Best European languages for reading novels

[sfuqua]

I know that this is very, very subjective, but which languages have the most novels available to read?

I love to read, and I find that I have sort of given up on studying Tagalog, because there aren't enough books I'm interested in reading that are written in it.

Spanish and English have tons of material available, and Portuguese looks pretty good. There seem to be a lot of things available in French, but I have trouble purchasing ebooks of them here in California

I like to read historical fiction and science fiction, and I have weakness for trashy romance novels.

Any thoughts?

[Cavesa]

I like to read historical fiction and science fiction, and I have weakness for trashy romance novels.
Any thoughts?

French and Spanish. Not sure about trashy romance novels (perhaps I should try a few more.), but they both have tons of historical fiction. And quite a lot of sci-fi, right now I am discovering some Spanish authors, and widening my horizon concerning the French sci-fi.

German is a language with huuuuuge bookmarket. One of the main reasons why I forgave it the lots of bad experiences and started learning it

Smaller in absolute number than the giants, but Polish is still a great choice, when it comes to these two genres. And Russian sci-fi has lots to offer as well.

[Speakeasy]

The attached Wikipedia article, "Books published per country per year", provides summary statistics along with a few links. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Books_published_per_country_per_year

I notice that the table provides information for Canada for the year 1996 only. Strange, I cannot recall a calamitous event that could explain either the lack of subsequent reporting for this country or the complete cessation book publishing!

[Longinus]

Probably you've played around with this page before. It's tremendous fun. But let me highlight the following part of it:

http://language.media.mit.edu/rankings/books

I would argue that the figure which has the most bearing on your question is the "translations from" category, which is the number of books translated from the target language into other languages. I think this is a good measure of interest in what is published in the target language.

So, then the top five languages for "translations from" (worldwide, not just European, although the top five are all European) are:

1. English
2. French
3. German
4. Russian
5. Italian

The first appearance of a non-IE language is Japanese at number 8. Note that Latin is 10 and Ancient Greek is 12!

[Longinus]

Holy cow! You're not kidding about the lack of books published in Tagalog! Look at the number of "translations from" for Tagalog (listed as Filipino), and look at the number of speakers. That might be the record low on the list for "translations from" divided by number of speakers. Apparently there is very little worldwide interest in anything published in Tagalog.

filipino.jpg

[Cavesa]

I don't think the amount of translations has anything to do with the best european langauges for reading novels. What gets translated is mostly matter of marketing, not any objective quality.

It's like a magic to learn a langauge and suddenly find lots of "new" authors. Authors who would be loved in other countries, if only they got there. But the anglophone art and entertainement industry has the best marketing of them all. And many publishers in other countries are simply lazy to look elsewhere. Why would they? You can fill your yearly quota of good books from the English speaking countries, why look for something different and make your work harder? Who cares? Monolinguals certainly not, how could they grief not having something they don't know.

These tables show nothing at all. Right now, scandinavian literature is very popular in Europe, especially when it comes to crime novels. Everywhere I go, there are tons of their authors in their bookstores, considering the size of those countries. Why? Marketing. The countries are extremely supportive to their writers and help with the export and translations, there are even subventions for those. (If only they exported the books in originals that eagerly too). Does that mean there were few good crime books there before this wave of popularity? Or that we wouldn't find just as many good crime noves in other countries, if we only bothered to have a proper look?

That's why I love hearing personal recommendations and experience of real people, real readers. I more or less know the tastes of many forum members, so I know what to take from their advice. And I hope it goes in the other direction too.

[Serpent]

Finnish The answer is always Finnish
The original literature is awesome. If you're open to translated literature, there are translations from Swedish, Russian, Estonian, Hungarian and I think some minority Finno-Ugric languages. But the best thing is that you can join the HTLAL Finnish with extra pain group

(I feel your pain wrt Tagalog, I basically gave up on Indonesian for similar reasons. It seems like they mostly read in English, or in Arabic for religious stuff)

[DaveBee]

There seem to be a lot of things available in French, but I have trouble purchasing ebooks of them here in California

There's an eBook/digital library called Culturetèque that's associated with the Institut Français/Alliance Française. It seems to be free to use, but I haven't borrowed any books from them yet.

EDIT
OK, borrowed a book. You're allowed to have two items out at once, total of 5 loans per month. No fee. You download a link to the book (acsm file extension), open that with Adobe Digital Editions, and that then downloads the book.

[Longinus]

I don't think the amount of translations has anything to do with the best european langauges for reading novels. What gets translated is mostly matter of marketing, not any objective quality.

I'm sure the position of Latin on the list at number 10 is entirely due to the marketing efforts of those powerful Roman publishing companies, and nothing to do with the quality of the material available in the language.

The data is just a place to start. Numbers matter, if you're looking for a wide range of choices. If your goal is reading literature, then probably Kabardian is a bad place to start. Once you're done with the Nart sagas, that's pretty much it. And many languages don't even have any significant literature at all.

If it's a personal recommendation you're after, I'll recommend Russian. There's classic literature, tons of modernist and post-modernist stuff, and lots and lots of detective novels and science fiction. I don't know about romance novels, but I'm sure they have those too.

[Chung]

Serpent pretty much took the words right out of my mouth.

After a certain point though, the quality of the novel counts more than the quantity of novels published in a given language. Speakeasy and Longinus habe already provided a vague approximation of the quantity of available novels sorted by language. Not even Garfield with his nine lives could wade through all of the original literature in FIGS and/or English.

If you don't mind reading on-screen or from printouts, there are legal online treasuries of literature in some of the languages that I've studied, including this one for Hungarian and this one for Polish.

I actually prefer short stories over novels, and if you're into them (and know enough Hungarian or Polish), then as a starter I'd recommend for Hungarian Válogatott egyperces novellák ("One minute short stories") by István Örkény and for Polish this collection by Bolesław Prus.