I’m looking for easy (and, preferably, entertaining) reading materials in Greek. I’m at the very early stages of learning the language on my own, with the help of some knowledge of Modern Greek and some prior study of related, highly inflected languages. I’ve read through Strong’s Nutshell book, and I’m in about Lesson X-XV of the White, Smith, and Pharr books.
The piece that I feel is missing, though, is the opportunity to practice reading (just getting more comfortable and fluent with the Greek script is an important goal) and understanding words and structures in context in connected reading passages (not just playing “peek-a-boo” between two columns of a long vocabulary list). I’d very much appreciate others’ ideas on additional sources to try (graded readers, children’s primers, Greek stories re-told in “teacher-ese”…) Much of what I’ve found on line is too difficult, for a number of reasons (old typefaces where kappas look like chis, too much vocabulary too soon, complex sentence structures). (One question I have is if there’s anything like Wheelock’s Latin text–with “sententiae antiquae” and short, easy reading passages–for Greek.) Bilingual/interlinear is fine, religious or other didactic content is OK, dumbed down for 19th century schoolboys is OK, humor and cultural content highly desireable (why do I feel like I’m writing a personal ad?!).
Some of the things I’ve managed to find so far that have worked for me:
Some other titles I’m aware of (although I haven’t used any of them):
Campbell, A Greek Prose Reading Course for Post-Beginners, published by Duckworth
Helm’s commentary on Plato’s Apology (includes a full vocabulary, but I gather the grammatical help isn’t always as extensive as would be desired)
JACT’s Reading Greek texts. (They also have an online “good text guide” at http://www.jact.org/publications/goodtext/goodtextguide.php which may be useful for browsing if you have particular authors you’re interested in)
Finally, one text I have used, Sidwell’ss Lucian: Selections. His dialogues are relatively easy and quite fun to read. The text includes a vocabulary in the back. My primary caveat is that the printing is somewhat blurry and it can be hard to distinguish accents.
Ancient Greek Alive by Paula Safire is a grammar text with readings constructed by the author. The readings are humorous and progress in difficulty. There are also short authentic passages in an appendix, but the fun is in the chapter readings. Check your library.
Was Greek Boy at Home mentioned? that is available online.
I’m currently working through an older book by Colson called Stories and Legends. Fortunately, my library can dust it off from storage.
A grammar text that includes sentences much like Wheelock’s is by Chase and Philips. After two years of study, I still found it quite difficult after the first few lessons. (I don’t do very well on isolated sentences anyway. I seem to need more context.)
Since you mentioned religion was okay, I’d recommend familiar NT stories. I filled a couple notebooks with various excerpts before I read anything else. It’s easy to make a bilingual text, Bible in one hand and computer in the other.
One more idea. I keep thinking of things I experimented with in the first couple years.
At this site there is an elementary composition book. Sorry, I can’t think of the title nor find my notebook. The selections were a couple paragraphs long with vocab not usually found in grammar texts. A vocab list was included with the English.
I was frustrated translating from English to Greek, but use it the reverse way. Read the Greek answer key, and use the English text to check your reading.