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is anyone else reading english on a daily basis? (as a non-native of course)

osmodia789
I managed to read (almost) every day for the last three years and while I still have a long road ahead of me, I can certainly feel a big improvement. I don't really have a goal aside from just getting better. I only do this for my own pleasure. I wanna be able to read difficult book without ever needing a dictionary and understand every spoken word in every context. Well that's actually a big goal I guess :D I do watch a lot of english content as well. Youtube mostly. News, discussions, videos about history and just random stuff. I play my video games in english as well. It used to be my daily habbit to read novels years ago but somehow I stopped. I picked it up again and basically just switched to english instead of continuing to read in my native language, which is german. Sometimes you feel so dumb because you need to pick up your dictionary every two seconds. ( I use my smartphone and it's blessing compared to physical book). You get angry with yourself because you know you checked that word at least three times already... you almost feel like an conman, impersonating someone or something you are not. But these moments pass and the joy starts to kick in the more fluid your reading pace gets. Right now i'm reading W. Irving. Tales of a Traveler (incl. Sleepy Hollow) and I quite like it. What are your experiences? cheers \*\*\*\* PS: here is actually a list of my books I already read in english. I have a normal 40 hours work week so I would say 50 books are not that bad :D Before 2022 I only read very rarely. Feb. 2016 1) Treasure Island, Stevenson 2) Alice in Wonderland, Caroll 3) Jekyll and Hyde, Stevenson 4) Through the Looking Glass, Caroll 5) Weird Tales 1938, various 6) Sherlock Holmes Hound of Baskerville, Doyle 7) Frankenstein, Shelley 8) Time Machine, Wells 9) The Scent of Death, Beckett Dec. 2021 10) The Hobbit, Tolkien 11) Lord of the Rings, Tolkien 12) Eaters of the Dead, Crichton 13) Travels to West Africa, Kingsley 14) Silmarillion, Tolkien 15) The Pickwick Club Papers, Dickens Dec. 2022 16) don't wanna talk about this one 17) 1984, Orwell 18) Call of Cthulhu (Collection), Lovecraft 19) Brave new World, Huxley 20) War of the Worlds, Wells 21) Unfinished Tales, Tolkien 22) complete short stories of A. Bierce 23) Make Room Make Room, Harrison 24) The King in Yellow, Chambers 25) Everything that rises must converge, O'Connor 26 - 31) full collection of 6 Lovecraft books 32) Jurassic Park, Crichton 33) Men like Gods, Wells 34) The Horror Stories of R.E. Howard 35) Moby Dick, Melville Jan. 2024 36) The Fisherman, Langan 37) The Plague, Camus 38) Scenes of London, Dickens 39) something wicked this way comes, Bradbury 40) The Haunting of Hill House, Jackson 41) Uncle Toms Cabin, Stowe 42) The Loss of the Ship Essex, various 43) Rendezvous with Rama, Clarke 44) Ghost Stories, Dickens 45) we have always lived in this Castle, Jackson 46) The Stranger, Camus 47) The Great God Pan Collection, Machen 48) One Hunderd Years of Solitude, G.G. Marquez 49) The Gods Themself, I. Asimov 50) Dracula, Bram Stoker

3 comments

wackyvorlon•
Don’t worry about needing the dictionary, Lovecraft sends me to the dictionary every so often and I’m a native speaker.
odoske•
Hell yea im reading and watching everything in English but when I’m talking with my family or some friends I need to keep it simple
Loud_cupcakexo•
Yes, despite being a native speaker I’ve lived in non English speaking countries my entire so digital media/entertainment is the only way for me to consume English.