read some of the books I own.

Despite the fact that I haven’t ever finished a book in French, hope springs eternal. I had mostly weaned myself off of going into The Strand and buying anything I wanted until I found the French section behind the staircase in the basement. I picked up “No Country for Old Men”, “Everything is Illuminated”, a policier about the murder of Cinderella and a book called something like “Blame it on Mick Jagger”, which also might be a translation from English. I felt a little odd buying up translated books when I could read through the originals so much more quickly, but I’ve seen the movies to both of those books, and I figured that would guide me through them. The weekend before I picked up two pre-1930s hardcover textbook versions of Les Misérables and a Balzac book, plus a vintage policier called “to die a bit” with an especially lurid, fabulous pulp cover. If I see more of the early textbooks, I’m going to pick them up. Mine had notes from several students [“French 1 & 2, Howard University”!] and a complete glossary, which is especially useful for me since I often know the big fancy words but stumble over more basic things like “twig”.

I’m still slowly making my way through Le Petit Prince, writing down and practicing my vocabulary along the way. It has helped, although I feel like I should re-read it at the end and just pretend like I always knew all these nice, shiny new words.

I keep buying books in French, hoping that someday I’ll be able to read them. I think it’s time for me to start doing that! Today I found my copy of Le Petit Prince and I’d like to start reading with that one. I’ve been reading Parisian newspapers, so a kid’s book should be much easier, right?

I was reading a book I’d borrowed from a friend at my last book swap. It’s the first part of the Ghormenghast trilogy. I’d watched the miniseries that the BBC made out of the first two books and had loved that, but the book was… Well, my boyfriend picked it up one day to see what I was reading and he thought it was impenetrable. It has dense, thick writing and while I wasn’t so worried about that, I’d gotten 200 pages into the 500 page book and still felt like I was maybe 20 minutes into the 6 hour mini-series. I felt like I was plodding through rather than enjoying myself, so I asked my boyfriend to put it on my TBR shelf and grab something else at random.

I was really hoping that I’d like Ghormenghast and that I’d read the whole trilogy enthralled, but I guess it’s not meant to be…

I feel a little stalled out on this goal. I did well before I moved, but then I stopped reading once I got through some of the easier things.

Lately we’ve had some down time at work when we’re waiting for people to get back to us or whatever and I’ve been reading books online. I finished off Prisoner of Zenda the other day and have started in on Pride and Prejudice. I probably shouldn’t be staring at the screen all day, but it’s better than surfing endlessly. I read pretty quickly too.

read some of them. The graphic novels have been the easiest to plow through, but I have also made progress on the regular old books too. I’ve been adding them to the pile for the swap on Saturday as I finish them off… We still have awhile before we move into the new place and I’m hoping I’ll get in more reading time before then.

When I went through my bookshelves decluttering, I found a bunch of books that I thought were worth reading, but maybe not worth moving. I have awhile before I need to move, so I’d like to get through a good chunk of them and offer them at my next book swap. I need to firm up how many I have and try to make a little progress each week.

Today I read three little chapbooks I’d bought. One was a chunk of Dracula that had been taken out of the manuscript, another featured a set of illustrators from the US+UK, and a third was a short comic book called “Snowmonkeys in Japan”.