Joining the 50 Book Challenge
byAs Robert continues on his 50 Novels in a Year Challenge, I watch in envy as he checks each interesting book from his list. My love of a good challenge and a good book, and my new Sony PRS-505 Reader purchase, finally made me decide to jump in and join him.
I miss reading for fun, as I was a kid who never let a book leave her side but gradually let the academic world steal my reading time (ironic, eh?). OK, I’ll be honest, dating and other social activities also stole that time away :-P.
Since I’m also trying to learn Spanish, I’m including some books translated into Spanish I found online. Reading in my target language has really helped my comfort level and has kept the progress fun. I’m also the type that grew up learning nearly everything through reading books, so it’s only natural (this was largely my dad’s doing–> Me: “Hey, Dad, do you know…” Dad: ”Yes. Here are four college-level books on it, along with some websites that have a lot of info to read.” I love my dad).
So, to the right of this post (those reading on the website and not RSS) I’ll have my book list a-la-Burdock style just for me to track my progress and to pick my next selection from. The Spanish books will be a lot slower than English, but the idea is for those to gradually become faster anyway so it shouldn’t bog me down too much.
By the way, the whole language thing is going great. I can still only create parts of parts on my own, but I can tell I’m improving and I’m actually starting to think in the language at times. I can definitely follow along in written word and I’m getting there in spoken word. A combination of the Michel Thomas method, SpanishPod.com, sentence flash cards, and reading novels in Spanish have really boosted overall progress and I highly recommend a similar approach to anyone reading this.
And thanks to all who emailed me to help me learn. I hope to get to a conversational level pretty soon but right now it just takes so much time for me to produce the language that it’s a largely one-sided conversation! I overestimated my ability to converse with native speakers when I made that post :-P.
Other posts that may interest you:
Sshhhhh Tracy - you’re letting everyone know the reason I’ve not been posting much (although there has been other reasons).
Seriously though - way to go TRACY!!!! :o) I’m really excited for you and incredibly honored you consider the challenge good enough to take up yourself. It’s been amazingly enlightening for me, and of course it’s totally in the spirit of ‘endless learning’.
I can’t say I’ll be joining you by reading any titles in Spanish, unless you count ones translated to the English such as Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude. But I guess that’s kind of cheating :o)
Anyway I can’t wait to hear what 50 titles you end up picking. I’m assuming most of them will be in ebook format, but don’t ignore the paper counterparts - especially if you like reading in the bath :o) If you need any unqualified advice, just ask!
October 21st, 2008 at 12:24 pmI’m ashamed to say that as I was looking at those 100 Best book lists you linked to I had only read maybe three or four on each list, and some back in middle school so I barely remembered them.
I figured the best place to start was to just grab a list and whittle it down to 50 that looked interesting to me, along with some Spanish titles I’ve found that looked interesting as well.
And yes! I do see why you’re so quiet! You are a busy fellow over there! Not only reading all those books, but also writing reviews, keeping up two websites other than this one, and reading so that you can write that 50,000 word novel in November?!? Geez! Lol, best of luck to you, friend!
And on the Spanish thing, I’m debating if I really want to read Don Quixote in Spanish or even at all. It’s suppose to be really great and a native Spanish book, but hmmm, is it really something I want to tackle? Hm.
October 21st, 2008 at 12:31 pmHah, it just hit me how many books that is a month. Oh well! That’s why it’s a challenge :-).
October 21st, 2008 at 1:23 pmOne a week (with 2 weeks to spare). Easy for an academic like you Tracy!
October 21st, 2008 at 4:21 pmTrue, but I tend to dwell on my books and read some slower than even my normal reading speed. Unlike some who like to speed through books like there’s no tomorrow and get full enjoyment of it, I prefer to read them like I’m watching a play or movie and “watch” each character interact and speak and such. Personal preference, but I know my uncle can read three good sized books (300-400 pages) a week no sweat, heh.
I guess what I’m saying is I’m a surprisingly slow reader for how much I read.
But then I also tend to not put books down once I get into them, so it may just be one day/night of non-stop reading a week :-P.
I’ll take a good look at all the books I plan on reading and probably put aside any that are tremendously long :-).
Then there’s the matter of my Spanish slowing me down, but that’s self-inflicted slowness :-D.
I’m getting excited! This should be fun!!!
October 21st, 2008 at 4:34 pmAs a hardcore Spanish learner I’d say; only load you new reader with Spanish stuff. When I started out learning Spanish I deleted all non-Spanish stuff from my harddrive, cleaned my mp3 player and started building up my collection in Spanish. It’s your choice, but you might consider it.
About the production: Don’t. Rush. It. If you start speaking/producing in general too soon, you’ll breed bad habits (with one of the worst symptoms a bad pronunciation). You might think: “WTF dude, I need to speak in order to learn!”. Well, that’s a myth. How can you produce something that you don’t know yet? Don’t force yourself. Just feed yourself with real materials like movies, series, books, etc., etc. I think you already watched the clip at Khatzu’s site?
It actually connects perfectly to what I’ve seen so far at my training school: students want to produce, produce, produce. But their accent sucks, they can only say two sentences of which half is incorrect.
Anyway, good luck with the challenge. Karma to you if you pull it off in Spanish.
October 27th, 2008 at 10:50 amThanks, Ramses. Yup, I am trying to read as much as I can in Spanish. I am reading The Invisible Man in English but I have an appreciation for both languages
(and needed something to read that I could fully understand cause I was getting annoyed only following the story line in Spanish ^_^).
And yeah, I spent some time at that Antimoon site and their accent is awesome. You can tell they aren’t native in their writing, but only slightly and it’s mostly the lack of conjunctions, which is fine.
October 27th, 2008 at 11:41 amWell, I know that they’ve written their articles in simple English because in the end, it’s still a website for English learners.
Another tip: if you’ve read a book in English, get the Spanish version. This way you’ll know where it’s about and you’ll pick up new words and phrases sooner than you could imagine.
October 28th, 2008 at 11:53 amOk, now I am getting the bug to get either a Kindle (gen 2), a Sony 505 (immediate grat), or the 700 de out in a few more days. What should I do??
I have had some guilt, foolish guilt but guilt nonetheless, that I should read War and Peace. Just to say that I have and perhaps learn some history besides. But Russian history is so dark. Except perhaps for that episode of the imposter claiming to be Anastasia Romanov - now that was fun. Having lived in England - you remember my comments from London on STPC don’t cha, Tracy - or maybe it’s better that you don’t! - English novels are sooo much more alive. my very office was located in Hertsfordshire right near Jane Austin’s house. My home was 5 minutes from Milton’s Cottage. I can visualize so well now. Anyway, has anybody honestly read W & P and can prepare me for it? Oh yeah, and what ebooker to plunge into!
October 29th, 2008 at 2:15 pm