I used to be a reader

[kareina]

When I was a child I spent most of my time with a nose in a book. This form of childhood mostly continued until my current decade--while I developed many other hobbies and interests over the years I still always found lots of time to spend curled up with a book. There exists no record of how many books I read in those days, but there are hundreds of books on my shelves, most of them read many times, because I have always been an addicted re-reader. At a guess I would say that I re-read four books for every one new book I read.

However, starting in 2005 I started keeping track of what I was reading. Just in time to track a huge decrease in how much I have been reading. Last year I managed only 12 books! (eight of which were in Swedish). This year isn't looking much better. I just finished my second book of the year, and the first one barely counts, since I finished it on the 6th of January, after 207 days of reading it.

Today's book completed was Kalle och choklad fabriken (Charlie and the Chocolate Factory), a book I read many times in English as a child. In fact, as a child I often read it at one sitting. The Swedish version, on the other hand, just took me 57 days to complete! That hardly counts as reading at all...

Comments

[corvideye.livejournal.com]

Hardly counts as reading?? I should say it counts double! It is probably engaging more of your brain than reading has done since you were very small.

[darttn.livejournal.com]

I don't think that it counts as a 'decrease' in reading, when you change languages with which you are devouring. It is not only reading, but learning the language at the same time, So, because it takes you 57 days versus 1 day in your native English, just means that you are learning the language at a great rate of speed, and as a side benefit, you are reading as well. So there! Now if you are going to track, track how long it takes you to read a Swedish book, versus another Swedish book of the same technical difficulty, then you will see if you have increased your speed.
Love you
Mom

[zzambrose.livejournal.com]

OTOH, that's pretty amazing. Reading in Swedish, I mean. I have yet to reach the point where I can read a newspaper in Greek, much less a piece of fiction. I once successfully read 'Winnie la pooh' in Esperanto, but that's cheating on several levels. I still remember (perhaps faultily) the phrase "La geamikoj ke geparencoj de Kuniklo" (Friends and relations of Rabbit) but that's about all.

[sismith42.livejournal.com]

Get audio-book versions of the ones you've loved, and listen in Swedish while you do other things?