It’s July, and we’ve crossed into the true month of midsummer. If you’ve been participating in Summer in Other Languages, how have you been doing? I confess that my performance has not been at all impressive. I started L’étranger by Albert Camus, but I find it slow going; with its unsympathetic protagonist. Other distractions, such as extreme weather phenomena, getting my son off on his end-of-year class canoe trip, a new teaching job, and some annoying health issues conspired to bring my French reading to a general halt. I do want to get started again, but at the moment I’m a bit in a slump.
However, I’m excited for the July readalong of Die Kleine Hexe (The Little Witch), which should be quite a different story from Camus’s tale of twentieth century malaise. Maybe that will help to get me more in the foreign-language reading mood, even if it’s a different language.
Here’s the readalong schedule if you’d like to join (feel free to read in translation). The chapters in my German edition are not numbered, but as there are so few it should be easy enough to keep track.
July 1-11: Chapters 1-5
July 12-18: Chapters 6-10
July 19-25: Chapters 11-15
July 26-31: Chapters 16-20
At the end of each week I’ll post my own summary of that section, some observations and some questions. My aim is to do this in (very basic) German and in English. Comments can be in either or any language.
Off we go! Here’s hoping this will be a pleasurable excursion.
… aaaand off we fly with The Little Witch! I hope you‘ll enjoy the adventure.
Thanks, I’m really looking forward to it.
Btw: there‘s a table of contents at the end of the book, so if you want to, you *can* number the chapters, too.
That helps!
Good luck with Die Kleine Hexe – it sounds like a charming respite from Camus! And congratulations on your new teaching job!
The two books could hardly be more different, could they?