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