The good: I love this translation. Robert Fagels is amazing and really wonderfully revives an ancient text, making it vibrant on the page. 
 The bad: I kind of hate Odysseus and Telemachus, making it nearly impossible to take satisfaction in most of the events of the tale. I don't remember hating them this much when I first read it, but then I was twelve and had different ideas about the world and how it should work. I mean, honestly. 
 My notes on the final four books went like this (I'm using spoilers even though this has been out for a really long time. Just in case): 
 (view spoiler)[Eumaeus kills Ctesippus and then shouts taunts over his dead body. Awesome. 
 Odysseus makes the women who have "shamed" the household clear away the bodies of their lovers and clean up the hall before taking them outside to murder them. 
 Classy, Odysseus. 
 Telemachus makes it even more classy by refusing them a "clean death" and hanging them instead. This is a charming family. 
 Penelope takes for fucking ever to believe that Odysseus is actually home. Sigh. 
 Penelope suggests moving the bed, and this suggestion makes Odysseus furious because apparently it calls into question his manhood or something. He built the bed out of an olive tree still rooted to the ground, and it takes the supposedly-clever man far too long to realize that this is Penelope's test for him, when he probably should have realized that all along instead of flying off the handle. 
 When the suitors get to the Underworld, the ghosts are all gossiping about the drama happening up top. 
 Odysseus weeps when he sees his father for the first time. 
 For some reason Odysseus still decides it's better to test his father and "reproach him with words that cut him to the core" instead of offering comfort to the man who has been broken by his son's absence. I really do not like Odysseus. 
 Antinous's father rouses the people to seek revenge on Odysseus - and, really, who can blame him? 
 "He lost the shops and he lost the men and back he comes again to kill the best of our Cephallenian princes." That about sums it up. 
 Athena holds Odysseus back, stops the fight, and hands down the pacts of peace for both sides... 
 ...which seems particularly unsatisfying for the families of all those who were killed. 
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 Which is not to knock the text and imply that nothing can be learned from it. But Odysseus and Telemachus are the worst.