I blame children, mold (mould to you) in the house (and 2.5 years OUT of the house), teaching middle school, a son with learning disabilities, and other things that have soaked up all my time over the last decade, I guess. Before that, I wasn't teaching Latin. I ran away (to England, for part) for a while and did other things. Long story. And before that, well, I loved Vergil and Ovid and mainly read those authors in college. When I was returning to Latin and to teaching years later, I knew my deficit was in reading prose. In what little time I had to myself for reading Latin, I was working towards improving my true reading skills using other prose authors. For pleasure I was reading Martial and Catullus here and there.
But maybe part of the delay in returning to Vergil was simply fate. It was long enough that now I'm reading him in great measure with just pure pleasure and little hard work. I sweated over lines in college, and in fact just now I left colleagues "working at it" the same way I used to once upon a time. I sat down near them a good 10-20 minutes after they had began, quietly read past where they were, began to help with dinner (we're making a Roman dinner tonight and the groceries had arrived), and overheard when they got to a part that I found a bit tricky. I was curious as to how they would interpret it.
But previous to that section, they were still trudging along, whereas I read the previous lines getting a rush because the action was simply unfolding for me (not being excavated). Frankly it was an amazing feeling.
Anyway, thanks, Ray for the comments. I didn't know I had any readers in the UK. I was toying with coming over to CA in April but have decided against it since one of our conferences will be the same weekend in the city where one of my close friends lives.
Vergil is definitely worth reading. I have really enjoyed what we've read this week and been pleased with how much I'm getting out of the reading personally.
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rosecarmine
Re: reading Vergil
Date: 2008-07-16 09:19 pm (UTC)But maybe part of the delay in returning to Vergil was simply fate. It was long enough that now I'm reading him in great measure with just pure pleasure and little hard work. I sweated over lines in college, and in fact just now I left colleagues "working at it" the same way I used to once upon a time. I sat down near them a good 10-20 minutes after they had began, quietly read past where they were, began to help with dinner (we're making a Roman dinner tonight and the groceries had arrived), and overheard when they got to a part that I found a bit tricky. I was curious as to how they would interpret it.
But previous to that section, they were still trudging along, whereas I read the previous lines getting a rush because the action was simply unfolding for me (not being excavated). Frankly it was an amazing feeling.
Anyway, thanks, Ray for the comments. I didn't know I had any readers in the UK. I was toying with coming over to CA in April but have decided against it since one of our conferences will be the same weekend in the city where one of my close friends lives.
Vergil is definitely worth reading. I have really enjoyed what we've read this week and been pleased with how much I'm getting out of the reading personally.