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. ![]()

I won’t give away how the plot progresses or how the movie ends, because I’m hoping that you’ll rent it and watch it. I know that many people dislike watching a movie with subtitles, which is what you’ll have to do if you don’t speak German, but it really is worth the trouble. Ulrich Mühe did a truly amazing job in portraying the almost soulless agent, the “little gray man” as Ebert called him. While the other actors and actresses were all good, Mühe made the film; without him, it probably wouldn’t have worked.


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