-I totally agree with Tarvos. She said many things better than I could.
-Count Monte Cristo is not bad at all, and the descriptions are not that long (compared with Les Misérables, another of my favourite books from that era). If it is similar in difficulty and style to the Three Musketeers, it should be great for an intermediate learner loving Alexandre Dumas. I loved the book, when I was 13 and the hero was the first man I have ever had crush on. Who cared he was fictional. And none of those representing him in movies was good enough
. I've read Les Trois Mousquetaires in original, and it was a surprising modern feeling read.
-Sure, there are plenty fantasy books for kids, but the genre isn't limited to them. There are plenty texts clearly for adults, with complex stories and characters and language. And as Blaurebell well said, there are many children's books with brains too
. I believe the best way to judge a book is just by trying it out. But that requires as well the ability to simply stop reading a bad book without feeling bad about it
-One of the main reasons of HP's popularity is the quite stable quality of translations. Sure, you can avoid translations completely, if you want, but as far as translated books go, the HP publishers didn't dare to present real crap. (Because they knew they were already losing part of their eager and excited public, as it was taking less time to improve your English than to wait for the fourth or fifth book. Presenting a bad translation would have pushed away another big part of the market, and they wanted us to buy the 7th book in translation too. Well, I didn't buy the last three
). I wish that could be said about all the translations. For example the Czech translator of Fred Vargas made me give up on reading Czech translations almost completely
-Terry Pratchett is awesome, but I think you need to be either a bit more advanced or know the books well, in order to enjoy all the jokes. I can totally recommend the Czech translations (Kulhánek is one of the brightest exceptions among translators), and the Spanish ones. I am looking forward to trying his books in German, but I don't feel ready. In the Czech translations, there are even a few more puns added and great, as Kulhánek translates the names in a totally appropriate and hilarious way (some suit the characters even better than the original ones in my opinion, and you have probably noticed how critical of translations I usually am), and he adds funny translator notes at the bottom of the page sometimes.
-Thanks for the Belgariad tip, I'l have a look. I am starting my German reading with the Song of Ice and Fire (I love the books, but it is quite a tough beginning) and Charlaine Harris, which should be much more accessible. And thanks about the warning against the LoTR in German, I was seriously considering buying the books.Can't tell you about the quality of the first Czech LoTR translation, as I haven't read it and I don't even know whether it was an "official"translation forbidden after publishing, or whether the book was translated after the ban. But the communist "literary" review of the book, published in a newspaper, is absolutely hilarious now!
.......
The one thing I wanted to say right after reading the first post:
Focusing so much on choosing the best book at each step is not necessary, in my opinion, as long as you accept the fact you'll need to read thousands and thousands pages. What are 300 "badly chosen" pages in the pile of 20000 pages? 1,5%, that is not so important. If the book is too hard, leave it for later. If it is too easy and you are learning nothing and just enjoying it, it is not much of a trouble and you'll choose a more difficult one next time. I usually strive for 20000 pages as that proved to be a good number for me (I don't stop after that, just stop counting) but of course a different high number could be better for you, that is not the point. The important thing is, that you need to read so much stuff of so many kinds, that there is no need to stress about it too much. No need to panic "but I should understand 98%! What if I understand just 95?", no need to stress too much about the next book being appropriately harder than the previous one every time.
The only thing one should worry about is having fun. If we accept that it is necessary to read a 10000/20000/50000/whatever number pages in order to get really good, we cannot turn it into torture. Either we have fun, or we'll give up, sooner or later. And having fun is very beneficial to the immersion process, I am convinced.
So, your interest in the books should be the number one lead, in my opinion.