January Wrap Up: Reading and Languages

As the title suggest, this January has been a mix of two things, and two things only. I have read much, and I have done a lot of language study... which most of the time has meant reading more and watching a cookery video or a quiz show every now and again. Who says learning languages isn't fun?

The two books that I reviewed are the only two that I finished this month: Sommarboken by Tove Jansson and Mio, min Mio by Astrid Lindgren. They were fantastic books, and I am pretty sure that they are widely translated, so I really recommend them.

Otherwise I have been slowly reading my way through Bone Jack by Sarah Crowe and The Cyberiad by Stanislaw Lem in English. These are both very great, very different books. Bone Jack feels like it straddles the border of middle grade and young adult fiction, a very dark coming of age story. I've been wanting to read it for a very long time, and it is not disappointing me thus far. The only problem is that I feel as though I have to draw it out. It would be so easy to gobble it up all in one sitting, but then I'd be finished and I don't think I'd be doing the book justice. The Cyberiad is wonderful - very silly, and very entertaining. A goodreads reviewer said that they wished they spoke Polish to enjoy all that word play in the original and I thought: 'Well, Polish has been on my hitlist for a while, now...'   But don't worry. I'm holding myself back.*

My foreign language 'currently reading' includes Pride and Prejudice, which I am racing through in Swedish translation, Tintenherz, which I am reading with the German Bookclub on A Language Learners Forum and Die unendliche Geschichte, which I am supposedly tandem reading with a friend. We are not so good at keeping on schedule. I am also intensively rereading through Kaninhjärta on ReadLang. I don't know why it didn't occur to me to read it on ReadLang before, but it has now, at the very least.

I guess that here is as good a place as any to put reading goals for February, so...

I hope that, by the end of February, I have finished reading both Bone Jack and The Cyberiad. I am still not sure what should be my next book. If I work through my bookshelf, the next thing should be Darkmans, which remains unfinished despite all of my good intentions. Otherwise, there are thousands** of books clamouring for my attention.

For the foreign language reads, I have no particularly ambitious goals, beyond finishing Stolthet och fördom, which will probably happen this week, and catching up with myself in my read-through of Kaninhjärta. I would also like to get back up to speed with Die unendliche Geschichte, and keep up to speed with Tintenherz. As I am going to both Sweden and Germany this month, I would like to buy at least one new book in both languages. But more on that later.

Happy Reading!
Little Newman

*For now.
**Exaggeration.