Can You Read The Odyssey Before July 17?

Two weeks before a film opens is enough time to read the entire poem it comes from. That surprises people, so it's worth saying plainly: the Odyssey is not a semester. It's a story — fast, strange, emotionally direct — and it is far shorter than its reputation.

Tell me, O Muse, of that ingenious hero who travelled far and wide after he had sacked the famous town of Troy.

— Homer, Odyssey, Book 1 (Butler translation)

That is the whole poem in a sentence: a clever man, a long way from home, and everything that stands between. Here is the honest math on reading it before July 17 — and a fallback if the math doesn't fit your life.

The honest math

The Odyssey — traditionally dated to the 8th century BCE — is 24 books totalling roughly 12,000 lines. In a modern translation, that comes to about 10 to 14 hours of reading for most adults: the length of a substantial novel, not a course of study. An average book of the poem takes 25 to 40 minutes. The famous strangeness of Homer is in the world, not the sentences.

Two things will slow you down more than the text itself:

The opening isn't about Odysseus. The poem begins in Ithaca with Telemachus, the son, and stays with him for four books. First-time readers stall here, waiting for the hero. Don't — the son's search for his missing father is the poem's frame, and it's also the stretch you can most safely compress (see the triage below).

Translation changes your speed. A contemporary line-for-line translation like Emily Wilson's reads quickly and cleanly; verse translations like Fagles's (1996) and Fitzgerald's (1961) are lusher and slower; Butler's public-domain prose version — the one quoted on this site — reads like a Victorian novel and costs nothing. Our guide to choosing a translation covers the trade-offs.

The seven-day plan — 90 minutes to two hours a day

One film-length sitting per day, for seven days:

Day	Books	What happens
1	1–3	A house under siege: suitors fill Odysseus' hall; Telemachus sets out for news of his father
2	4–6	Sparta and Helen; Calypso is ordered to release Odysseus; shipwreck, and a stranger washes ashore
3	7–9	The Phaeacian court; Odysseus names himself and begins his tale — the Lotus-eaters, the Cyclops
4	10–12	Circe, the land of the dead, the Sirens, Scylla and Charybdis, the cattle of the Sun
5	13–16	Ithaca at last, in disguise; the swineherd's hut; father and son reunited
6	17–20	A beggar in his own palace; the old dog; Penelope; the scar; the night before
7	21–24	The contest of the bow; the reckoning; the marriage bed; an old man in an orchard

The fourteen-day version — 45 minutes to an hour a day

The same sequence at half speed: one or two books a sitting. Started in the first days of July, it finishes right at release — trim the skimmable stretches and you land early. Both plans ship as printable schedules in the Home Pack ($19).

Short on time? Read these books first

If the full plan won't fit your two weeks, here is the honest triage. Thirteen books carry the spine of the poem — about six to seven hours:

• Book 1 — the situation: a besieged house, a fatherless son, a war ten years done
• Books 5–6 — Calypso's island and an offer of immortality refused; the shipwrecked stranger and Nausicaa
• Books 9–12 — the famous stretch: the Cyclops, Circe, the land of the dead, the Sirens. When people say "the Odyssey," this is usually what they mean
• Books 16–17 — the reunion with Telemachus; the return to the palace; the old dog Argos
• Book 19 — the night interview with Penelope, and the scar that betrays Odysseus to his old nurse
• Books 21–23 — the bow, the reckoning, and Penelope's final test

Skim without guilt: Books 2–4 (Telemachus' travels — a summary will do), 7–8 (feasting and games among the Phaeacians), and 13–15, 18, and 20 (the slow tightening before the ending).

One exception to the skim list. If the father-and-son thread is what draws you to this story, keep twenty minutes for the second half of Book 24, where Odysseus finds his own father, Laertes, digging alone in an orchard — an old man grieving a son he believes dead. The poem has been holding that meeting back for twenty-three books. It does not end with the slaughter in the hall; it ends with three generations of one family standing in the same field.

Start tonight

You don't need ideal conditions. Read Book 1 tonight — half an hour — and then pick your pace: seven days or fourteen. If neither fits, read the short version of the whole story, keep the journey map at hand, and go to the theater knowing the shape of the story and what its homecoming costs.