I am genuinely interested in your opinions as to effective and less dry Greek textbooks. What, ideally, would you like to see in such a book?
Also, of the Greek textbooks you've looked at, did any even approach this ideal?
The e-book most useful to me was NT Greek in a Nutshell. Some sections were organized excellently; others, like the Verbs, never fully explained themselves. The list of pronouns was incomplete, including only third-person.
The other e-book I used was "First Greek Book", but its major drawback was size. It seemed to jump around lesson-to-lesson with regards to grammar points, and I wasn't able to fit things together.
An ideal book would mean:
1. Grammar Notes on each Part-of-Speech: Nouns first, of course, followed by Adjectives (and articles) and then Verbs. Spend LOTS of time on the verbs. Give charts for every verb. Nutshell didn't explain the -mi verbs properly.
2. After the Grammar Notes, offer Reading Lessons within a set vocabulary for each lesson. Each subsequent lesson would add more vocabulary.
3. A good index.
4. Under 25 pages (which means, any inkjet like mine can print it)
My motivations for wanting to learn Greek were to understand Hellenic culture, myths, science, philosophy, and battles. I later learned that Greek was the main language of Byzantium, which had a nearly thousand-year-reign over Asia Minor.
A distraction was realizing that I could read translations of Greek texts in English. From that point, it was more learning the language than the texts.
