Bookbinding has helped me learn Ancient Greek
A year ago, I got upset that even though I had taken ancient greek classes in college, I really hadn't retained anything (and honestly, was never super able to actually just read it.) I read that having massive amounts of input (just reading a huge amount) was the best way to get better at reading, so I decided to try and do that. The problem with a lot of ancient greek books is that (for at least english speakers) they are usually sold as kind of expensive critical editions, and in these editions, the greek text only takes up a tiny fraction of the page! While the vocab and commentary is most of it. This is, I suppose, okay for learning, but not good if the goal is uninterrupted reading. Pretty much every ancient greek text is available online in some form, but I didn't want to read on the internet because of the greater possibility for distraction. I realized, though, that I had access to a printer at work, and I could just kind of make my own books. So I started by just coptic binding sections together. I needed a repeatable process that allowed me to quickly create something that I could carry around in my backback. I got a lot better at ancient greek, and also, got more into bookbinding! I find myself now thinking about what I'd want from my own custom ancient greek editions, font, typsetting, and I'm watching DAS bookbinding to learn about different ways to bind, and better ways to do it, materials to use, though I am trying to maximize cost effectiveness, even at the sacrifice of being archival. I've done case bound books, and my first library style bind (with the groove!). It's my dream to have a bunch of ancient greek editions on a shelf that all adhere to a common formatting standard and bind style.