reading journal 03 (蔡宗桓)

English Reading Journal-3

Book Title: Real Time- Stories and Reminiscence

Author: Chaudhuri, Amit

Publishing company: Picador

Year of Publishing: 2003

Number of pages: 183

Student: Chung-Huan (Allen), Tsai

49677007

Among this week, I have focused on the forth story of the book, Beyond Translation. The narrator was an England immigrant from India. Each summer in his childhood, he went back to Calcutta, a Hindu city, to visit his uncle, aunt and cousins. However, the narrator did not know how to speak Bengali, the main language spoken in India, while his cousins did not understand English. because of language barrier, they seldom expressed their ideas or thoughts to others. Nevertheless, They usually went to Calcutta's bookshop together, and the narrator bought the book written in English and his cousins bought the books in Bengali. The narrator said his cousins and he never "encroached" each other's territory, which means they never tried to understand what other language books are about.

Even through in the same family, because of different background, the family still has the gap between each other. The narrator said he was "only" the visitor, and he did not know what his cousins thought. I think different stories they read represented different "world" they live in. That is, although the blood kept them together each summer, they had nothing other in common. And they never knew what other stories are about.

During this time of reading, I found that I have read faster than before. That's because I know more about India and have experience of how the writer expressed his ideas from previous chapters. However, because some midterms have not been done, I have no enough time to finish the book, which was planned. I think I can progress more after midterms since I will have more time.

I am glad I am almost finishing the first English novel in university. And I hope during this week I can have chances to continue the next novel. At the next novel, I will chose the book that are more suitable for my vocabulary level and I will also concentrate on the book of the whole long story instead of the book of components of several stories to challenge my reading skills.