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Books worth reading | ||
 Language Learning Forum : Books, Literature & Reading |  | |
| FSI Senior Member United States Joined 6350 days ago 550 posts - 590 votes  Speaks: English* | Message 9 of 21 24 August 2007 at 5:50am | IP Logged | ||
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You can find many English audiobooks at Project Gutenberg and Librivox.
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| Volte Tetraglot Senior Member Switzerland Joined 6430 days ago 4474 posts - 6726 votes Speaks: English*, Esperanto, German, Italian Studies: French, Finnish, Mandarin, Japanese | Message 10 of 21 24 August 2007 at 6:59am | IP Logged | ||
I second this suggestion, and also suggest the collaborative list of audiobook sites. Edited by Volte on 24 August 2007 at 6:59am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Aka-gold Newbie Russian Federation Joined 6293 days ago 2 posts - 2 votes Speaks: Russian* | Message 11 of 21 24 August 2007 at 7:17am | IP Logged | ||
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Thank you so much
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| furyou_gaijin Senior Member Japan Joined 6377 days ago 540 posts - 631 votes Speaks: Latin* | Message 12 of 21 24 August 2007 at 9:20am | IP Logged | ||
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I second Marc's reccomendations of Boris Vian and Robert Musil. Vian is indeed intranslatable, but so are many things...
In Serbian, nothing goes beyong Milorad Pavic. In Russian, there are many things, really, but my absolute favourite for a few years now has been Sasha Sokolov. Very few people know him in Russia or outside of the country yet his 'School for Fools' is among the greatest prose works of the 20th century. (Although his writing is only accessible to the most advanced students of the language, I'm afraid...) If you're looking for short stories, Mikhail Veller is the unsurpassed king of the genre. Needless to say, all Russian books are available for free on the web for anyone who cares to look for them. In Japanese, I'm quite fond of Murakami Ryuu and have a profound dislike of Murakami Haruki but that's a personal preference and not everyone's cup of tea... I also sometimes say that Japanese literature started and finished in the 10th century with the great Heian women... (^_-) In Finnish, you might want to check out Arto Paasilinna's works. It's very much like Almodovar's films, though: crazy but in a rather predictable way once you've seen (read) a few of them... If I can think of anything that stands out in any other language, I will post it here too... Edited by furyou_gaijin on 24 August 2007 at 9:22am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Captain Haddock Diglot Senior Member Japan kanjicabinet.tumblr. Joined 6759 days ago 2282 posts - 2814 votes Speaks: English*, Japanese Studies: French, Korean, Ancient Greek | Message 13 of 21 24 August 2007 at 9:44am | IP Logged | ||
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Although Umberto Eco writes in Italian, he is extremely talented and works quite closely with his also-very-talented translators. I particularly recommend:
- Foucault's Pendulum - The Name of the Rose - Baudolino If I ever learn Italian, his originals will be high on my must-read list. I have only read them in English, but the wordplay in Foucault's Pendulum is astonishing in places. Jules Verne is wonderful in French, of course. Japanese: I just finished the 15-volume manga series "Iriyaddo" and was highly impressed. The Da Vinci Code hardly holds a candle to it in terms of international adventure and historical mystery. Edited by Captain Haddock on 24 August 2007 at 9:48am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| FSI Senior Member United States Joined 6350 days ago 550 posts - 590 votes Speaks: English* | Message 14 of 21 24 August 2007 at 11:44am | IP Logged | ||
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I second the suggestion of Jules Verne in French; they are adventure novels, through and through, which is fun for me, as I hardly ever read adventure novels. Furthermore, my first exposure to Verne as a child came from the Wishbone episode of Journey to the Center of the Earth. It wasn't until this year I read the book itself, and it was fun to remember the original episode that first raised my consciousness of it.
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| wordwizard Diglot Newbie Canada none Joined 6381 days ago 14 posts - 15 votes Speaks: English*, German | Message 15 of 21 24 August 2007 at 3:26pm | IP Logged | ||
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I'm reading a German book called Marion Doenhoff:Ein widerstaendiges Leben by Alice Schwarzer. It's about this aristocratic lady who was involved in the July 1944 plot to assassinate Hitler and about her postwar life. I bought the book secondhand some years ago and read what I can every year. It is really interesting to see how my vocabulary and understanding has improved since the last reading. I also just found out that the author Alice Schwarzer herself is pretty interesting.
By the way, how does one type umlauts and the German SS? I'm sure there is some method but I haven't figured it out yet. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| sluggy Bilingual Tetraglot Newbie Canada Joined 6294 days ago 24 posts - 29 votes Speaks: English*, Russian*, French, Spanish Studies: Japanese | Message 16 of 21 24 August 2007 at 9:12pm | IP Logged | ||
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Someone mentioned poetry, which reminds me - Marceline Desbordes-Valmore has some awesome stuff. I especially like her poems "Le Mal du Pays" and "N'écris pas."
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