Slogging through miserable books

If the topic was important and the book was a classic, then I would force myself to read it with charity. I figure that it’s well-acclaimed for a reason, and that I’m not going to let sloth and torpor get in the way of furnishing my mind with beauty. Oftentimes, I end up “learning to like” what was previously a chore, and I grow a little bit wiser as a result. Other times, I’m still lost despite my best efforts, but at least I get payed-cred rights for reading the book and an opportunity to understand my own tastes.

Hopefully, this isn’t a common experience and that reading is generally enjoyable for you. If it is not, then you have a serious problem.

pseud-cred* not paid cred

I am a simple man and I have a simple ruleset:
1) If Yea Forums tells me a book is great, I read it
2) If the book Yea Forums told me to read is giving me a headache, I stop reading it because I'm not ready for it.
3) I come back to the book once I'm ready and I doesn't give me headaches anymore.
4) I don't read other books. (especially the reddit-core like Hamilton's Mythology*)

*Read through Pseudo-Apollodorus's 'Bibliotheca' (difficult but short) or read a legitimate history book and get mythology from authors themselves (Homer, the tragedians, early historians, and the philosophers)

>who are you trying to impress OP?
Yea Forums. i've forced myself to read the greeks even though i hated every fucking sentence of it.

>>who are you trying to impress OP?
>Yea Forums. i've forced myself to read the greeks even though i hated every fucking sentence of it.
You really went through that to impress a board? Specifically WHICH of the Greeks and which translation? Did you try it as an audible book (if you have an amazon account you get 2 free ones.
How can you be forced to "slog through" the Greeks? You realize it's on fairly recent that you can even read such things unless you knew Greek, right? Do you know the poem "On First Looking into Chapman's Homer? He was SO excited and ecstatic to hve a viable tranlation, he wrote a goddam poem about it! And you are bitching that yu need to "slog through...eish:

On First Looking into Chapman's Homer
By John Keats
Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne;
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He star'd at the Pacific—and all his men
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise—
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

{compare: CURRENT generations vs Keats' generation== not only is is translated for you, you can pick from number of different ones, on a SCREEN you can look up words and decide if you agree ir not really with the meaning, and STILL bitching))

What exactly is your problem with the book (except the prose)? Is the information given in the text wrong? I'm at part 4 of it and don't understand your problem with it, it's written fairly okay. It's not supposed to be a retelling of the myths, but a summary of them. And it does it's job for that well enough. It's not the author's fault if you don't like the myths enough to ignore the okayish prose.

NO PAIN NO GAIN

Two years ago I fell for the >start with the greeks meme. My advice: If a book is boring to you, then you aren't going to retain any knowledge from it. Therefore it's not worth reading as a precursor to other books. You're just turning pages and wasting time. Charts aren't a checklist where you get badge at the end indicating you're an expert.

If you still want to learn about Ancient Greece start with Iliad or Odyssey and only use Mythology as a reference when you want to dive deeper into a topic.

Attached: sadler.jpg (900x900, 105K)

You won't have much Illiad who all these characters are, if you don't learn even the fundamentals of greek mythology. Which takes away a lot fron experience (imo). In a side not, while it's significantly harder, if you put your mind to it you can retain the Information in a book even if you find it boring.

*much of a idea
*On a side note