Reading in German
I’m quite proud of myself because I have just read an entire novel in German: “Klassensprecherin Dolly” by Enid Blyton. I’ve read a lot of other stuff in German over the years — chapters of this and that, short stories, and even half of Alice in Wonderland for LibriVox (Elli read the other half), but never a whole novel from beginning to end. And Enid Blyton is unknown here, so I wasn’t even familiar with the story or characters. Our library has NONE of her books in English, though she is a British author! They only have a few German translations in storage. Hilarious.
Yes, it’s “just” a kids’ book… but still it was quite an accomplishment for me! And very fun, as well. I’ve always loved boarding-school stories. And I was just delighted when Dolly gave horrible Irmgard a good shaking!
Now I’m in the middle of “Balletschuhe” by Noel Streatfeild, which I’ve read before in English, of course, so that helps quite a lot. But I think Streatfeild’s writing style is a bit more complex than Blyton’s.
Category: Blog, Books 3 comments »
November 27th, 2010 at 10:03 am
Congratulations. Have you tried “Lottie and Lisa” (Das doppelte Lottchen)?
November 27th, 2010 at 10:37 am
Not yet, I’ll have to see if my library has that one :)
October 28th, 2017 at 8:19 pm
Thank you so much for your German reading! I learned German in school but am getting rusty. It’s lovely to share these with my daughter.