Tag: books

Categories
just life

2022 in books

2022 finally saw me reading a bit more again, and i’m glad for that! here’s a book montage of my reads, courtesy of goodreads:

i visited the local library a few times, and did my best to keep things interesting and always have a few different books around in case i got tired of what i was reading. and as a result, my reading was all over the place: there’s children’s books and graphic novels, sci-fi and romance, historical stuff, a memoir, a couple of productivity-themed books… even an encyclopedia about a particular mummy! about half were digital books (either kindle downloads or audiobooks) and the other half i read as physical books, mostly from the library, but also a few that were gifted to me, and one that i found on the trash!

i’m not going to give myself pressure to keep up this rhythm in 2023, but i’m happy this is how last year turned out. onwards!

Categories
languages

graded & grided readers

graded readers are books that are “easier reading”, written for a certain level of language proficiency. often, they use simpler language, or only have a certain number of words or characters in them. they’re great for when you want to read a book in the language you’re learning, but you can’t quite manage all kinds of literature yet… so you want something that matches your level. in chinese, graded readers are usually sorted by HSK level, or number of characters one has learned.

the chinese ones will sometimes have both the chinese characters and the pinyin transliteration in the page, so that it’s easier to read. the issue with this is that our western eyes immediately float to the latin characters we’re familiar with, making the exercise a bit pointless.

and this is where the magic grid comes in! :) you apply it over the text, and it hides the pinyin lines, so that you’re left just with the characters themselves. i didn’t know what it was for when i first noticed it tucked into the back cover, but it’s such a simple and elegant solution — i love it!

Categories
geek in canada

the arthur conan doyle room

libraries are nice places in principle… but a beautiful one, with a literary giftshop aaaaaand an arthur conan doyle room definitely takes the cake! :D

we read about the room on (where else?) atlas obscura and put it on our plans. then, on a day of walking around downtown toronto, we made a detour to the toronto reference library, to discover this room.

it looks like a place right out of baker street, with its carpet and bookshelves, where you can find not only books by doyle, but also books about doyle and his works, translations in many languages, pastiches (which are sort of fanfiction!) and more. some are rare books, but despite this, the nice librarian just let us have a look around and even read, if we wanted.

we had it all to ourselves for a while, snapping photos and taking our time admiring all the spines of books collected over the years, from collections, auctions or just donations.

for a fan, this was such a treat! :)

Categories
just life

the other ana campos

that time we went to granada and i found out someone with my name has been busy writing children books…

i really wish i had saved this card to send them! what have your namesakes been up to?

Categories
traveling

journeys are the midwives of thought

“Journeys are the midwives of thought. Few places are more conducive to internal conversations than moving planes, ships or trains. There is an almost quaint correlation between what is before our eyes and the thoughts we are able to have in our heads: large thoughts at times requiring large views, and new thoughts, new places. Introspective reflections that might otherwise be liable to stall are helped along by the flow of the landscape.”

a quote that stayed with me from the art of travel, by alain de botton.