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Read with me 跟我一起讀 ⋯

A blog by amytheorangutan in General

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About this blog

Since my main attraction towards the Chinese language is their characters, I find reading to be the most rewarding exercise of my learning journey. I want to document all the books I read from here on through this blog. It’s going to be a long term project and my update will be very slow due to my undesirable reading speed combined with my OCD tendency to look up words. I will make a post when I start a new book with some information about the book and will fill in the other details as I progress/complete the book. 
 

Please if anyone has read or want to read the same book or books by the same authors let me know as it would be cool to be able to discuss and it would motivate me. 
 

Lets hope I will keep at it and not give up.

Entries in this blog

amytheorangutan

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My HSK level 4.5
Book title 《平如美棠：我倆的故事》
Author 饒平如
Origin country China
Traditional/Simplified Traditional
Pages 330 with illustrations
Paper/E-book Paperback
Translated to English (Yes/No) Yes
English title Our Story: A Memoir of Love and Life in China
Approximate comprehension level  
Approximate hours to complete  
Start date 21/06/2021
Completion date  
Short paragraph of what it’s about  
Short comment  
amytheorangutan

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My HSK level 4.5
Book title 82年生的金智英
Author 趙南柱
Origin country South Korea
Traditional/Simplified Traditional
Pages 183
Paper/E-book Paperback
Translated to English (Yes/No) Yes
English title Kim Ji-young, Born 1982 by Cho Nam-ju
Approximate comprehension level 93%
Approximate hours to complete 24
Start date 26/04/2021
Completion date 20/06/2021
Short paragraph of what it’s about It's a book about a woman in her 30s who is married with a daughter. One day her husband noticed something is not quite right with her and then the whole book basically tells her story from her childhood to her current life that is sprinkled with subtle and not so subtle sexism. One of the quotes from the book that resonates with me was 「所以你失去了什麼？」
Short comment This book is so hard to read. I don't know why but it took me so long to move forward. There are days when I started to wonder if this is the best use of my time and if I learn anything from reading it because I can't remember most of the new words I looked up. I started to forget a lot of words I already learned outside of this book because of how slow I'm progressing every day and how much time I spent on it but I've finally finished it and I actually think it's a good book and I'm interested in the subject matter so my snail pace reading definitely not due to the book being boring but mostly due to my language limitation. I bought the same book in English for my husband and tried to read a few pages of it, I felt like I gained some kind of superpower that made me read incredibly fast like I'm on fast forward ?
amytheorangutan

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My HSK level 4.5  
Book title and author 便利店人間 村田沙耶香
Origin country Japan  
Traditional/Simplified Traditional  
Pages 207  
Paper/E-book Paperback  
Translated to English (Yes/No) Yes  
English title Convenience Store Woman Murata Sayaka
Approximate comprehension level 94%  
Approximate hours to complete 21  
Start date 05/04/2021  
Completion date 25/04/2021  
Short paragraph of what it’s about The book tells the story of a woman who works at a convenience store in Japan for 18 years who, from what I can deduce, seems to have symptoms of autism. She deals with it in a very interesting way and seems to be handling her life fine, but people around her keep pushing her to be "normal". She eventually tried to comply but it actually makes her life worse.
Short comment I really like this book. It shows how weird the so called "normal" people are. It is interesting to see how 2 people who were dealt similar cards in life deal with it in a very different manner. I also love how Japanese books, movies etc describe mundane everyday things in such great details. This book describes the running of a convenient store in details and I just love it. I can literally see myself at a Family Mart/7 Eleven and having 「古倉惠子」serves me at the till and tells me about the hot dog special offer. Even though from reading the summary it sounds like a pretty simple story but there are actually a lot of words I had to look up and it's not as easy to comprehend as I thought.
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