


To be honest, this is still interfering with my pleasure every now and then, but mostly I'm just reading I got through Das doppelte Lottchen in a little more than a day.Īnd what a terrific book it is! Luise, nine, is at summer camp when a girl turns up who looks exactly like her. But here's the amazing thing: I find I'm reading the books like a seven-year-old! The first few times I couldn't do it, because I was still spending too much effort acquiring the grammar and vocabulary. I'm guessing I now have the German reading age of a bright seven-year-old. I discover, to my surprise and delight, that there is a solution to this problem! I have recently been making efforts to improve my very unsatisfactory German (it's the language two-thirds of Switzerland speaks, even if they don't speak it here in Geneva), and I've been using my normal method of simply picking things up and reading them, starting with very easy stuff and gradually moving towards more challenging material. It's hard to keep focused on what's actually going on.

But now, you're too sophisticated you keep on thinking about the author's style, and how he's manipulating you into believing this and expecting that, and anyway you saw someone else do it better in that book you read a few years ago. Once, you'd just get completely absorbed by the story and follow it breathlessly as it progressed, identifying with the characters and willing things to come out right for them. I often see people here on Goodreads complaining that they can no longer read books the way they used to when they were kids.
