Ani wrote:Morgana wrote: Do I need to know about Chinese history to read this book? My knowledge is non-existent in that department. How would the reading buddy thing work? I think once I commit to it I'll definitely fail to read it, but I'm already not reading it, so things cannot get any worse (Btw I do also have Bröderna Lejonhjärta, but I think I'm saving it for a few books down the line... I have so many already! I've turned into an ebook hoarder!)
Pardon my butting in.. I did struggle with the Chinese history aspect (lack of knowledge on my part) but in the English & French at least there are some foot notes to help.
You two better get going before we all start reading the second book
Is this a forum wide read along? Who else is reading? @Morgana, you don't need to know all that much, just roughly what the Cultural Revolution was and why. I had to read Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress (also available in French, Ani, in case you're interested!) for a class, and that gave me the background I needed. A quick wikipedia look-up would also help
Morgana wrote:How would the reading buddy thing work? I think once I commit to it I'll definitely fail to read it, but I'm already not reading it, so things cannot get any worse (Btw I do also have Bröderna Lejonhjärta, but I think I'm saving it for a few books down the line... I have so many already! I've turned into an ebook hoarder!)
I have no clue Maybe we can talk about it with each other in our logs or PMs? What we've enjoyed, what we didn't like? We can do it without goals, instead just updating each other on where we are so we don't actually spoil something. Or maybe we can both try to read it and then talk to each other about it when we're done? My husband has a reading buddy in the US, and they write letters to eachother about the book, sometimes while they're reading, sometimes when they've finished. We can do something like that, except more digitally. It can be a low pressure kind of thing
Morgana wrote:I was going to ask you how your Finnish was these days! It has been a long, slow process to change my attitude about language learning, and that process is still ongoing. I have a tendency to turn everything into work even when there's no need to do so, and it sucks the fun out of everything. So, I am working on just having fun, not having goals, not worrying about how I'm doing or when I'll get to some specific destination, and rather try to enjoy each day's contact with the languages, whatever form that contact takes. It's very much not my personality type, so it's intentional practice for now, but hopefully overtime I will "chill out" and convert the "chilling out" into the default approach. And so it is with wanderlust: it used to be a source of stress (distraction! extra work! more inevitably failed attempts and disappointment!), but if I'm interested in having fun and being curious and not worried about goals/timelines/perfection, then it sort of opens up that avenue and frees it from being this potential detriment to everything else. And it frees me from having to think of anything I start as yet another long-term commitment. You said something important: "At the end of the day, I know what I want," and that's the key. Knowing what one wants to get out of something, and also knowing why (ie. that the "want" has solid foundation and isn't an externally-inspired "want" and thus a bit fragile). When you sort that out, it's a lot harder to get side-tracked.
Thanks for this comment Elenia, I quite appreciated it.
I'm glad I could be of help it is liberating when you remember that you can pick up and drop languages as you please/need. I enjoy being able to have fun with my languages, and while I would definitely welcome stronger skills and I would ideally have more discipline, I'm glad that I do not have the opposite feeling of stress. A language will always be there for you to get to in future, or to come back to. German isn't going to up and walk away. Finnish isn't going to disappear off the face of the earth. Of course, this is only true for the bigger languages, but those are the languages we are both talking about. The only endangered language I currently have any interest in learning is Northern Saami, and there are efforts being made to keep it going, so I don't mind holding off on that for however long it takes. Your idea of having notes to yourself where you will see them is a good idea. My sister always writes her goals on her mirror (right now, it says '2018 is the year of EASE'. It's not always easy to stick to such things, but it's good to remind yourself, and be reminded, that your languages are for your own enjoyment, and that the moment they stop being enjoyable and start being a source of stress is the moment you should scale back or take a break. Well, anyway. Now that I've waxed poetic, I should really go and get some