I wasn't impressed. There were moments of brilliance, but overall, I was left wanting. So many of the stories bored me.

On the other hand, there were some great parts. It made me want to read the Odyssey again.

One of the best books I have ever read.

Basically a collection of apocrypha (big plus) that are highly reminiscent of Italo Calvino (big plus). The language is lovely and I find this so quotable. However, there are several especially in the beginning that read like great ideas which were never developed. If you gave me the sketch, I would read the story - but the story isn't there, only the sketch. In the end, I dig it. It's different and creative and I love the idea. Whatever negatives I have, they're worth it.

(re-read)

I first read this in December 2010 but never finished it. I thought I'd like it more—alternate takes on the Odyssey, featuring the most unreliable narrator ever, sounded like a great idea. But it never clicked for me, the part when Athena comes to Odysseus ('Epiphany') made me unreasonably annoyed, and while I liked some of the chapters (Polyphemus' one, especially), when I finally finished the book, almost 3 years later, my reaction is a big 'ehh'.

This was my second reading of The Lost Books of the Odyssey, which I think is an enormously underrated—it is as if Borges rewrote The Odyssey and did it 44 times. This time I listened to the audiobook which was read well but I would recommend the actual text (ideally on paper) because the footnotes and other apparatus is part f what creates the overall effect.
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2010 Review:
Imagine Robert Graves' "Homer's Daughter" reduced to 5 pages. Now imagine 43 variants along the same lines with 20 of them written Calvino (including one on returning to Troy to discover it has been turned into a cheap tourist destination), 20 of them written by Borges (including several in which Odysseus is a character is his own or someone else's story), two by Vidal (one in which cyclops was basically decent and after he was tricked by Odysseus who then flees, the cyclops fantasizes stories of his wandering for the next decade, not wanting to kill him in his fantasies but to string out the revenge), and a final one by Lewis Carroll (in which the Iliad and the Odyssey are both manuals for strange forms of chess that have morphed and been corrupted over time).

If you cannot imagine all of those, then you should just read the book -- about 35 of the 44 inversions/reimaginations/retellings of aspects of the Odyssey are amazing, both in the way they are told and the new worlds they open up. And the effect of the book as a whole is powerful, reinforcing certain themes over and over again (like Odysseus basic character) while varying others (like the cause and resolution of the Trojan War).

Thanks to the Popsugar Challenge I finally got around to reading this, after adding it to my Goodreads TBR in 2010; it fulfilled the book that has been on my TBR the longest. I am certainly glad I read it - I feel smarter because of it - and will easily say how clever and intellectually stimulating it was. I also love revisiting stories of mythology through a new lens. That said, it was a challenging read! It is extremely cerebral and I found I had to really concentrate while I was reading - not always an easy task in my world! I would also say that some of the vignettes or episodes were better and more clearly developed than others, which is perhaps just the nature of a work such as this.