I don't know about this book. It was good in some ways, but I didn't feel any desire to keep reading it.

When I started reading this book, I thought: What is happening here? There were many short stories about Odysseus and the war of Troy. It got even stranger when he came home for the second time. Now I understand that these stories are other versions of parts of the Odyssey, and there are at least 5 different ways in which Odysseus comes home. All the stories are original and most are a possibility for what really happened. My appreciation for the book grew the more I read. I should really read the Iliad and the Odyssey once.

did not finish- maybe a case of right reader/ wrong time but i think it might have been wrong reader/ wrong time. I couldn't quite get a sense of urgency from the book. sure you can imagine the odyssey 44 different ways- but why? what is the urgency in doing so? that was never explained to me

Cannot recommend this highly enough. Inventive, clever, absolutely genius.

Loved this book- would I have as much if I wasn't obsessed with the Odyssey (yes, I've read it at least 10 times and anything else related to it that I can get my hands on)? I'm not sure. But Mason's writing is so beautifully imaginative and dream-like. The concept, that 44 additional books of the Odyssey were uncovered- some fragmented- many written at various times & places- allows telling from fresh perspectives, new beginnings and endings, and gorgeous meditations on the "truth" (or the perfectness of their being no truth) of the original.

Probably the most clever book I've read in an awfully long time. My only wish is that I didn't know it's factuality until after I read it.

The book is made up of several short stories, all of which are billed as bits and parts of the Odyssey that didn't make the codification. Or, as I put it to a friend; they're all the heretic bits. So you see multiple variations of Odysseus' return to Ithaca, multiple imaginations of Achilles, etc. There's also some neat stories: The Odyssey as a chess game, the whole story from the point of view of Polyphemus, and the like.

It's a collection of short stories, but a wickedly clever one. I vaguely remembered hearing of it through BLDGBlog, and Manaugh's interview with Zachary Mason is certainly one worth reading: http://bldgblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/computational-mythologies-interview.html. Mason mentions remaking the Odyssey as a story of the Caucasus. My interest is, of course, piqued.

It's hardly a great work of literature, but it is a wickedly fascinating book. So go and read it.

Great book. Like a master jazz musician riffing on a theme. Didn't try to replace or modernize the Odyssey, but filled in gaps and told alternative versions. I felt like I was sitting in front of fire on a little Greek greek island while a master storyteller wove his tales.

On rereading, this is every bit as amazing as it was the first time - a meditation on fate, loss, and death. The form is fanfic, at some level, but poetic.