First, I'm big on finding a good translation. Especially for such a classic as the Iliad. So that took quite a bit of time yesterday, but I think I found my match in Lattimore. This translation is apparently as close to the meter and structure of the original as possible, while still being simple and poetic, and is highly regarded as one of if not the best English translation. It was really a no-brainer for me once I'd found enough info on it.
I spent so much time on that, and as mentioned yesterday I'm always slower going into a book at first, so I again didn't get to 37 pages yesterday nor get near the 74 pages I should be at by the end of two days. Skipping the long intro for now, I started the Iliad on page 77 and made it to 94, so rounding down I made it to 17 pages yesterday.
Adding that to yesterday, I'm at 37 pages so far, exactly half of the 74 to be perfectly on track.
I thought the Iliad would be pretty difficult, and was shocked to find it as easy as it was so far. I know they say that Homer (who I've never read before) wrote in a very plain and simple style, but I didn't realise it would still seem that way (with a good translation of course).
I definitely prefer it to Black Rain so far, and good thing since it's about twice as long. It also just makes me feel good that I'm finally tackling Homer. It's so easy, in fact, that I'm not even reading the notes for now. This version has accompanying notes for each book (chapter) and I sampled them at first but found them too spoilery. I know some of the story already of course, but I'd rather first read it all in the actual story rather than the notes. So I expect to go through the notes later.
Of course I've been annotating and taking lots of notes. And using google on some things. It's a bit annoying that the included maps are too small to read well (if I zoom in it becomes blurry, and same thing happens trying to read it on my computer) and no googled map has all the locations I'm looking for. I have found some good maps online though and bookmarked them and have been referring to them a lot to get and idea of where the many (many) places they mention in the book are.
Google has also helped me with the names and pronunciation. First, apparently ancient Greeks love to use about a hundred different names for a person or group, often all in the same breath. If one didn't know better, it'd seem like they're talking about a different person or group each time. So google has helped me realise that Achaians are also Danaans, that Smintheus is Apollo and so on. And pronunciation-wise, I quickly corrected that Achaians are not pronounced "A chee ahns" but rather "Ah ky ahns", and so on. Actually I've found in my google searches a few sites that have audio pronunciation of words and I played around there for awhile, trying to think of rare words I wasn't quite positive how to pronounce just right.
All in all I'm very excited about this read.
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