Greek mythology, where to begin?

[jhonerliz]

I have a book of Mythology by Edith Hamilton.....

[Christophe]

If you wish to start at the beginning you really should start with Hesiod. If you want a text to start off with you might try Classical Mythology, Images and Insights or Graves, as has been suggested.

[Atsab]

Get Graves! Hamilton is boring and weak. Bullfinch changed all the stories to match contemporary worldviews and censored them for children. Robert Graves, on the other hand, REALLY knows his stuff, never shies from the details, and gives all the versions of the myths as they developed, endowing the reader with a firm understanding of the culture and events that shaped them and how they changed over time. Besides that it's quite readable, if rather erudite. The fact that it's in two volumes makes it seem much longer than the others, but it's not actually too much bigger, and besides that you could just read the first one and be better off than if you hadn't (or even better off than if you'd read Hamilton or Bullfinch). Graves also wrote the novel I, Claudius, which is on the Modern Library's Top 100 books of the 20th century list, and The White Goddess, a pioneering work of anthropology examining "the nature of poetic myth-making". He's a real go-getter.