TODAY I found a bookshop with several shelves of foreign languages. The German section was all mixed up with Dutch and Scandinavian. C'mon ~ German doesn't have struck through Øs or Ås with little halos on top!Every single volume of slightest interest that I didn't buy I made careful note of inside the paper bag my methadone came in. Author, title, price... I'm the character Oscar Wilde was speaking of when he famously remarked on the price of everything and the value of nothing...
But prices aside, I carefully checked everything on display. What I wanted more than anything was something nonficitonal and rivetting. For a novel to hold my attention it has to be really special. Otherwise my attitude pretty much goes: this isn't even TRUE, yet you think I should be leafing forever onwards through your tawdry tale? The only novels that have grabbed me in recent times are thrillers. When I heard you could make £20k writing romance and that top writers knock out five or more a year I bought one for 20p. I seriously could not make it past page one. I have an idea (amongst so very many) for a crime series. Who knows, I might one day even put pen to paper (or digits to keys)... As it is I'm mired in my present project which is slowly ongoing. My characters are so real to me. Their story HAS to be told....
Anyway I perused carefully through this not-too inspiring selection of German books and came away with a Collins Gem German dictionary for £1. It's tiny but I quickkly realized on getting it home that my vocabulary has outgrown it. My favourite German word, klitzeklein which means teeny-tiny wasn't there, because the book is too klitzeklein itself!
Most of the novels were translations from English, whcih seemed the biggest waste of time. I want to know I'm experiencing something unique. So I chose a thriller by Volker Klüpfel and Michael Kobr called Seegrund which means Bottom of the Lake. Paragraph one I understood perfectly... because it was somebody speaking English! But I found I also understood paragraph two just as well. This is seriously freaky.
I was about to take my purchases to the till when I realized that behind me was another mixed language pile of children's picture-books. And here, finally, the book I've long been searching for ~ an illustrated encyclopedia of science. As well as all types of animals and plants, we have the Solar System, the sun, the stars, asteroids and meteorites, comets; the weather, the human body, some amazing star maps and the cutest photograph ever of a family of golden bears crossing the ridge of a waterfall, Mummy Bear glancing back to make sure her babies aren't tumbling over the side... This is the book I've longed for ever since I took up German again. It gives all the basic vocab on everything. It's dead easy to read and beautifully illustrated. My best spent £2 in a long, long while!Though I still feel full of unaccountable gloom whenever I stop, I'm determined to keep on running so my misery won't bite me on the bum and eat me. Perhaps there's no magic cure for depression, but at least knowing that you're accomplishing something, even if it is just learning to speak over again... That does help a little.
Now I must ping. it's nearly 4am. I'm only awake due to my broken sleep cycle.
Apart from books, my best news is THE HEATWAVE HERE IS OVER! Normal cool weather is resumed! I couldn't be happier.
Wishing y'all a cheery day :-)...
PS Chogstable the nightingale is trilling and tootling his klitzekleine head off in the cherry tree outside, the feathery swine!
7 comments:
I suppose that you have read Das Boot. It is good. What about some of the classic German books? I really like book stores.
Never read Das Boot. Tell ya the truth - I didn't even KNOW it was a book, just a film with catchy techno soundtrack! - so thanks for telling me. I'm kulturell barbarisch ya know ;-)
Hi, doll. Hope it has been a good day for you. Glad it is not so insufferably hot there.
Love,
SB
You said you could put up a hit counter for me once. Can you really do that for me? I'll give you all my passwords and anything else that you need. You can change whatever you'd like as long as you get that hit counter up there, and I can still get into the blog to post blogs.
Why do you think that your so doom and gloom as of late? Why does re learning a new language help you so? If a naked photo of myself would help you out I'll email you one. What is your email address? Do you ever masturbate to my blog? Should I write you an erotic blog post, just for you? All about you and me having a shagfest.
SB: :-)
Anna G: OK gimme 2 days. I need to set up an email account just for you and I'll give you the password.
I don't think you should give your blog password to anyone. Only if absolutely necessary would I want to go into someone else's blog. It feels like going through someone else's knicker drawer.
We need the email account because the hitcounter will email the html/java to that account. You lift it from the acccount, click "add gadget" in blogger ~ as if adding something to the sidebar ~ and choose HTML. It's the javascript version you embed, not the html. The java one is better but I'll explain all that.
Please give me 2 days to set all this up. I will do the email now, but you know how it is setting up about 4 things in a row ~ headfucking
as for fucking Anna haven't you noticed I have the libido of an Egyptian mummy? One of the best things about opiates, heroin specially is that it elevates you above the nastiness of physicality. Ie just the feeling of being in a body. That's one thing I love about it so much.
Heroin does make me want to eat, but you can't have it all.
I meant it when I said you should write erotic fiction. It was the details you gave like about his shoulders etc, stuff other writers might leave out.
Erotica is not my thing, but I've read enough Jackie Collins etc in my time
Anna I gotta go I have fish and chips and cyder and cigarettes all gasping at my attention as well
Take care ;-)
Syd: I forgot to add, re classics. At school we went from writing simple holiday postcards and telling how many brothers and sisters we had (GCSE at 16) straight to politics and the environment and Kafka's Die Verwandlung in the original. Plus mz German teacher made me do 2 modern pieces of shit that she should have known I hated. When Urfaust was on the syllabus and I so much was into Goethe. Thankfully when the final exams came I answered all my literature questions on Kafka, as the other 2 shitty books I'd not have a word to say about. With the worst one, I couldn't even tell you the plot.
Which is why when I came back to German I read Wir Kinder Vom Bahnhof Zoo, which is based on tape recordings of a 15 year old girl and thus WAY easier to follow (I had no translation). And Stern magazine. And basically stuff in the middle. I would like to be able to read high German literature in the original, and wouldn't consider going on a degree again unless I could do this without constantly using a dictionary... but not yet. What I would like is some decent poetry. I only have Hölderin and Goethe's Faust. Faust I like but it's hardly beginners' stuff...
Sorry I was a bit too distracted to answer this before
:-)
I want a new book as well. It would be nice to sit outside on my patio on my cozy porch swing and read in the evening. It's a lot better outside at that time. The evening breeze is refreshing. I think i'll go get a book.
Finding something you like and to hang yourself into with such a passion despite depression is pretty great. I can totally relate to that.
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