Seeing how we are reading, not reciting, these texts, I prefer to sacrifice meter for brevity and clarity. Have you any particular recommendations? I can read Greek and do speak a bit of the modern language (just from Duolingo) if that would be a consideration.
Heh—my favorite prose Odyssey's kinda a bad one, from many perspectives, as it's an even less a literal rendering than most: TE Lawrence's 1932 translation (publishing as TE Shaw—you might find it under either name). It's not so far off it'd be at all fair to call it a retelling, but it's also less-close to the original than most translations. It's also guilty of some of the deliberate archaism in its language that I just accused Butler of, but is more to-my-taste regardless—I make no claim to consistency :-)
I find it clean, unassuming, and to read at a nice modern-feeling (but not too modern-feeling) clip without resorting to abridgment.