Barry Cunningham

I read this book after seeing the moving during my freshman or sophomore year in college.
I found the characters even more two dimensional in the book than in the movie.
I learned that I really dislike Ayn Rand. I found none of her characters engaging or well characterized. They are simply symbols she is pushing around on the page to promote her political ideals.

I know I read this Lattimore translation my freshman year at MIT.
It really is beautiful, if a bit gory at times. The huge number of names, oblique name references, and mythological and geographical references do make reading difficult, but I was in no hurry this time and was using the notes in Willock's excellent Companion, so I thoroughly enjoyed it.
I don't remember and can't help wondering now if I got as much out of it as a freshman as I do now. I have a lot more background knowledge of Greek mythology, history, and geography now than I did then. But, even as a freshman, it was not my first exposure to Homer: I remember buying and reading the Classics Illustrated version of The Iliad in elementary school, as well as reading the Rouse translations of The Iliad and The Odyssey when I was in high school. I must have liked it my freshman year though because I remember reading a lot of the followup Greek dramas outside of class because I liked them so much.
Anyway, I decided to pick up The Iliad again because I recently read Madeleine Miller's The Song of Achilles, which I loved for her lyricism, and Pat Barker's The Silence of the Girls, which I really liked for her storytelling. I wanted to see how much they were retconing Homer. The answer is, quite a bit, but they can stand on their own. Nowhere near as bad as the movie Troy.
Anyway, I can recommend the Lattimore translation as one of the most readable and lyrical. It's most enjoyable if you take your time and lookup or figure out all of the references.
I'm sure there are other fine translations out there and opinions and preferences may vary. John Keats wrote an excellent favorable review of Chapman's translation some time ago.

I've been currently reading this for nearly 50 years.
Stevens's poetry is frequently enigmatic. Hence, I keep coming back to poems over and over again, reading new meanings into it.
I still have not read it all, and when I have, it will still probably be on my Currently Reading list.

A little lame actually.
The first thing I note is that Einstein had discredited and abandoned the idea of the luminiferous ether several years before this book was written. Even though not all scientists had gotten that memo by 1913, that Doyle premises his story on its existence indicates that science is not going to be a strong point in the story, though it is consistent with Doyle's “spiritualist” world view at the time which does bleed through into the story.
The opening chapter, where everyone is behaving a little peculiarly, is a particularly heavy handed foreshadowing of the crisis to come.
The last chapter retcons the global catastrophe, reminiscent of more recent films that feature similar annoying mulligans (I'm thinking of the Avengers and Superman), one can see coming from the structure of the narration: our reporter protagonist must have an audience in the end.

Currently reading the Essays portion of this edition of her Complete Works. It's about 1,206 pages and I'm currently about 244 pages along.