There are a couple of excuses for not being around as much. Mainly that thing that people insist on calling school.
I haven't been reading as much.
Which is a bit of a problem considering I blog about books. Not only that, pretty much all of the books I've been reading are in French. Yes, you read that right. Yes, I need to get a life.So far this month I've read.
- The second and third Harry Potter books (surprisingly OK).
- La Disparition (George Perec - basically the only letter 'E' in the book is in the author's name).
- La Végétarienne (Han Kang - she's a Koran author shortlisted for the Man Booker International last year).
As it turns out, reading in French is actually pretty hard. It gets pretty annoying having to Google Translate every other word, but I have noticed my French improving. I'm writing in the definition of all the words I don't know in the margins, and then when I've finished the book going back and creating an Anki deck of them. That way I can improve my vocabulary and not just forget the words as soon as I've read them.
I started out reading some books I knew quite well like Harry Potter, but now I'm starting to explore and discover French books I haven't read in English, like Albert Camus and George Perec. I love them. I've also started reading more classical literature from around the world - not just in French. At the moment I'm reading Dubliners by James Joyce - though I'm not attempting Ulysses just yet *cough*ever*cough*. They've sort of renewed that excitement for reading that I haven't really felt since I first discovered YA books when I was about seven. So I'll probably be talking about those a little more. Who knows? I don't.
I started out reading some books I knew quite well like Harry Potter, but now I'm starting to explore and discover French books I haven't read in English, like Albert Camus and George Perec. I love them. I've also started reading more classical literature from around the world - not just in French. At the moment I'm reading Dubliners by James Joyce - though I'm not attempting Ulysses just yet *cough*ever*cough*. They've sort of renewed that excitement for reading that I haven't really felt since I first discovered YA books when I was about seven. So I'll probably be talking about those a little more. Who knows? I don't.
What else?
I decided to take the plunge and just write a post a couple of days ago. I've got quite a few stored now, so I'm determined to keep up with blogging for the rest of 2016 without another month of disappearing.
Also, I was featured in the Big Book Project this month and talked about my book blogging experience. You can check out my guest post here: https://bigbookproject.co.uk/2016/08/21/harveys-experiences-with-blogging/
Here's to a more fruitful September!
School is definitely hurting my blogging habits as well. I'm hoping to cram in some posts this weekend (since it's Labor Day weekend in the US), but I'm not sure how well that's going to work out. I guess I'll wish you luck with that.
ReplyDeleteI've been thinking about reading some books in German. I've been watching a lot of movies and YouTube videos in German over the last few months, and it's definitely improving my German, but I'm afraid if I don't have someone's body language as context, I'll just end up lost and confused. At this point in time, I still watch a lot of them with subtitles, so maybe I'm not ready for that... XD That's great for you though! Good luck with school and stuff. I hope to see you posting more regularly again soon! :)
You should definitely try reading some books in German! I find they're much easier than watching videos, mainly because you can spend as much time as you want working out grammar and vocab e.t.c Good luck with your blogging!
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