CarlyD's 2024 German Reading Challenge--15,000 pages

[CarlyD]

A change from doing my normal 365-day (or however many days) challenge, a mishmash of whatever I want to do for at least a minimum time each day.

I'm going to set this super high--can I do it? Maybe. Probably not. But can I try to get as close as I can? Yes.

I'm following the Super Challenge as to what constitutes a page, but I'm just counting pages, rather than converting them into 50-page book counts. Also, each page will be read 3 times--not one after another, but I'll be going back to books to see if I can read them better/easier/faster the next time. The books include bilingual readers and fiction books, and German-only readers and fiction books and will include A1, A2 and hopefully a bit of B1 towards the end.

Ok, I've changed my goal 3 times now--I started with 2500 pages for the year. We'll see how far I really get.

**Updated to 15,000 pages on 2/25/24.

[CarlyD]

I've been plugging away at one book, but I'm going to list all the books currently in my To Be Read stack. The page numbers total 1,858 but the amount of pages I claim will probably end up being less as I adjust for indexes, English, etc.

Das Lasagne-Desaster--READ
Elvis in Köln
Adel und edle steine
Oktoberfest
Donauwalzer
Ein Mann zu viel
Oh, Maria
Der Brief
Der Stille Tod
Eiskalter Mord
German Short Stories--My Daily German
German Dialogues Book 2--3 short stories
Mysterious Cases of Private Detective Müller--chapter 1 done, HARD
Conversational German Dialogues--105 2-page stories
13 Einfache Kurzgeschichten--the vocab help is for the English words, not the German
Sexy and Romantic (they aren't) German Short Stories
German Conversational Dialogues--100 1-page stores, some with vocab help, some without
1st German Reader for Tourists
Wer verlor das Geld?--READ
German Language thru Dialogue--16 stories with questions after each
German Short Stories Book 1--105 stories, but lots of English, so probably few pages

No goal yet as to when these should be done. Some are much easier than others.

[DaveAgain]

No goal yet as to when these should be done. Some are much easier than others.

I think Das Lasagne-Desaster and Elvis in Köln deserve their places at the top of your list!

[CarlyD]

Well, I have 40 pages so far since the 20th, so I'm on track, but it will be probably forever before the bar starts to move on my tracker.

Also, just because I'm able to read a book doesn't make it an interesting book. Gah. But I got three Sherlock Holmes and one Dracula book in the mail today, so there's something to look forward to.

[CarlyD]

Up to 112 pages so far. Woo hoo. I finished one (small) book, and am reading bits of 2 short story reader books right now. One is incredibly boring, and one has numerous errors (Ich bin was shown as I chb in), but the stories are interesting.

We're having a huge storm tomorrow, so I'm planning to hide inside with 2 fictions books and my knitting. I think Elvis in Köln and one of the Sherlock Holmes books. If I keep up my current pace, I'll hit less than 50% of my goal, so I'm hoping that I'll be reading faster, and more pages, as I move forward.

Reminder: Andre Klein's first two books--Cafe in Berlin and Ferien in Frankfort both have 60-page workbooks, both saved as PDFs to my pc. I think he said something about putting out a 3rd workbook--check before starting the books.

[CarlyD]

Books are going well--238 pages so far. I was hoping for 30 or so minutes a day, but I've got a good selection of books and am doing 60 or more minutes each time. I finally started the Sherlock Holmes book last night--it's listed as A1/A2, but it's hard--and only got through 4 pages, but that's ok. I do look up words, but generally the next day, never while reading. That book has lots of older-use words and a lot of verb tenses that make me stop to figure out.

Joined the 6 Week Challenge again, and I looked at the old leaderboard--and got totally depressed. I'm on there several times, which should be good, but I've been signing up for German since 2018. So this is my 7th year of learning German and I'm still on the bottom. Yes, there's been gaps of months in there, but seriously. I need to come up with some goals that will actually work for me. I don't need German for a job, to survive in another place, for relatives. So I just don't have the motivation to stick with it.

Yes, my vocabulary has gotten much better. Yes, I can read faster and easier than I was expecting to be able to. But I'm still tripped up by so much--noun genders that should be firmly learned by now, those pesky "little" words--von, zu, and all the rest that totally change a sentence but still are jumbled up in my head. Aargh.

