Book Review – The Odyssey by Homer

In continuing my year of the Greek classics, I had thought I had read The Odyssey in high school before. Little did I know that the public school tricked me into only reading the “exciting” parts of the story and missed out that this was more than an adventure story. Having read this with the help of Romans Road Press the Ascend podcast series to help fill in what I know I would have missed on my own, I’m grateful for living in a day where I have the resources to help in redeeming my education and could see myself reading this again in a small group of tutoring setting.

As with the Iliad, there is nothing here that I’m going to add that is insightful or new or even based. I do find myself like Odysseus a little less than I thought I was going to but that, again, comes with finding out the lie of the public school version. There is a lot to take in here and ideas of piety, father/son relationship, what it means to be great, what it takes to be a good man, and various ideas of Greek culture abound. If you’re reading it solo, seek out a study guide, podcast, and/or small group to get more out of it. There is a reason this is one of the early great books of the Western canon and it was a challenge but also a great journey to undertake.