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Have any books ever disheartened you? | ||
Tags: Motivation | Book | ||
 Language Learning Forum : Books, Literature & Reading |  | |
| Rykketid Diglot Groupie Italy Joined 4823 days ago 88 posts - 146 votes  Speaks: Italian*, English Studies: French | Message 1 of 23 10 September 2011 at 8:30pm | IP Logged | ||
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I mean... Have you ever found a book which was really hard to understand, with a lot of
words that you had never seen before and that made you lose heart? This happened to me with "Maurice" by E. M Forster some years ago and it is not a good feeling at all... Have you ever had alike experiences? What books made you feel like that? And what have you done? Did you give up or take that as a personal challenge? 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Teango Triglot Winner TAC 2010 & 2012 Senior Member United States teango.wordpress.comRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5546 days ago 2210 posts - 3734 votes Speaks: English*, German, Russian Studies: Hawaiian, French, Toki Pona | Message 2 of 23 10 September 2011 at 9:00pm | IP Logged | ||
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For me it was "Der Tod in Venedig" (Death in Venice) by Thomas Mann whilst studying German last year. It was simply out of my league at the time, so after furrowing my brow for a couple of hours, I shelved it as a challenge for another day. Luckily I decided to move on to Patrick Süskind's "Das Parfüm", which I found much easier to read, and this swiftly restored my motivation. :) Edited by Teango on 10 September 2011 at 9:03pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Cavesa Triglot Senior Member Czech Republic Joined 4999 days ago 3277 posts - 6779 votes Speaks: Czech*, FrenchC2, EnglishC1 Studies: Spanish, German, Italian | Message 3 of 23 10 September 2011 at 10:00pm | IP Logged | ||
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Funkční histologie (functional histology but I doubt it ever got translated) by prof.Konrádová
I tried to read the textbook in czech but sometimes I felt as if it was in foreign language. Five lines long sentences and chaotic approach to sentence structure and punctuation were too much for me. Add to it the amount of standard latin derived terminology and strange foreign word creations in place of quite normal and perfectly suitable czech words (I believe some were trully invented by the author with the purpose to make histoly even harder to study). I decided to leave it and study from something else. It was disheartening, it made me ask myself whether I hadn't overestimated myself when I was unable to get through a textbook. So I left it buried under a pile of other books, studied from other sources and came back only to read a chapter non covered anywhere else. From foreign languages there were several French books but none left impression strong enough for me to remember. p.s. sorry if you think it is too off topic but the book really fulfilled the definition by OP 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4818 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 4 of 23 17 September 2011 at 4:28am | IP Logged | ||
Similar experience, some years back. I looked at it again this year, and it didn't seem so bad. I'm concentrating on Fontane at the moment, but will turn to Mann again eventually. n.b. since discovering "Listening-Reading", I think the value of listening to an audiobook really helps. Also reading a translation first. If you can get them. You don't (necessarily) need an actual parallel text, although it could be even more helpful. Edited by montmorency on 17 September 2011 at 11:54pm 3 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5756 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 5 of 23 17 September 2011 at 2:39pm | IP Logged | ||
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There should have been many books like that, but I early on decided that if the book is really out of my league I will improve enough to understand it in due time. And if I don't, I choose to see it as a sign of poor writing.
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| Emiliana Diglot Groupie Germany Joined 5104 days ago 81 posts - 98 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Arabic (classical) | Message 6 of 23 17 September 2011 at 2:59pm | IP Logged | ||
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I once tried to read a book by Toni Morrison. I don't even remember the title, but I barely grasped anything. Still, I had the feeling that this is great literature, though I never read any translation. After all, this is a long time ago and maybe I should give it another try. And to the question what I did: well, after a while I just stopped reading...
Btw as a native speaker of a certain language (in my case German) it is really fascinating to see how books are perceived by non-natives. Personally, I think that Thomas Mann writes in a very clear and easy way, while Patrick Süßkind's "Parfüm" is a more neboulus kind of story (but still great of course). Edited by Emiliana on 17 September 2011 at 3:05pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| montmorency Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 4818 days ago 2371 posts - 3676 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Danish, Welsh | Message 7 of 23 18 September 2011 at 12:02am | IP Logged | ||
How do you find Christa Wolf? I bought several of her books, because she was a significant (former) East German figure in the literary world, and her name was always cropping up, but to be honest, I found her style fairly opaque. Having said that, I haven't tried them for a couple of years, and I might have made sufficient progress by now. However, if I still have problems, I think I will just look for translations (and go back to the originals after having read the translations). 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Emiliana Diglot Groupie Germany Joined 5104 days ago 81 posts - 98 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Arabic (classical) | Message 8 of 23 18 September 2011 at 12:11am | IP Logged | ||
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I've never read anything from Christa Wolf but what I heared is that her writing is rather "transcendental". Sorry that I can't tell you more.
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