Today I was fiddling with my Library Thing account adding all the books that I can remember. I have been playing with it for ages and it is really hard to remember all you have read. At the moment I have 113 books in my list which is not bad, but I am convinced I have read lots more...Anyway, the silliness of the whole exercise culminated in me adding a lot of the chick lit books that I have read so many, many years ago when it was all I could grasp in English without a dictionary. Funny thing is, had it not been for all that chick lit I would not be able to read Dickens, Austen or Wilde today.
I know it is an intellectual laughing stock. But I always used to say: if I will learn a single word from this book then it is more than worth reading it. I can assure you I learned more than single words from those books, however nonliterary, dull or inspiring they are, they taught me something.
So as I started it's silly, really.
P.S. I borrowed the picture from here.
This is so crazy.... yesterday I was fiddling with my Library Thing as well and wondering about all the books I have not added on there! Wow. Also, I have to remind myself constantly that you are not a native English speaker because your English is so fantastic! Yes, typical American that I am to assume such, right? :) I think there is a definite difference between the chick lit of today and that of Austen but perhaps I am biased. I do after all have a very difficult time reading modern fiction.
ReplyDeleteBack to language... as I try (and then abandon and then pick back up again) to learn French, remember how you encouraged me to start with cartoons? And then a friend in Paris recommended that I pick up French Elle and the like to help me start reading in French. We've got to start someplace, right? And the simpler the better at the onset! You are such an inspiration to me! Suddenly I am filled with warm fantasies about one day reading Balzac in French!!
So, no, I really don't think it's silly at all! It is inspiring! None of us learned to walk but starting with a marathon!