I have no more exams, I am free for quite a long time, and naturally I should make as good use as possible of that time. I have many plans, probably way too many. As usual.
Yesterday I started reading another Norwegian book, or rather a book in Norwegian, Døren by Magda Szabó. The original is Hungarian, and I thought I should get some more exposure to Hungarian literature without necessarily waiting to read it in Hungarian. I very recently finished Jeg skal vise dere frykten by Nikolaj Frobenius, which I liked, but I was not absolutely thrilled about it. I fell in love with this new book from the first couple of pages though, so all is looking good.
But there are more books, there always are.
I am also going to start reading Russland og russere, Russia and Russians, a book about... well it's rather obvious. I am very much looking forward to it, since I usually like these kinds of books very much. Shortly I will make a post on books on culture that I have found very useful. It's also in Norwegian, which is great since this gives me increased literary Norwegian influence.
Furthermore, I am taking a class on the history of nationalism this spring at a Swedish University, and I plan to at least skim through the two books I have ordered for it. There are three books on the curriculum, but the third one was sold out, which is a bit troublesome. Swedish books! Or at least one of them was Swedish...
Russian then? Of course, there's always a Russian book! I started reading Dostoyevsky's Бедные Люди (Poor Folks) the day before yesterday. It's very short; I have already read 13% of it on my Kindle, and I am looking forward to reading the rest! I really wanted to read the Brothers Karamazov or the Idiot, but I didn't feel like starting on a huge book just yet.
Finally, I also have ambitious plans about reading a little bit of Anne az élet iskolájában (L.M. Montgomery). I really don't have any idea about how much comprehension I am aiming at and what degree of dictionary use I am going to allow myself. I am really going to try to read it in a highly relaxed way and tried to get through as many pages as possible instead of as many understood words as possible.
And I am very well aware that French is missing. I will see if that can't be fixed.
I would say those are my reading plans for Christmas. Add to that ambitious grammar study and big amounts of wine and chocolate. And ridiculous amounts of Christmas cookies when I go home to Sweden, cause you know... mothers and so on...
Регина, привет, Вы как? Давно в ЖЖ ничего не пишете)) Я сейчас пересматривала свою ЖЖ-ленту друзей.
ReplyDeleteЯ тоже немножко стала учить венгерский; у меня есть студент-венгр, и он занимается у меня ДРЕВНЕирландским! Представляете?
*Ребекка ;)
ReplyDeleteПривет! У меня всё хорошо! А у Вас? Я так долго не была на ЖЖ, что я сейчас боюсь снова входить)) Венгры всегда мне кажутся такими умными людьми! Древнеирландский, уф, это... ОН наверно очень серьёзный студент. Он много языками владеет?
Hi Tricours,
ReplyDeleteI enjoy following your posts from the HTLAL days -- very informative and thoughtful, and very impressive achievements!
You'd mentioned Kindle and reading in Russian on it, so I wanted to ask how exactly does that work, and if you are happy with it?
-- Do you use an FSB port for uploads, in other words, can you by-pass Amazon store and upload anything directly from your computer?
-- Are you able to upload files in text format onto it, or do you have to use PDFs? (hence, can you use any of the dictionary, highlight, bookmark functionality on the Russian texts?)
I am hoping to get something that my mom can use to read in Russian, so I would greatly appreciate any comments or thoughts that you may be able to share.
Kind regards, and best of luck in all your endeavors!
Varia
Thank you very much Varia!
ReplyDeleteThe Kindle comes with a USB cable. You just connect it to the computer and it works like any external units, like a USB stick for example. You can read PDFs and txt-documents directly on the Kindle by simply moving the files to the directory, or you can turn them into e-books using Mobipocket Creator, http://www.mobipocket.com/en/DownloadSoft/ProductDetailsCreator.asp. However, to be able to read in Russian at all you have to jailbreak your Kindle and hack it, http://blogkindle.com/2009/10/unicode-font-hack-v0-2-now-for-kindle-international-too/
You can highlight, add bookmarks and comments to a Russian text, but I have no idea how it would work with a dictionary. I only have the English dictionary that came with the Kindle.
Thank you very much, Tricours! This is very helpful. Happy Holidays and exciting new reads to you!
ReplyDeleteVaria