eebeejay Newbie Canada Joined 4480 days ago 34 posts - 43 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Norwegian, Latin, French
| Message 513 of 656 20 August 2012 at 6:06am | IP Logged |
I hope I'm not too late to the game but I'm going to work on a half super duper challenge for French. This sounds like exactly what I need to force it to stick in my brain and actually be successful this time.
1 person has voted this message useful
|
kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4889 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish
| Message 514 of 656 22 August 2012 at 3:56am | IP Logged |
I'm currently at 17.2 books, which feels pretty good. It's definitely easier reading on my kindle than trying to read an actual paperback. And the combination of 6-week Challenge and Super Challenge has been great - I like seeing how much time I actually spend reading versus 'studying,' and it's motivated me to read in longer chunks of time.
1. Vingt mille lieues sous les mers - première partie. Jules Verne, 1870.
2. Madame Bovary. Gustave Flaubert, 1856.
3. Le Grand Meaulnes. Alain-Fournier, 1913.
4. Le hussard sur le toit. Jean Giono, 1951.
5. Harry Potter et l'école des sorciers. J.K. Rowling, 1999
It's been ten years since I read this in English, and it was a pleasure to revisit it. I found myself staying up late just to finish a chapter, just like I did back then.
6. L'immoraliste. André Gide, 1905
The story of a man's sensual and sexual awakening. On his honeymoon in North Africa Michel spends more time walking in the gardens with the local Arab youth than he does his with new bride. He yearns to trade in his scholarly life for one more full of passion.
I thought it was a fasciniating story of a turn-of-the-century closet case, but deeper readers might see that the novel explores the classic universal problem of individual freedom, identity, and what constitutes “life”.
Flics
17. Camille Claudel (Bruno Nuytten, 1988). A biography of the sculptor Camille Claudel, a mistress of Rodin.
Every other scene was filmed in the shadows, there was lots of dramatic music, there were lingering closeups of Isabelle Adjani's cheekbones, and Gérard Xavier Marcel Depardieu put in a star turn playing Gérard Xavier Marcel Depardieu . I mean, playing Rodin. The critics loved it. I didn't.
18. Le Havre (Aki Kaurismäki, 2011) A sweet, sad, funny movie; one of the best I've seen this year.
From the official site: In this warmhearted portrait of the French harbor city that gives the film its name, fate throws young African refugee Idrissa (Blondin Miguel) into the path of Marcel Marx (André Wilms), a well-spoken bohemian who works as a shoeshiner. With innate optimism and the unwavering support of his community, Marcel stands up to officials doggedly pursuing the boy for deportation. A political fairy tale that exists somewhere between the reality of contemporary France and the classic cinema of Jean-Pierre Melville and Marcel Carné, Le Havre is a charming, deadpan delight.
And now I'm torn about which novel to tackle next. If anyone is familiar with the classics, I could use some advice! Specifically, which one of these is the least difficult - Stendhal (Le rouge at le noir), Balzac (Le père Goriot), Zola (L'oeuvre), Maupassant (Bel ami), Proust (Du côté de chez Swann) or Hugo (the first volume of Les Misérables, Fantine). I'll be doing a lot of train and plane travelling at the end of the month, so I could use a nice meaty book to dive into, and I'll have either parallel text or English copies of these books.
These are all on my to-read list; I feel like I'm getting a college education here all over again. I'd like to start reading them in progression, easiest to hardest.
(I also have the next Harry Potter ready to go - it won't all be heavy reading)
Edited by kanewai on 22 August 2012 at 5:25am
1 person has voted this message useful
|
Hekje Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 4703 days ago 842 posts - 1330 votes Speaks: English*, Dutch Studies: French, Indonesian
| Message 515 of 656 22 August 2012 at 4:08am | IP Logged |
Reporting in for the full Super Challenge in Dutch.
Films and TV episodes (45 min+): 43 of 100
Books (units of 100 pages): 6 of 100
Books: 2 of 100
1 person has voted this message useful
|
travnett Senior Member Switzerland Joined 5013 days ago 9 posts - 13 votes Speaks: GermanB1 Studies: Spanish, French
| Message 516 of 656 22 August 2012 at 8:51am | IP Logged |
Tv Episodes: Türkisch für Anfänger S01 E1 through to S02 E18 (30X25min) = 8 of 100 films
Books: (Units of 100 pages) Hummeldumm 6 of 100, Die chemie des Todes: 20 of 100
1 person has voted this message useful
|
patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4533 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German
| Message 517 of 656 22 August 2012 at 1:08pm | IP Logged |
Hekje wrote:
Reporting in for the full Super Challenge in Dutch.
Films and TV episodes (45 min+): 43 of 100
|
|
|
Isn't the unit for a film/tv 90mins?
1 person has voted this message useful
|
geoffw Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4688 days ago 1134 posts - 1865 votes Speaks: English*, German, Yiddish Studies: Modern Hebrew, French, Dutch, Italian, Russian
| Message 518 of 656 23 August 2012 at 1:30am | IP Logged |
UPDATE - Added French Book Entry 5
Having made great strides in my French reading comprehension, I went back and read Le Petit Prince again. It went a good bit faster this time, and I understood a lot more, but I still have a good ways to go to really call it 100% comprehension. I may come back to this again in another several months as a diagnostic of my progress.
BOOKS (French)
5. Le Petit Prince
FILMS, ETC. (French)
9. ...
BOOKS (Dutch)
11. ...
FILMS, ETC. (Dutch)
10-14. ...
I am not entered in any Super Challenge for German, but I also am still reporting for my log:
BOOKS (German)
9. ...
FILMS, ETC. (German)
15-25. Das Rad der Zeit (audiobook)
1 person has voted this message useful
|
Kerrie Senior Member United States justpaste.it/Kerrie2 Joined 5395 days ago 1232 posts - 1740 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish
| Message 519 of 656 23 August 2012 at 2:08am | IP Logged |
geoffw wrote:
FILMS, ETC. (German)
15-25. Das Rad der Zeit (audiobook) |
|
|
That's one of my favorite series. You are really brave if you're reading that in any target language. I read the whole series in English (my native language), and there are still tons of words I'm not familiar with!
1 person has voted this message useful
|
geoffw Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4688 days ago 1134 posts - 1865 votes Speaks: English*, German, Yiddish Studies: Modern Hebrew, French, Dutch, Italian, Russian
| Message 520 of 656 23 August 2012 at 2:13am | IP Logged |
Kerrie wrote:
geoffw wrote:
FILMS, ETC. (German)
15-25. Das Rad der Zeit (audiobook) |
|
|
That's one of my favorite series. You are really brave if you're reading that in any target language. I read the whole series in English (my native language), and there are still tons of words I'm not familiar with! |
|
|
Well, having over the years read Tolkien's Fellowship and Two Towers, as well as Game of Thrones in German, I've got a lot of the medieval fantasy vocabulary down by now. It sounded like a lot of words and phrases in Rad der Zeit was a made up language, though (but see: Tolkien).
1 person has voted this message useful
|