Russian:
Ugh. I'm tried to read анна каренина but am finding it tedious. I know Dostoyevsky's opinion
of Tolstoy was not particularly high and as a Dostoyevsky fan it rubbed off on me. The book
is certainly readable ... just not finding the story very interesting.
So I started reading Человек в высоком замке instead, which is a nice change ... but I don't
have audio for it. I don't want to fall back into the trap of silent reading. Maybe I should
read it out loud. Lots of great new vocabulary, though, like Гексаграмма and Тысячелистник.
More importantly, I've crossed the halfway point on my march to the mythical number of 1760,
where I will magically have C1 powers in Russian. The problem is that, as of right now, my
skills are really skewed. Reading is strong, everything else is trailing behind.
So ... reading is going to go on the back burner for a while as I take a shotgun approach to
fixing my other skills. I've added Modern Russian and RussianPod101 (using the Ari's Chinesepod
method in its basic form) to LearnRussianRT for course work.
I guess all these courses will take 400 hours, which is going to make it hard for me to reach my
reading targets. So I will have to read faster or something.
Italian:
The Desert of the Tartars is a highbrow book and, as such, is an acquired taste.
Having said that, it's a really good highbrow book, much better than many that are more
famous. I'm winding down and only have about five chapters left and will be sad when
it's over. I'm thinking of reading
Il giardino dei Finzi-Contini next.
I tried watching an episode of
Don Matteo. Just like
Un Passo dal Cielo,
it reminded me a lot of Quincy (US show from the 1980s). Some fish out of water with
genius powers solves murders that baffle the detectives, and there are subplots that
are comical in a cutesy way. I can't take it.
Il Commissario Montalbano still seems like
the best TV option.
Courses
ru: Glossika (GSR 1 -- 56/104)
Learn Russian RT (12/100)
Modern Russian (2/36)
Ari's Chinesepod Method for Russian (5/395)
it: Language Transfer (18/45)
tr: Language Transfer (16/44)