If I can at all read books in their original language, I will! It's the real thing. And as skilful as translators might be, a translation is not the original work. And, of course, if a book is not in a language I am fluent in, there is a translation going on in my head, and it will inevitably be flawed, but at least I still get to see the original. I had once read "all quiet on the Western front" and I felt like I missed something. I then read "im Westen nichts Neues" and although I struggled a bit with the vocabulary, I did feel like I had now felt the spirit of the original work.
Years later, I found "die Blechtrommel" in a secondhand shop. In the UK it is known as "the tin drum". I bought it! I had long had that story on my wish list. And it lingered for a while in my book cupboard. The time never seemed right for a German book. Until I decided to deal with it.
I have now given up. It is not very accessible German. It was a bit reading through treacle. And if you go to bed, and there is a book on the bedside cabinet, and you're not grabbed by a desire to read a bit of it, there is something wrong. It's better to read some book than no book! But with this one, it was too tempting to read the paper instead. So I've decided to get rid of it. Maybe one day I'll read it in English or Dutch. And now I'll move on with a book I had already started, in Welsh. That's non-fiction again. I'll have to get some fiction in some feasible language ready for when I finish that!
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