How frustrating that Wildside Press didn't include more with their complete text of Pope's translation. Not only is there no mention of Fenton and Broome, the two men who actually translated 12 of the 24 books--not only are none of Broome's notes included, but there is no annotation whatever, no bibliography of recommended further reading, no criticism, not even a decent history of the translation or of Pope himself, aside from a single reductive paragraph by Theodore Alois Buckley (who edited the text and wrote the rather flowery introduction--in fact there isn't even a date for the introduction--it's Victorian but Wildside doesn't make that clear). Even the back cover is misleading, attributing a Samuel Johnson quote to the Odyssey, when it referred explicitly to the Iliad. Finally, there is no line-numbering, so this edition would be difficult to teach or reference in a paper. Not a scholarly edition.

I used the JACT Reading Greek course as a Freshman and have recommended it to many people wanting to learn Greek on their own. It focuses more on reading fluency than on syntax-worship (boring Smyth stuff like "dative of throwing by means of rocks") but doesn't neglect formal grammar, has a nice teach-yourself book to accompany it, and has lots of fun readings from Aristophanes.

In other words, unlike most teachers, I *liked* the Reading Greek course a lot. But the point of the course is to introduce you to basic vocabulary and especially the grammatical structure of the language and its peculiarities. Once you've done that by going through the first-year course, what you need is lots of practice with actual texts. That's what the JACT follow-up books like this offer, with "highlights" of different authors and running vocabulary, and if you find that the most helpful, more power too you.

Me personally though, I recommend using the Loeb parallel-text editions, whose texts are good and whose translations have tended over the last many years towards fairly strict literalness. The advantage there is that, even though you'll still want to look many of the words up to see what their central or most basic meaning is (independent of present context), you have a translation there specially designed to guide the language-learner. You won't sit there thinking, "did that say what I think it said?", or start joking with or pontificating to your fellows based on a wrong reading.

The classic second-year text for Greek is Xenophon's Anabasis, which is very repetitious but in a good way. Less conventional but just as appealing are the mythographer Apollodorus, the historian Diodorus Siculus (book 17 is on Alexander the Great), and of course Plato. The first book of Herodotus too, though not Attic, would be an excellent second-year text.

And if you're particularly eager to get into Homer (the best of all) and then the tragedians, I recommend Pharr's excellent Homeric Greek, which is meant as a first-year book but better for a second- or third-year one. He takes the whole first book of the Iliad, a paragraph or so at a time, with notes and full vocabulary. (You might even use it with the very literal Loeb translation by A. T. Murray.) Good luck!

This is the worst book i have ever read!!!!!! Never read it!!!! It is soooooo boring! Are English teacher made us read it! Don't read it!

The topic explored by the author is the practice of forgery in late Antiquity to substantiate a religious cult's legitimacy. As a revised version of the author's doctoral thesis and his first book, it has page after page of unnecessary excerpts whose sole purpose seems to be to let the reader know that the author really has passed his language proficiency exams. These are then followed an apology trying to explain why they really were worth quoting. It is a very boring read. Besides these stylistic annoyances, the entire structure of the book takes the form of a survey of various instances of pseudepigrapha... which are then dutifully stretched back to the initial lackluster thesis. There are no fantastic insights in this book. Unless you are doing a specialization in this field, I would not recommend buying this book. There are many better books in the study of religion to be savored. If you must have it for a specialization, I would recommend finding it at a university library... though it may have a limited availability since it is only a revamped standard doctoral thesis that is not widely applicable in many areas of study.

I am an avid fan of murder mystery books on tape so I looked forward eagerly to listening to my unabridged copy of "Natural Enemy".

From the beginning, the story was sluggish....so much so that the only reason I kept listening to it was that I'd paid for it and I didn't want to have wasted my money! Unfortunately, I am now finished with the book and find that I have wasted my time AND my money.

Some of the characters in the book are interesting and the "idea" of the story has some merit but it is way too drawn out and convoluted for my taste. Since the main character of the book is fascinated with entymology and the like, there are tedious descriptions of spiders, webs, flowers, trees in the nearby meadow, ad nauseum, that are related to situations in the story but are too contrived to be interesting.

I could have stopped reading at any moment and would not have cared what happened to any of the book's characters.
To be honest, I stopped just short of the end of the book. I couldn't take any more.

I don't usually leave negative reviews but this book has really earned it.

This has nothing to do with our favorite Springfield family! There's no nuclear power plant, no Moe's Tavern, no Chief Wiggum. I doubt the characters' hue even approaches the "yellowish" spectrum. For shame, John Malcolm, for shame. Worst book ever!

With my circular saw giving me trouble, I picked up this book with high hopes. The book has one only page for troubleshooting tools is each of three categories (small, medium and large power tools), which is not sufficient. The pages on doing the actual repair were so vague that I immediately had to go elsewhere for assistance.

As near as I tell, this book is not helpful to people who do not understand troubleshooting and repairing power tools. To use this book you do need to already have some grounding in the subject. However, if you already know about such things, then why do you need this book?