Latin update

[Hugh Lawson]

Still working on Lucretius, De Rerum Naturam (Concerning the Nature of
Things), a long poem of about 250-350 pp.

Here is my method.

Try to read a sentence. Test reading against translation.

If unable to make out the sentence, read translation, and try again.
Study grammar as needed.

For now, I don't try to read Lucretius as poetry. I'm not good enough
to get that anyway. I seek the literal meaning.

ACW relevance:

One of my grammar books is by Basil Lanneau Gildersleeve, who was a
CSA officer during the war, staff type I believe. After the war he
went back to classics professing. Dover reprint.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basil_Lanneau_Gildersleeve

I'm not sure what I'll read after DRN. I long for something easier, so
I'm thinking maybe some of Cicero's philosophical works, or perhaps
Cornelius Nepos on famous commanders.

Learning to speak enough of a language to get by travelling is by no
means the same as learning to read literary authors in that
language. Even reading formula fiction is much easier than reading
literary authors. For example, Simenon, the author of the Commissaire
Maigret police stories, is way easier than Proust or Flaubert. To
compare it to baseball pitching, literary authors put a lot more on the
ball, throw much faster, and give you many more looks. Throughout the
centuries literary authors have written for patient, determined
readers. One should keep that in mind when reading, say, _The Sound and
the Fury_, or Henry James's fiction. ;-)