What Are The Main Differences Between Books Of The Odyssey Versions?

'The Odyssey' is one of my favorites. The original hardcover version I own, published by Penguin Classics, has around 384 pages. It's a bit dense, but the translation by Robert Fagles makes it incredibly readable. The page count can vary depending on the publisher and the size of the text, but most hardcover editions hover between 350 and 400 pages. If you're looking for a specific edition, I'd recommend checking the ISBN or the publisher's website for exact details. The beauty of 'The Odyssey' is that even though it's ancient, it feels timeless, and the hardcover versions often include helpful notes and maps.

For the hard core fan, Rodney Merrill’s translation of the Odyssey is an English dactylic hexameter. What he’s tried to do is rephrase Homer in English to exactly the same rhythmic pattern as the original Greek. It’s an academic/poetic exercise that few people have attempted before, and, indeed, few people would wish to read for pleasure. It’s an amazingly challenging read at first but you soon get used to it. In total contrast to Rieu’s prose translation, the Rodney Merrill translation of ‘The Odyssey’ is written in English dactylic hexameter, attempting to re-create the unique rhythm and sound of the original Greek poems. This challenging, and at times, even strange read is essentially a specialist item – best left to translation geeks and classics students. However, it so effectively highlights the scope of translation of Homer’s works.

Reading both Iliad and Odyssey back to back is emotionally jarring, a contrast between a relentless, brutal war film tracking glory and suffering and a fantastical, sometimes mischievous, sometimes hopeful road trip around a chaotic, supernatural world and its man. As for length, there’s room for the emotional reset required between the end of Iliad’s funerals, culminating in Hector’s tragic funeral and our first experience of pity, and the beginning of Odyssey’s long journey home. As for the two epics being read together, the combined length is not just a matter of numbers of pages, it’s also a time buffer between two episodes of such vastly different moods and tones, a time to draw and dwell on the tragedy of the first of the two great epics before getting on to the second. Reading them quickly one after the other would be to do them a disservice, each demands a separate space, and the physical bulk of the two books on a shelf is just sufficient to enforce that needed space.

While The Iliad is the longer of the two poems and thus the real monster, The Odyssey is the sequel and is actually a more compact, focused work that follows the single journey of a hero to return home to his family. Assuming a dedicated reader, it is possible to read The Odyssey in two weeks or so. The short chapters move at a brisk pace with lots of action. Yes, there are occasional lulls in the narrative, but these are filled out with lots of interesting detail about the world of the poem as well as further development of individual characters. Penelope’s pause in weaving and her subsequent unwinding of the shroud is a suspenseful masterclass even in lack of action. No one should therefore be afraid of The Odyssey because of its reputation as the Greatest Epic. It is a foundation story of Adventure. Read it. It is short. Get a good translation and devour it within a couple of weeks – you will be surprised by how quickly the pages pass.

I’m trying to find a physical copy of Haunting Adeline to add to my bookshelf and the page count seems to vary greatly between “versions”. Most copies of the original self-published paperback from 2021 seem to be around 384 pages. However, the book has since been picked up by a wider distribution deal and re-printed under new ISBNs. The formatting, margins and font size have all been tweaked slightly in some of the “new” prints which has resulted in some copies having as few as 380 pages or as many as 388 pages. The core story remains the same in all of these “versions”. It’s worth noting, however, that there is a special edition hardcover of Haunting Adeline that was released in 2023, which includes the author’s handwritten notes, additional scenes, and artwork. This edition is significantly longer than the paperback and truly is a different version of the book. I found a copy of this hardcover at a local bookstore, and it had a slightly different weight to the cover than my friend’s copy, although it had the same number of pages (his was a paperback). The page numbers between common print runs of Adeline and Zade are generally the same. I went to a local store and found the copy to be the same number of pages as my friend’s copy (even though the book covers felt slightly different in weight) – details for publication, etc. included on back of book and also on front of store packaging and, of course, ISBN. (I understand that ISBN and the exact page number may or may not be of importance to you.)

This book handles the subject of suicide with the respect it deserves, as opposed to most works for young adults dealing with the subject in a sensationalized manner. Instead of describing the act itself in gory detail, Curtis focuses on the awful aftermath of such an event, and the terrible reactions of those who discover the body: shock, guilt, bureaucratic red tape, etc. The film gives little detail of Neil's actual death but conveys huge horror in the contrast between the triumphant pageant he has just gone through and the terrible shock of the next scene. The novel creates dread more slowly and builds to a terrible tragedy which is revealed rather like a dark tide coming in rather than a bolt of lightning. This is not to say that the film's approach is ‘better’, just that it creates a different reading of the material to that which the novel produces.

I just thought I’d ask if anyone else found these as sort of bored in high school. I know lots of people seem to like them and consider them some of the best novels of all time. I just never got it. Maybe I was just too young. Maybe my teacher didn’t do it justice. I’ve been thinking about reading them again as an adult, but the bad memories of the novels in high school are sort of putting me off. Are the audiobooks so much better than I’d hear in class? Maybe I’d actually like them.

Read them in parallel! Find a good companion guide or podcast that is book-by-book. So you read a book of The Iliad and then listen to some discussion on it, and then you read a book of The Odyssey, and then you read a book of The Iliad, and so on. It’s very interesting to compare and contrast the two epics as you read them. Of course, reading the two epics in parallel will take twice as long as reading them one after the other, but the additional insight you get into how Homer treats topics like heroism, family, and the gods in each of the two epics is well worth the additional time. And the additional time is not comparing two books of similar length but rather experiencing two epics of greatly different length intertwined in such a way to produce a longer and far more rewarding reading experience.

This comparison is to writer like the high jump to athlete. In setting the high bar of the epic tale of kingdoms and heroes, the Greek Homer set a standard that the Irish writer James Joyce aimed to exceed in his modernist masterpiece. By tackling the ‘epic of the ordinary man’ and shaping it into the modest narrative of a single day, the writer succeeded in reframing the epic form in a radically innovative manner. By faithfully mirroring the Odyssey’s structure and montage of leitmotifs, i.e. recurring motifs and situations in episodes, the writer unfolds a symbolic journey that follows a modern-day hero. By applying the symbolic journey of the hero to the humblest of subjects – and embedding it in the most mundane of materials – the writer of this masterpiece is making a point: the classic tools of the epic are meant to be used on the most everyday of subjects, in order to uncover a universe in every life of them, be it ever so ordinary.

My old classroom copy of Book 10 opens with the survivors of the Laestrygonians in a state of melancholy and they set sail for Circe’s island. Odysseus arrives at the island and sends Eurylochus and twenty-two men to investigate the smoke. They are invited in, seated and served a drunken draught by Circe. She taps each of them on the head and they transform into pigs and are driven off to pens. Eurylochus returns to Odysseus and the hero sets off for Circe’s house alone. On the way he meets Hermes disguised as a young man and is given a moly to eat and told what to do. He goes to Circe’s house, drinks a potion and resists her wand. He throws himself at her feet and she recognizes him as the Odysseus that the prophecies have been talking about. She agrees to help him and after he makes her promise to help him he is restored to his men and they become lovers for a year and then guests. The book ends with a description of their preparations to set off for Hades.