MamaPata wrote:Cavesa wrote:You found your own answers.
Readlang can easily be used for several languages at once. So can Memrise. I know one book per week is quite challenging to incorporate in daily life, but one book per two weeks is doable for most people, in my opinion (of course, I am talking about the 300-450 pages book, not George Martin or Robert Jordan size of book) I'm looking forward to reading of your results, concerning looking up the underlined or written down words, it might motivate me to do this more seriously too.
Yes, I do use memrise for several languages, as well as other courses, I'm just not always very reliable about it.
I don't actually have a problem getting in one book a week - I read fairly fast, so I've read over 50 books this year. But there are a lot of things I want to read in English because I prefer to read them in the original (and I have non language related reading goals) and I have to read quite a lot for class. I'm going to try and increase my French reading, you're definitely right there, but I have a lot of other goals outside languages. So French doesn't always come first.
Of course, I totally understand!
That is one of the reasons why increasing the non-reading vocab building methods may be useful, if your reading capacities are saturated.
And it depends on your reading needs. Of course the obligatory books cannot be changed.
But in some cases, it is possible to switch from English originals to French originals, without sacrificing quality of the experience or information. For example, I see no problem in mostly switching fantasy to French (I know, I may be already annoying with my favourite genre, sorry
), or thrillers, crime novels, horrors, sci-fi, historical fiction. All these genres can be fully enjoyed in French originals, without lacking the amount or quality. For example, I see that one might not wish to read George Martin in translation or avoid it, but majority of the authors of the same genre are by far not as awesome, not enough to make me cry out of feeling of missing out
.
When it comes to non obligatory non-fiction, I believe French can satisfy most readers too, whether the interest lies in physics, history, philosophy, or chemistry. Sure, it is definitely possible to argument there are more books being published in English, but you cannot read them all in a lifetime anyways (just like you cannot speak with all the natives of a language). And it is true that the majority of research, and the best research, in most areas is being published in English. But there are many areas where English is just one of the most important languages, where top researchers use English as a second language and publish in French too, and sometimes earlier than in English. And for the needs of an amateur non-fiction reader, it may often be less relevant who the most important archeologist is than who are very good popular archeology writers.
The hard point is the beginning. Looking for the first few quality authors suiting your needs, after that Amazon will give you recommendations
P.S. 50 books this year?!!!!!!! WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!! That is awesome!!! I feel ashamed as I am only somewhere around 20.