translation and more actual meaning from the original Greek. You will not want to leave Odysseus, his son, or Athena once you start and you will thank yourself for diving into such a journey of literary bliss.
