If you’re going to mooch a book from BookMooch for foreign language learning purposes, it would behoove you to figure out exactly what you’re mooching beforehand. I know; I learned the hard way.
A month or two ago, I was skimming what was available on BookMooch that was 1) in German and 2) available from users in the States. I saw a fiction book, Wie ein einziger Tag by some fellow named Nicholas Sparks. I was wanting a run-of-the-mill fiction book so as to work on my everyday German vocabulary, and this looked like it might fit the bill. I hopped over to the amazon.de page, saw that it had an excellent overall rating, and requested it. I received it in short order, and put it on the shelf until I had some time to sit down and work through some of it.
Tonight I had a bit of time, and so I pulled the book out with pen and notebook in hand. I read through the first 15 or 20 pages, and well – oh my. It’s what I get, really, for being out of the loop in regards to bestseller novelists, especially those who write mostly romance. Sentimental, gushy romance. I skimmed through some of the later sections of the book, and came to the conclusion that, while I’m willing to submit myself to a lot of things in my quest for an enlarged German vocabulary, Nicholas Sparks is not one of the things I’m going to submit myself to. Yuck. I felt like I was reading a very bad soap opera.
If I’d seen this cover of The Notebook (the original English version of Wie ein einziger Tag), I would have known to stay far, far away:
See, sometimes you can judge a book by its cover.
If anyone wants a copy of Wie ein einziger Tag, there’s a copy available on BookMooch. 
Comments 4
Yikes. Not into romance eh. Being a fan of the classics I can’t say I’m against it completely but it certainly wouldn’t be my first pick for a genre from which to learn a language
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Posted 06 Feb 2008 at 12:46 am ¶It really depends on the type of romance, I guess. Sparks was just too… mushy, soppy. It would not surprise me at all if the movies based on his books are played regularly on the Lifetime channel. Nothing wrong with the genre, it’s just not for me.
Posted 06 Feb 2008 at 1:01 pm ¶My girlfriend (and possibly ever other woman on the planet?) loves The Notebook, even though it’s awful and saccharine and trite, just like everything else that Nicolas Sparks has ever written.
Posted 07 Feb 2008 at 5:57 pm ¶Awful, saccharine, and trite.
That’s a perfect description of some of the stuff I skimmed over. And that was in German, a second language, which means I generally don’t “get” emotions as well through it as I would through English.
Must stay away from the English version.
Posted 08 Feb 2008 at 8:06 am ¶Post a Comment