Thoroughly recommended - "Deluxe" Penguin eBook of "The Odyssey"

[vivaldirules]

Harry's comments and the awards this translation has received motivate me to read this. Alas, it's not available in a format for my Reader. Come on, Sony, catch up! Penguin is pushing all of their products to ebooks for their customers. So why aren't you actively working with such publishers to get them in a format for your customers?

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by kaas

damn, latin- I was as happy as a clam once I could stop learning that language
Five years of Latin in school was enough of a torture for me!

I think it's one of those things where if it's forced upon you in school, you hate it, whereas if you're learning it out of interest, as an adult, it's a lot more interesting. I wasn't taught Latin in school - I started learning it, purely for interests sake, myself about 5 years ago, and now (even though I say so myself) I'm pretty fluent in it and able to read more or less any Latin author, which is very satisfying. Virgil's "Aeneid" is, I think, my very favourite Latin text - it's just such a wonderful poem.

[montsnmags]

Hey, that Fictionwise mob are canny buggers. I just bought the Chambers Dictionary I've been intending to buy for some time. It cost me $50, but with $38.50 worth of "Micropay Rebates". Now, you see, I've been wanting to buy Harrap's Shorter French-English Dictionary too, and, well, then, this "Deluxe" Penguin ebook of The Odyssey comes along, and, gees, will you look at that the "Micropay Rebates" come to almost exactly the total cost of those last two, effectively giving them to me for free with the $50 Chambers.

So now I've also now got an account with them, and a small amount of "Micropay Rebates" that is going to sit there burning a virtual hole in my pocket. I wonder what else I might want....

Sly mongrels, that mob.

Cheers,
Marc

[nevsf]

Originally Posted by vivaldirules

Harry's comments and the awards this translation has received motivate me to read this. Alas, it's not available in a format for my Reader. Come on, Sony, catch up! Penguin is pushing all of their products to ebooks for their customers. So why aren't you actively working with such publishers to get them in a format for your customers?

To vivaldirules... it's available directly from Penguin in Adobe Reader format, which should be compatible with the updated Sony 505. I haven't bought it yet, but I've bought other Reader books and they work fine on the 505.

[haridasi]

I've added the book to my wishlist. Which seems to just get bigger and bigger.. After discovering the ebook device I have rediscovered books.

[lmarie]

Originally Posted by haridasi

...After discovering the ebook device I have rediscovered books.

My feelings exactly! I am reading more now than I have since I was a teenager/young adult.

Lelah

[haridasi]

Originally Posted by lmarie

My feelings exactly! I am reading more now than I have since I was a teenager/young adult.

Lelah

Almost the same here. I read a lot when I was younger (I checked out two plastic bags from the library once, and finished reading them all before I had to return them).

And I must say, Mobileread makes it easy to find things to read about. And there's a lot of free offers around.

But I still buy a lot of books.

[Surfergirl]

Originally Posted by HarryT

I think it's one of those things where if it's forced upon you in school, you hate it, whereas if you're learning it out of interest, as an adult, it's a lot more interesting. I wasn't taught Latin in school - I started learning it, purely for interests sake, myself about 5 years ago, and now (even though I say so myself) I'm pretty fluent in it and able to read more or less any Latin author, which is very satisfying. Virgil's "Aeneid" is, I think, my very favourite Latin text - it's just such a wonderful poem.

Hi Harry

One of the things I most regret in life was not taking the opportunity to learn Latin when I was in school. How did you start learning it - was it a course, or book, or what?

Irene

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Surfergirl

Hi Harry

One of the things I most regret in life was not taking the opportunity to learn Latin when I was in school. How did you start learning it - was it a course, or book, or what?

Irene

I learned initially by doing a course with the Open University - that's a very well-known national "distance learning" university here in the UK. Why not try local colleges and universities and see if they offer evening classes or other courses - very many do.

In addition, there are a number of excellent books aimed at complete beginners.

[Cookie Monster]

Originally Posted by Surfergirl

Hi Harry

One of the things I most regret in life was not taking the opportunity to learn Latin when I was in school. How did you start learning it - was it a course, or book, or what?

Irene

At school with good old Mrs Whittome it was the Cambridge Latin Course. That was good although since i've recently started relearning my latin i've found Wheelock's Latin to be invaluable. It's used by many universities and you can find lots of vocab flash cards and tests for it online.

If you get Wheelocks buy the Comprehensive Guide as well. One final thing don't forget to download an answer key

[zerospinboson]

anyone have a clue why there's such a price difference between the left/right editions of this book on BoB?
http://www.booksonboard.com/index.ph...06971&v=buynow

[Gideon]

The Fagles' translations are amazing...

[zerospinboson]

Oh, btw: the Fagles translation of the Aeneid is (currently?) only 6$ at eBooks.com.

[Renaldo]

Originally Posted by vivaldirules

Alas, it's not available in a format for my Reader. Come on, Sony, catch up!

I don't expect Sony to 'catch up' any time soon. I choose to buy MS Lit books, strip, then convert them to lrf. I know some people have an issue with this, and the law probably does too, but I have no qualms about it since I'm not distributing it and am only putting it into a form I can use after buying it, or at least the rights to read it.

The way I look at it is, if I bought a pbook and had to tear the pages out one by one in order to read it, it's my book, it's my choice if I need to effectively destroy it to read it. I've bought the rights to read it, and may do so in whatever way I need to. So, if I buy an ebook, I've bought the rights to read it, and can do what I need to, to do so. I don't see any reason to let a format issue stop me after I've paid my money.

And this is a good deal at Fictionwise right now, I'll be getting it this weekend, I think. Thanks for the reccomendation, HarryT! This is one I've been meaning to read, and I probably would've ended up getting a pd version.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Gideon

The Fagles' translations are amazing...

I think, personally, that Richard Lattimore's translations of the "Odyssey" and the "Iliad" are hard to beat. Fagles' are great as poems in their own right, but they aren't so faithful to the original as translations.