Siddhartha in English and German

Siddhartha is the Sanskrit name of the Buddha and means “he who is on the proper road” or “he who achieves his goal.”  Hopefully reading this book in German will improve your Germany language ability, and also get you 2% closer to spiritual enlightenment.

The German-English, alternating chapter dual language book is now available on Kindle.  Even though this book is public domain, the English translation I used is a bit too new for the USA.  So you can only get it at here on Amazon.ca and other Ex USA sites. Next time I will pick an older translation.  

Check it out, and leave a review or send me a note.

Die Grok Reader, Die

"Wisdom cannot be imparted. Wisdom that a wise man attempts to impart always sounds like foolishness to someone else ... Knowledge can be communicated, but not wisdom. One can find it, live it, do wonders through it, but one cannot communicate and teach it.”

-Herman Hesse, Siddhartha

For those of you who want to attempt Siddhartha auf Deutsh zu lesen, it's in the works.  A new dual language, alternating chapter GrokReader (or grok reader) format for kindle.  Should be ready by Fruhling.

If you only read one book in French, make it this one.

Well, the votes are in, the next dual language book will be in French/English.  I got a few votes for Les Miserables,  a few urgent pleas  for  more Balzac, and a lot of La Petit Prince.  Les Miz is way to long, I assume, and there is no one who's taken French who hasn't read the  Little Prince at some point. It's the Catcher in the Rye.  

So instead, let's try Camus. Which doesn't  rhyme with "famous", sorry Reagan, Peace Be Upon Him.   It has the advantage of being short, not too antiquated French, and the first line of a Cure song and album, "Standing on a Beach".

Thanks for your input into the GrokReader books!

A new way to read an old book -Pinocchio

The next book in the GrokReader format is underway, this time in Italian.  I went back and read the English translation, and was surprised by 1. how long it was, and 2. how dark, long, and complicated of a story it is.  Disney took just a few parts from the full story, but there is a lot of surreal stuff going on in this book.  

The GrokReader format contains the original Italian version of the story, as well as the English translation, in alternating hyperlinked chapters.  

I picked Pinocchio mostly because my father is trying to learn Italian, so this will give him a way to make it through the Italian original, while having the English version to fall back on.  He is not very tech savy, but he does like to read books on his iPhone.

The book will be out by December, so let me know what book should be next in the series.

Learning Spanish without Grammer

I took a speed-reading course and read War and Peace in twenty minutes. It involves Russia. 

-Woody Allen

I learned Spanish by reading Spanish books and watching Telemundo with closed captioning.  It took a few years, but as I really could not stand grammar or memorizing vocabulary, it was the only way for me (for I?). I started with young adult books, though I was neither, beginning with  Harry Potter in Spanish, with a copy of the English version as well. At first I would have to read each chapter in English,  followed by the same chapter in  Spanish.  Eventually I could read a few chapters in Spanish, only switching back to my English book if I got confused or lost the thread.   Though I quit reading Harry Potter when the books became 1000 pages, I've gone on to use this method to read Hunger Games, Twilight, and other books that everyone was talking about, yet I couldn't stand to read in their native language.

The GrokReader concept is a digital version of having two paper novels open at the same time, with links to make it easy to move through the chapters in tandem.  If other people have used a similar method to read dual-language texts, I'd love to hear about it.