I'm going to push for my first milestone--500 pages read--and then regroup and see where I stand.

[CarlyD]

Getting back on track now. We had a horrible storm last weekend, with electricity out, tree and roof damage. Some still don't have their power back on yet. Fortunately, my Kindle was fully charged when we lost power. Unfortunately, I hadn't thought about putting any German books on it--I prefer reading actual books so I can lightly underline words or phrases. I have a couple on there now for the next time. So I spent the many hours sitting in the dark reading a mystery series.

I finished another (small) book last night and I'm up to 279 pages--whoo hoo! I don't think I got this far when I failed the last Super Challenge. Although counting words to meet the SC definition of a page is a pain in the little books, I think it's still the way to go.

I'm wondering if I should just pick out 2 or 3 books, instead of flitting from book to book. A reader, an easier fiction book and a more challenging fiction book. That might be better.

[CarlyD]

So, 426 pages in 3 weeks. Yes, these are books that I could have read months ago, so I'm not struggling, but I'm just happy that I'm sticking with it. I've finished 4 books so far--two small books about a rat named Rhumus, and two short story readers that were horribly boring.

I'm just starting chapter 5 of Wer verlor das Geld? I remember looking at it quite some time ago and it didn't look that interesting. Plus the chapters are really long. It still isn't interesting, but my goal is one chapter a day, then read something that I like better.

When I was working on Spanish, they had an amazing amount of English books that were also available in Spanish. I have a bunch of the "chapter books" of Scooby Doo, Junie Moon, and others. Light, fun reading. For German I mostly seem to find heavy, somewhat depressing books and most of the books I see recommended for language learners are versions of the classics. I'll keep looking, but I need to read the books that I already have first.

Part of me wants to raise my goal. The other part keeps saying that I'm going to quickly run out of easy books and I'll be into the more intermediate books that take forever to get through--and even basically understand--each page.

[DaveAgain]

When I was working on Spanish, they had an amazing amount of English books that were also available in Spanish. I have a bunch of the "chapter books" of Scooby Doo, Junie Moon, and others. Light, fun reading. For German I mostly seem to find heavy, somewhat depressing books and most of the books I see recommended for language learners are versions of the classics. I'll keep looking, but I need to read the books that I already have first.

If you scroll through ARD's "für kinder" radio programmes, or Hörspiel, or Hörbuch you might find one you like, and could get the matching book later.

I remember liking:

Die schönsten griechischen Sagen.
Pippi Langstrumpf (longstocking) is funny.
Die Geschichte von Herrn Sommer by Patrick Süskind.
Der Kleine Nick by Goscinny & Sempé (ISBN: 9783257235401)
Die Flußpiraten des Mississippi by Friedrich Gerstacker (audio, text)
Damals bei uns daheim, by Hans Fallada (text)
Heute bei uns zu Haus by Hans Fallada. (text)

[jeffers]

Part of me wants to raise my goal. The other part keeps saying that I'm going to quickly run out of easy books and I'll be into the more intermediate books that take forever to get through--and even basically understand--each page.

You mentioned a couple of Andre Klein books, but I don't think any are on your initial list of books. He's got at least 12 books in the Dino Lernt Deutsch series, and at least another 5 beginner books in his Baumgartner and Mortimer series, so there are quite a few decent beginner's books available if you want to keep it easy for now. Another author who has a lot of easy German readers is Brian Smith. His "German Easy Reader" series has 3 easy, 1 pre-intermediate, and 3 intermediate books, all with audio you can download for free. The books are quality, and use a carefully restricted vocabulary. I've read the 3 easy readers, and they're unfortunately rather boring. But sometimes the feeling of "Wow, I understand all this!!" trumps a dull story. Since then he's churned out a set of 23 graded readers (mostly A1-A2, a couple B1 and one B2 volume). I have no idea of the quality, but I'll probably try a few of them later this year. The problem for your preferences is all of these books are quite reasonably priced on Kindle, but the paperbacks are a little pricey, although still better value than the traditional little readers like "Elvis in Koln" and "Oh Maria".