Once more, it's hard to call these things interesting when I'm talking about myself, but that's the name of the group, so . . .
1) The only time I get to read books anymore is when I go to bed. I read aloud and bore Jane to sleep. A fun time is had by all.
2) My first few baby words were in German, and between high school and college I took 4 years of Deutsch classes. What I really liked about this is it allowed me to stumble through Beowulf in Old English. It wasn't easy, but man it was great.
3) I took a break while I was deciding whether to be a chef or musician or librarian or what. During those two years I worked a driving job where I had a good 6 hours each shift to do nothing but read. Sometimes I miss it, but I don't miss the lousy pay.
4) I learned how to pronounce the Russian alphabet. I have no clue how to read or speak Russian, but it was fun to pick up a book and read it aloud. I've since forgotten how to do this, but it doesn't take much time to get it down and you will be the life of the party. Seriously.
5) I tried to read the Bible all the way through, but when I got to the Midianites my better judgment caught up with me.
6) There are these cool language tutorials called "See it and Say it in _______." There are little stick figure pictures, along with simple phrases about what's going on. I've been through the French one, the Spanish and the German. They're really fun.
7) Back when I read the paper, I did it in this order: comics, business, sports, recycling. (Can you tell I'm grasping at straws now?)
8) I buy books at yard sales and resell them to the bookstore. Maybe different stores have different policies, but the ones my store really likes are: hardbound underground comics; GLBT and women's studies; coffee table books with good pictures; books in languages people want to speak: Spanish, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Arabic.
9) Don't buy Tom Clancey novels at yardsales thinking the bookstore is going to want them. Well, maybe your bookstore; definitely not mine. Don't expect to sell the bookstore books in Dutch, Greek, or Hindi.
10) If you want to brush aside the junk on the web and find a site with the information you need, get good at using Google Advanced Search (especially the part that allows you to exclude pages containing certain words). Start your search and pay attention to what you *don't* want. Identify words that tend to pop up on those pages, but wouldn't be on the pages you want. Go back, exclude those words and start over. After your fifth or sixth false start, you'll be finding good information.
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Comments: 14
The stuff about books is cool too.
Jessie, I used to sell at BookSmart, but they didn't always have someone buying who knew what they were doing. I now sell to Half Price Books because they'll take LPs, cassettes and CDs - saving me a few other stops.
I have to admit that I only speak English, really, but I did take enough French in High School that I can read it pretty well, and use a dictionary when I have problems. When I was a senior, one of our assignments was to translate a chapter of either Camille, The Little Prince or The Count of Monte Cristo, from the original French. I chose The Little Prince. It was not easy, but it was fun.
Like Kathleen, I read and loved The Canterbury Tales and Boccacio. I haven't tried Beowulf, (I am familiar with the story.) but did do The Faerie Queene. I"ve read some of the Niebelungenlied (in English), because my husband forced me to tape the Ring Cycle from PBS when we were first married. We had only one television at the time. It was torture. He has almost paid me back for it, after 16 years.
I would never try to pronounce anything in French either. My high school teacher learned to speak French in Haiti as a missionary, and spoke with a Southern Accent. I would never want someone to think I had cursed their mother on purpose because I wasn't taught correct vowel formation. : )
We also have a friend from Columbia who is teaching them some Spanish, and a future daughter in law who speaks the two above languages, as well as Italian and German. Her mother is from Austria and her father from Italy. She was born here. We aren't pushing this hard, but are kind of hoping they pick up some interest in different cultures and possibilities, even if they don't pick up the language.
No wonder I like your style so much.
About the kids...they are all very bright and precocious Jedi in training...making them worldly is a way to keep them occupied so that they don't mess up the house too much. I'm hoping that it keeps them away from the Dark Side of the Force. (My son in law is a Star Wars buff. He is the Jedi Master. He calls the Three younger kids "Jedi in training" ages 6,8 and 15)