Here's my idea: a whole main section on this forum dedicated to review of books, films, series, etc as a language-learning/comprehensible-input experience. In this case, everything should be included:
- Language studied
- Material in original language? Y/N
- Estimated level of the person doing the review
- Other languages spoken by the person (focus on native language)
- Actual review of the material (focus on understandability, etc)
[Book] [German] Daniel Kehlmann - Die Vermessung der Welt [As a B2-speaker]
Target language: German. Original language? Yes
My level: B2-ish
Other languages: Portuguese (native), French and Spanish (fluent) and Dutch (conversational, B1-ish)
Review:
In this novel, Daniel Kehlmann tells a fictional version of the lives of the mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss and explorer Alexander von Humboldt, two important characters in the history of German science.
The episodes usually focus on either one or the other character, and are filled with lots of humor. Interesting contracts of the aristocratic background of Humboldt and the humble early life and family of Gauss. In general, the story was very pleasant and intriguing.
Personally, I find the book was too hard for me at my current level. The writing style is in general a bit harder than what I could and the vocabulary, even though not too hard to be impossible to follow, was above the comfortable (or slightly uncomfortable) threshold that made the overall experience painful as I couldn't just enjoy the story and had to read the translations quite often while parallel reading.
The passages with Humboldt were easier in general, while the ones with Gauss made me have to learn some math-related vocabulary that went over my head (even though I'm from an Engineering background).
In the end, I liked the story, but hated the pain of reading it in my current level, and decided to finish it in French instead.
I would not recommend this for someone in my level.