The other day I decided to update my bookshelves on
Goodreads and I discovered that I am currently reading more books than I realised
. What happens is that I tend to start reading new books quite frequently on an impulse, then I leave them aside because I start on other books which I find even more interesting and appealing. I need to be better at keeping track of my own reading, and Goodreads is a nice tool for that. I will use it more frequently than in the past.
So what am I currently reading? According to my entries on Goodreads, three books in Russian, two in German, one in French and one in Italian. They are:
RussianБелые ночи (white nights) by Dostoyevsky. I've already talked about it in my previous post. Ditto for
И снег приносит чудеса: Рождественская история.. I never seem to get through this Christmas story during the Christmas break. I already tried last year but gave up. This year my Russian has improved, so I have advanced much further, and I'll try to get to the end of it to find out what the miracles referred to in the title are.
Почему языки такие разные (Why are languages so different), by Vladimir Plungyan. I started this book more than a year ago but only got through a couple of chapters. I'll get back to it though, it is enjoyable to read a book about languages in Russian.
In general, my list of read Russian books should hopefully increase significantly this year as my reading ability gets better.
GermanMozart - Sein Leben und Schaffen: Komplettausgabe: Die Biografie von Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, by Karl Storck. This is a "heavy" Mozart biography of more than 500 pages and I got about halfway before I took a break from it last autumn. I do intend to finish it though, slowly but surely.
Die Kunst der Freiheit: In Zeiten zunehmender Unfreiheit (The Art of Freedom: In Times of Increasing "Unfreedom"), by Alexander van der Bellen. I started reading this book by the newly elected President of Austria only three days ago, but I am already well into it, as Mr. van der Bellen is an interesting personality who is not afraid to take positions that may not be seen as politically correct in our times. As the book is not very long I should finish it pretty soon.
FrenchLe facteur temps ne sonne jamais deux fois (The Time Factor never calls twice), by Etienne Klein. I've also mentioned this book before in my log. It explores the concept of time and what time actually is from a scientific point of view. It is an interesting read, but I am progressing slowly, not because of the French, but because the ideas and concepts put forward in the book are not always easy to grasp for a non-scientist. I therefore need more time
.
ItalianGenerazione Erasmus: Il coraggio della responsabilità (The Erasmus Generation: The Courage of Responsability), by Sandro Gozi. Mr. Gozi is an Italian politician, member of the outgoing Renzi government, and a specialist in European affairs. It is pretty political, so I won't go into it here, only to say that it calls for a new generation (the Erasmus generation) to carry out reforms in order to save the European ideal.
My list of books to read is currently at 23, but in reality there are a lot more in my Kindle which I could add to those. I try to keep my list manageable though, there are still books I entered in Goodreads back in 2013 which are on the "to-read-list".