The most recommended books about the Odyssey

I admit that I picked up this book mainly because I’m researching the musical scene of revolutionary-era Boston. I figured this new book would offer some state-of-the-art context I could learn from. But even apart from my pragmatic motive, it was a stimulating read.

Wheatley is such an unlikely figure you would almost have to make her up. Kidnapped at around age seven from West Africa, she was shipped to America and purchased by a genteel Boston couple. They quickly recognized her genius.

Within a few years, she was reading the Bible, of course, but also English poets Pope and Milton, not to mention Virgil, Ovid, Terence, and Homer. All the while working as an enslaved servant. 

Wheatley’s first poem was published when she was thirteen. She received national acclaim three years later for an elegy she wrote for the British evangelist George Whitefield. At eighteen, Wheatley sailed to London… show more.

Journeys are most often linear – Here to There – or circular – "There and Back Again." The Odyssey is actually a return leg in the most traumatic and perennial circular journey: going to war, and then, getting back. "Wily" (in modern terms, read, "sneaky," "trickster")  Odysseus left Troy a famous warrior, but takes seven years to get home. The fabulous episodes of that journey, the Cyclops, the Sirens, Scylla and Charybdis, Circe, and Calypso, the wreck in Phaeacia that leaves him bereft even of clothes, have grounded the Western imagination. But the concluding little things – the recognition scenes, the dog that dies, and the nurse who doesn't – push that epic past into a close, human Now.

Talking about Penelope brings me to the Penelopiad. This book could have been more accurately called the Trial of Odysseus.

Odysseus here feels like an ancient Andrew Tate. Picture the ancient soap opera: Penelope, the ever dutiful, saintly wife, is left holding the fort while Odysseus sails off on a ten-year vacation fighting the Trojan War, followed by another decade of epic escapades and sexscapades.

And meanwhile Penelope is using her twelve maids to let themselves be used and abused by her suitors to buy time till Odysseus returns. Well, the suitors are killed, naturally. But the maids…Honor killing is still an epidemic in parts of India, and to see it from the POVs of the maids, who have so far been overlooked as extras in a play, felt like redemption.

The best thing in the book that worked for me was the way it is structured as a conversation… show more.

The book may not have much swearing in it, but it has one of the best titles ever. It sounds like an insult drawn from an obscure meme. Dahl is a master of the short story, and here you get four of them, including his fabulous character Oswald Hendryks Cornelius.

If you like your sleuthing seaside—with mermaids!—I recommend These Wicked Waters. Our main character, Annie, reluctantly spends her summer working at her mother’s new island resort, but things get super mysterious when the staff starts disappearing and she learns about the island’s curse. Cursed islands give me immediate grabby hands. With nods to The Odyssey, the sirens in this story are not your friendly, musical-loving mermaids. And the hurricane at the end will have you on the edge of your seat. 

For fantasy, adventure, and humanity, I find no book like Homer’s Odyssey. Some prefer the Iliad, but for me, the Odyssey has greater depth, resonance, and experience of life. Most of us know about Odysseus’ wonderful adventures, but the whole second half of the epic is about his attempts to get home and, once home, to reintegrate himself into his family and society, from which he has been absent for twenty years.

I love the way the epic relates stories but also makes you think about what stories mean, why people tell them, and how to tell false ones from true. There are many fine translations of the Odyssey, including Emily Wilson’s recent one; my favorite, however, though a bit dated, remains that of Lattimore.

All adventures begin with The Odyssey.

Before there was Don Quixote, Huckleberry Finn, or Bilbo Baggins, there was brave Odysseus. It was Homer who first taught us what it means to desperately desire “to make it there and back again.” For me, The Odyssey struck a personal cord. As a warrior who once answered his nation’s call, it often wasn’t the battles in far distant lands, but the journey home, that was most difficult. Home, that beautiful, powerful word, holds great magic for Odysseus, and for me, too. Many ideas can send a hero on an adventure, but only love of home can bring him back again. These are the greatest adventures of all, and why The Odyssey is foundational for my own novel.

While this started a little slowly, I was soon completely invested in the life of its unlikely hero. Fletcher Sinclair is a meme personified—he lives in his parent’s basement, plays video games all day, and consumes far too much of a particular sports drink. Then, a strange virus hits the world, eliminating all the men—except for Fletcher.

That the human race’s potential extinction should rest upon Fletcher’s shoulders both horrified and fascinated me. It was filled with twists and turns, which even I, as an author, didn’t see coming. No spoilers and no hyperbole, but Erik Dargitz invented the most brilliant post-apocalyptic cult I’ve ever read! Fans of Handmaiden’s Tale and Animal Farm will love this book.

This is an obvious pick, I know. Still, it’s on record as the greatest adventure, the highest bar of duty and courage—and ultimately love.

Homer’s epic detailing Odysseus’ journey home from the Trojan War is fraught with peril and obstacles that would have made a lesser human give up and call it a day. 

Destiny called him away, but it was love that brought him home from war. At each crossroad Odysseus was offered an alternative, he chose to return to his wife, his son, and his land. He could have been made immortal.

He was offered riches and greater glory, and all the dude wanted was to kiss his wife and sleep in his own bed at the end of the day. Is that so much to ask?

The reason The Odyssey is on my list is to reflect the scale of destiny, and the answering and equal call… show more.

Tightwads on the Loose is another honest and well-written account of a couple’s ups and downs, in this case while cruising in the Pacific for seven years; only one year less than my husband and I traveled on our sailboat.

This enticing story also has a lot of parallels with my life: the couple’s age, their sense of adventure, their frugal means, their full-time commitment to their boat for many years, their need to make money, and some of the geographical and cultural experiences. Recognizing experiences and personality traits while reading this book made me enjoy it better.

Luckily, Wendy and her partner did not have to endure numerous dramatic life-altering events. Tightwads on the Loose is an easy-to-read sailing memoir that I highly recommend.