It looked like Orberg’s book, but it wasn’t Orberg. It’s a book written in Latin to help learners of Latin build reading skill, so it’s basically a Latin reader. I remember seeing a pdf version somewhere on the net, but I can’t remember where nor the title of the book (otherwise I wouldn’t be asking for your all’s help in finding it). If I can remember clearly, the first story was about someone or maybe a group of people or a family getting ready to sail somewhere and I think the boat crashes and sinks if I’m not mistaken. I wish I can give more clues, but that’s all I remember. Is anyone familiar with this book?
Might you be thinking of “Ad Alpes”? It is about a family that set out from the Near East and end up in Northern Italy. Only thing, the boat doesn’t sink; they make it to Brundisium. Here’s a link, so that you can check it out:
I think this book would fit in well at your current level, having finished most of Orberg and D’Ooge. You’ve had some reading experience with Orberg as well as the selections for translation from D’Ooge. Up till now, your focus has been on retranslation as a means of sharpening your compositional skills. This book was written to be used as a transitional reader for 2nd second year high school students going into their third year in anticipation of reading Cicero. In a “traditional” curriculum in the U.S., 2nd year students would read Caesar, which would give them command of a somewhat specialised vocabulary, i.e. military and some political terminology. With Cicero, students have to expand their vocabulary to include a little more everyday and political vocabulary. Ad Alpes helps accomplish this in the process of introducing you to everyday life in the ancient Roman world. It also gets you used to reading a whole work, as opposed to bits and pieces from here and there. Best part-it’s free! I’ve read less than half of it, but that’s not due to disinterest. What I did read, I enjoyed but I just have too many other projects right now and this is material I’ve covered before. The link Barry and I gave you is to the original 1927 version, so download it, read the preface and a couple of chapters and if you like it, keep on going!
Thanks for the link to you both. I was skimming through it, and correct me if I’m wrong, but to me it seems as if this book is more advanced in level than Caesar (his Gallic War at least, for his Civil War seems a little more difficult). I would say because its vocabulary is more vast than in Caesar’s work. So I was thinking I would go through it after I read Caesar’s Gallic War. Would you say this is a good course of study? I was also going to do North & Hillard’s Latin Compostion while reading Caesar’s Gallic War to keep sharpening my Latin writing skills. But only after I finish with D’Ooge (which should be in no more than three months hopefully because I’ve decided to translated the stories in the back of the book too). And now that I’ve brought up the topic of translation, my attitude towards it really has changed. I like to think of translation as a way of writing down notes to better help retain the information (or in this case, the meaning of the words) that one is learning. And in the classroom setting, it’s really the only way a teacher may know if the students truly understand the meaning of what they’re learning (unless the teacher just so happens to be able to read minds). It seems harder to try to retain all these words in memory by just looking them up and reading (pretty much what I was doing and I’m sure everyone does that uses Orberg). I kept having to look up words that I had previously looked up multiple times. It’s less frequent now that I’m translating on paper and not just in mind.
When you read the preface to Ad Alpes, you’ll discover that one of the aims of the book is to help students transition from Caesar to Cicero. If you’re reading Caesar now, then I agree that you should wait to start Ad Alpes,
I’m delighted that you’re carrying on with the composition work! I think you’re beginning to realise the benefits of not only reading extensively but writing as well. Writing adds another tool to your learning kitbag, a tool that helps you remember what you’ve learnt by forcing you to use it and think about how you’re using it. As far as having to look up words, if you’re not doing this already, I’d recommend reading through the selection first, see how much you already understand, try to guess from context the words you don’t know and figure out the relationship of the words to one another in the sentences. I think you’ve seen us use the term “anticipatory parsing” (from Hale’s presentation on how to read Latin). If you haven’t, here’s a link: http://www.bu.edu/mahoa/hale_art.html
Then go to the dictionary. Hopefully, you’ll find yourself looking up less, and when you do look something up, more often than not, it’ll be to confirm your guesses. I’ll give you a quick example: try memorising all the possible meanings of rēs; or, guess what rēs means in the particular context it’s being used and try to find that meaning in the dictionary article to confirm what you’ve already guessed.
Keep up that tremendous enthusiasm! You’re doing great!