New guy - Feb. 14, 2019
40+ yrs later - finishing college, marriage, career, kids and their eventual marriages I am finally returning to my old passion for Bronze Age Greece thru Hellenistic period. I have hauled many of those books around all these years, so have finally pulled many of them out. I was rereading "The Kind Must Die" by Mary Renault and did some side studying on the web; I ran across a reference of this on your website dated May, 2005. That became a WOW - a group that likes ancient history.
Greece, particularly the Bronze Age is my real passion; but I dabble in ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and a growing interest of pre-1066 England, the William period and pre-BC Roman era.
I am simultaneously reading: Mary Renault's, 'The Bull From the Sea'; Caroline Alexander's 'The War That Killed Achilles'; Richmond Lattimore's translation of 'The Iiad of Homer'' with Edith Hamilton's 'The Greek Way' sitting in the pile...and you might as well add 'Wikipedia' & Google Maps to the mix. I can't read a historical book/novel of any kind without researching the people, places, events, alleged 'facts' as I read and make comments in the margins. That's why I can't borrow any books. Thus it is often a slow process to get through a historical book on 'my list'.
I retired into the Pacific NW onto a working farm,on a small island on the Columbia River with a WA state address. After working way too hard for an old man I go to bed real early and read till 11:00 PM - 2:00 AM nightly. I've spent the last 4 yrs. pruning fruit trees, planting more, building a barn, clearing land, establishing a Large garden, pressing my apples, pears, canning, and the list goes on....keeps me pretty darn busy. But I get unfiltered, organic apple, pear juices all year...dried walnuts off our Black Walnut tree...again, the list goes on. Fresh Air, NO people! Closest neighbor is about 10 acres away. I've been so busy cleaning up, planting and harvesting, etc. I haven't even gone out on the Columbia to fish in the best salmon region on the entire river! I keep saying 'next year.' And of course, my lady, my love, my wife keeps me in line and working like a helot. My next project is to add onto the barn a new kitchen for her, so all our canning will be out by the trees, garden and No mess in our main kitchen any more. Yes, I cook, and can, and press the apples right next to my lady. Harvesting the walnuts is a trip; we only have one giant tree...once it starts dropping we pick up at least one 5 gal. bucket of nuts every 3 days for about 3 weeks. Salsa!! I make my own! 36 qts. every yr. with almost all home-garden grown ingredients. Well - I think I've said more than enough. Since I'm a new guy and maybe a lot of folks will be reading this, I'm wondering if anyone could give me the name of any authors for that early English history period I mentioned [pre-1066 to pre-Roman]. I get burned out after reading months of one subject so I change history periods or subject matter altogether.
