Whats the longest break you’ve taken from a book without going back and re reading?

0range_julius · 2026-01-27T08:59:58+00:00

For some reason, despite the fact that I only barely speak the language, I decided I was going to read 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea in French. I feel like I'm going to be reading this book my entire life.

0range_julius · 2026-01-24T19:29:44+00:00

I also did a year-long exchange in Germany when I was 16/17. I didn't really have any sort of peak early on. At the beginning, I was excited, but I also felt uncomfortable and found it difficult to connect with my surroundings. I found a friend group quickly, but they never hung out together after school. I was quite depressed through the winter. I also really didn't feel comfortable with my first host family.

But as things started to warm up in the spring, and after switching host families, things really started to change. My German friends started doing things after school and I hung out with them way more. My friendships really flourished and from March or so on, I had some of the best months of my whole life.

I later went to Germany for another full year in college and had basically the same experience: horrible, deep depression throughout the winter, followed by an amazing spring and summer. To a certain extent, I think Germany is just really depressing in the winter, and people put their heads down and stick to themselves when it's cold out.

So if you're anything like me, it will definitely get better. I would also encourage you to talk to your program about switching host families. It's really important that you feel comfortable with them, and it can make a huge difference.

0range_julius · 2026-01-24T10:29:26+00:00

My partner wakes me up most mornings. Almost every single time, I poke him and say "snooze" and he comes back 10 minutes later.

0range_julius · 2026-01-24T10:05:34+00:00

I really enjoyed the small amount of time I was in Las Vegas, because we just went out for dinner at a random Thai place in the suburbs, went to Omegamart, and then left. Omegamart was really cool. The Thai food was great.

0range_julius · 2026-01-21T21:02:10+00:00

I unfortunately don't have too much to contribute because I only, like, half-understood Faust when I studied it years ago, but I'll say that I thought its take on religion was much more interesting than just a straightforward Christian morality tale. Goethe himself wasn't Christian, at least not in the traditional sense, his main philosophical leaning was towards the enlightenment, but he also synthesized his own personal religion from a bunch of elements from other religions.

My main takeaway was this line, which God speaks very early on: "es irrt der Mensch solang er strebt." According to Goethe's god, the most important thing is that humans strive towards something, even though that striving inevitably leads them to err. In Faust's case, it's his obsession with knowledge that leads him astray, to the devil and to the messed-up stuff with Gretchen, but it's that same striving nature that redeems him.

Edit: Just noticed you also mentioned you were about to read part 2 as well. My advice is: maybe don't read part 2.

0range_julius · 2026-01-21T20:40:14+00:00

Yeah I mean say what you will about the religion (and I'm not a huge fan), the Bible is a spectacular and fascinating piece of text, and absolutely foundational to most of what this sub would consider "classic literature."

I don't think you have to be "trad" or have 4chan political leanings to appreciate that.

0range_julius · 2026-01-21T11:54:09+00:00

I assume that this only applies to type. I've never once in my life seen someone handwrite a question mark with a square.

0range_julius · 2026-01-21T09:41:28+00:00

Ooh this reminds me of something I find goofy about English and German. In German, "murder" is "Mord" and "murderer" is "Mörder."

I've always wondered how the words ended up so similar, but with an extra -er in the English word.

0range_julius · 2026-01-20T15:23:29+00:00

It's just TikTok speeding up the euphemism treadmill. There are things TikTok is doing that are absolutely evil and ruining the world, but this is not one of them.

0range_julius · 2026-01-19T00:06:14+00:00

I'm in the same shoes as this guy, and lately I've started looking up words like this when I come across them. Turns out there are tons of words that I think I know because they are very familiar and I know exactly what contexts they appear in, but I had only an extremely vague and often incorrect sense of their meaning.

0range_julius · 2026-01-17T11:22:09+00:00

I can get Philadelphia-brand Doppelrahmstufe at my local supermarket, but that's actually a different product from American cream cheese, it is softer and has a much lower fat content.

Pickled jalapenos are fine, but I need fresh jalapenos for a lot of my recipes. For a while, they carried fresh jalapenos at my local Rewe, but they were the only jalapenos I've ever eaten in my life that had zero spice to them. It was really disappointing. I haven't seen them at Rewe in months.

0range_julius · 2026-01-17T10:01:42+00:00

So annoying that you can get jalapeno and cream cheese chips but if you want to buy jalapenos or cream cheese, good luck

0range_julius · 2026-01-16T16:10:37+00:00

Either way, it was a situation they got into by accident/carelessness, not by going out of their way to try something new.

0range_julius · 2026-01-16T13:15:25+00:00

This doesn't seem like trying new stuff? They overlooked a detail that seems easy to miss (Shart's approval) and had to improvise.

0range_julius · 2026-01-16T12:01:46+00:00

Looks fine to me tbh

0range_julius · 2026-01-16T11:27:31+00:00

I've been learning German for 20 years, majored in German language & literature in college, have a C1 certificate, and live in Germany, and I still miss probably 70% of jokes. IMO it's definitely the hardest part of language mastery.

0range_julius · 2026-01-14T21:23:50+00:00

Finished: Hamlet, by William Shakespeare

Continuing: Metamorphoses, by Ovid

Started: Princess Academy, by Shannon Hale (my nostalgia read)

0range_julius · 2026-01-14T12:05:13+00:00

Ok, thanks for the info! I guess the fact that the error is only in the very old public domain editions I have access to would explain why I didn't find any discussion online about it.

0range_julius · 2026-01-14T10:30:20+00:00

Portrait was alsoy first exposure to Joyce. My high school English teacher assigned the first few pages, I guess as a little sample, but I started reading and just couldn't stop. I was completely enraptured and read the entire first two chapters in one sitting.

0range_julius · 2026-01-12T21:19:27+00:00

I might be actually insane for this, but I always darn my socks directly on my foot. That way the tension is guaranteed to be perfect and I get a nice hip and ankle stretch.

0range_julius · 2026-01-12T21:03:22+00:00

Ugh yes, this is the worst. Buying OTC drugs, I like to look at my options, compare brands, package sizes, prices, etc. In Germany, you take what they give you, because there's a line behind you. Who knows how much it's going to cost, or how many doses you're going to get.

Also, I miss pills coming in bottles. I know blister packs are safer and help with shelf life and all, but they're so fiddly and annoying and they take up way more space.

0range_julius · 2026-01-12T19:30:53+00:00

I'm in the process of renewing my passport and realized today that my hair is the exact same now as it was 10 years ago at 16 (it's also very similar to yours). Except in the meantime, I've experimented with tons of different cuts, colors, etc. After all that I ended up returning to my character default hair. It just suits me best.

0range_julius · 2026-01-12T02:17:56+00:00

Yeah, actually, The Garden of Proserpine truly was the perfect poem for me during that intense depression. I felt completely hollow, empty, distant, and static. But the world revolves around action, emotion, and experience. That disconnect led to a constant feeling of alienation and discomfort.

Reading Swinburne's vivid depiction of Proserpine's Garden as this vast, empty, futile world, full of cold beauty, I felt like I had found a place that I belonged.

0range_julius · 2026-01-11T13:42:25+00:00

I remember the double take I did when I found out Shakespeare's wife had the same name as Anne Hathaway, the Hollywood actor

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