The Odyssey was once all Greek to me. I struggled to keep up with the characters, the mass of heroes and villains, and the swarms of sons and daughters. The film adaptation pushed me to try again, so I spoke to classicists and did research to render the inaccessible accessible.

“Avoid the Odyssey” was the first piece of advice from Antony Makrinos. I sought context, visited the British Museum, watched Simon Armitage’s *Gods and Monsters*, and found the best recommendation was the podcast *Instant Classics* presented by Mary Beard and Charlotte Higgins. Their enthusiasm was contagious and helped me understand that the epic is about Odysseus’s journey back to Ithaca, but it is also a coming‑of‑age story, a travelogue, and a family saga.

Choosing a translation is vital. Emily Wilson’s version gained me the most, with its iambic pentameter and detailed footnotes. Rebecca Laemmle advised mapping characters on paper, a cheat sheet that kept every strand in view. When the repetitiveness felt off‑putting, I turned to audiobooks, with Ian Mc Kellen reading the Robert Fagles translation.

After years of struggling, I finished the Odyssey. It felt surprising, modern, and fast‑paced. The epic remains one of the oldest, and I may continue with Margaret Atwood’s *The Penelopiad* or Madeline Miller’s *Circe*.