I used to be a reader

[kareina]

When I was a child I spent most of my time with a nose in a book. This form of childhood mostly continued until my current decade--while I developed many other hobbies and interests over the years I still always found lots of time to spend curled up with a book. There exists no record of how many books I read in those days, but there are hundreds

Comments

[corvideye]

Hardly counts as reading?? I should say it counts double! It is probably engaging more of your brain than reading has done since you were very small.

[kareina]

lol, ok, it might count as double, but twice two books so far this year is still only four books in two months--I used to read at least one a week, often more. See my reply to my mother below about time spent reading.

[darttn]

I don't think that it counts as a 'decrease' in reading, when you change languages with which you are devouring. It is not only reading, but learning the language at the same time, So, because it takes you 57 days versus 1 day in your native English, just means that you are learning the language at a great rate of speed, and as a side benefit, you are reading as well. So there! Now if you are going to track, track how long it takes you to read a Swedish book, versus another Swedish book of the same technical difficulty, then you will see if you have increased your speed.
Love you
Mom

[kareina]

Nah, it does count as a decrease, as the reason it takes 57 days isn't that the reading itself is so much slower, but because I am just not putting in the hours I used to. These days I rarely read for more than 20 or 30 minutes at a time, and rarely more than one time in a day, and not every day. Does that sound like the child you raised?

[darttn]

Only 20-30 minutes a day???? No, that does not sound like the child I raised. You have changed haven't you!

[kareina]

life is busy!

[zzambrose]

OTOH, that's pretty amazing. Reading in Swedish, I mean. I have yet to reach the point where I can read a newspaper in Greek, much less a piece of fiction. I once successfully read 'Winnie la pooh' in Esperanto, but that's cheating on several levels. I still remember (perhaps faultily) the phrase "La geamikoj ke geparencoj de Kuniklo" (Friends and relations of Rabbit) but that's about all.

[kareina]

It is WAY easier to read a piece of fiction in another language than a newspaper IF you choose fiction that you have already read in your own language (see above on my tendency to re-read stuff). If you know what is supposed to happen in a chapter you don't have to stop to look up so many words, as you can understand so many new ones from context (which is the same way we grew our vocabulary in our own language--learning words from context, and only stopping to look up words if there wasn't enough context to figure it out). With a newspaper the information provided is all new, so you cannot as easily predict what it should say, and therefore it is harder to read.

I just wish my understanding spoken Swedish was as good as my reading. There are still so many words I understand when I see them in writing that I simply don't recognize when I hear them.

[sismith42]

Get audio-book versions of the ones you've loved, and listen in Swedish while you do other things?

[kareina]

It is an option, but I have never liked listening to things when I can't see the speaker because of my hearing problem. Therefore I have never developed the habit--I have, occasionally, listened to Harry Potter audio books in Swedish, since David had them, but I found that it ate my phone battery really fast, and it already has issues, so I haven't done that in months. Also, I can't think of a time when I am doing something else where I would have enough brain power free to listen to something. Most of what I do either involves paying attention to what I am doing, or I am with other people, so listening to something instead of enjoying their company would be silly...