July is over and it’s about time to review the reading goals I had set myself. First of all, I was able to read all three books I wanted to read but it was a really difficult task. To be honest, if I hadn’t published the reading goals on the blog in advance, I wouldn’t have gone through all of them. But I kept reading and it totally paid off.
I would like to give you a short review about the books and the some info where you can get them, in case you are interested in reading them.
Reading goals July
Agatha Christie – Morderstwo w Orient Expressie (Polish)
This is one of my favourite Agatha Christie novels and I know the story very well. And this was pretty helpful because at my level it was not very easy to read the book in Polish. Knowing the story helped me understand better and learn a lot of words from the context. I bought the book in Poland a few years ago. You can also find it on Amazon.com but it’s quite expensive there. Empik, a Polish store for books, CDs etc. has an online shop where you can find the ebook for about € 5. I’ve never tested this online shop but I will do once I’ve read all the Polish books I still have at home.
Agatha Christie – Karty na stół (Polish)
I had never read this book in any other language before, so the story was absolutely new to me. I didn’t expect very much but at the end I was pretty surprised that I could read the entire book and was at least able to follow the story and catch the main points. I could understand how the murder happened and more less understood the main points of the process until the murderer was found. I looked up a few words in the dictionary that seemed to be important to me but in the end it were only 15 words or so.
I’m usually a fast reader but it took me about 10 days to read this book. I’m very happy that I committed myself to reading this book because otherwise I would have put off reading it until “my Polish was good enough”. And now I feel highly motivated because I was able to read an authentic text 
Selma Lagerlöf – Skatten, Herr Arnes Penningar (Swedish)
The team from interlinearbooks.com kindly offered me a free copy of this book that is designed for beginners like me. Every Swedish line is translated into English directly below the line. This is helpful and tricky at the same time. You have to be disciplined to not read the English translations only. But once you come across a word you don’t understand you don’t have to use a separate dictionary. This is very convenient. To be honest, I would have never been able to read this book without translations. The book is far too difficult for my level and I often had to consult the translations.
You can get this e-book with translation (and also books in a few other languages) at interlinear.com. I read the book on my tablet which worked really nice.
Other books read in July
I read two other books this month as well and I want to share them here because maybe they are interesting for you as well.
Essentialism (Greg McKeown): Currently, I want to decomplicate life a little bit and this book is very inspirational for this purpose. I read on the train to and back from Berlin and now I’m constantly re-reading specific chapters. Highly recommended [English]
Keine Pizza für Commissario Luciano (Claudio Paglieri): This is a crime novel based in Italy that tells the story of an ambitious man whose dream is to become the next Italian Prime Minister. A fascinating story about the strange and sometimes horrifying world of politics in Italy (and maybe many others countries as well). I read the German translation by Christian Försch. In my opinion the translation is very good because it also explains things that are not explained in the original text because they might be immediately understandable for somebody who knows a lot about Italian history and politics. The original title is: La cacciatrice di teste.
Reading goals August
Since publishing my reading goals helped me to actually read a few books of which I was not sure whether I’d be able to read them or not, I now feel encouraged to continue setting new reading goals.
For August, I want to read a little bit more in the languages I already know better. Recently, I neglected my stronger languages a bit but I need to foster them continuously for my work as translator. But I also want to include books in my weaker languages and of course I want to start my Reading Catalan project.
Books I plan to read in August:
- The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency (Alexander McCall Smith) - a crime novel based in Botswana. I’m already curious. [English]
- El arte del asesinato (G.K. Chesterton) – an old crime novel in Agatha Christie style [Spanish]
- Маленький принц (Antoine de Saint-Exupery) – the little prince. I’ve never read the little prince before but I saw that many language learners collect this book. [Russian]
- I casi del Commissario Nicoletti – this is a collection of three crime stories designed for learners of Italian. I started the first short story a few months ago but then stopped reading. In August I want to finish this first story and maybe read a second one. [Italian]
- Agatha Mystery – L’espasa del rei d’Escòcia (Sir Steve Stevenson) – this is the first book for my Catalan project. I definitely want to start it in August but maybe I won’t finish it this month. [Catalan]
- Fem i knipa (Enid Blyton) – a time travel back to childhood! Do you remember the Famous Five books? I bought this book in Sweden years ago and now after having read the interlinear book I’m so motivated and I want to give it a try. [Swedish]
Your turn!
What are the books on your to-read list? Feel free to add any recommendations for books or online-shops in the comments. Thanks!
