German by the book

I'll deal with German second, even though it's my 3rd-best language (after English and Japanese).

In third place, German is right on up there - say 50%. That's mainly because of my knowledge of Dutch. The two languages are similar. I'm therefore able to take a look at any page of German and make a reasonable stab at the meaning.

The no-brainer now, is to see whether my just-read-a-book approach will work for German too. Because if it does, then that simplifies things. Why re-invent the wheel?

I check my Kindle reader. I took it along to Japan this trip to have plenty to read. And I loaded it up before I left. It has about 150 books on it. They are mainly in English, but there's also a book or two each of German, Polish, Greek, Dutch, Spanish, Italian, French, Swedish and even Arabic.

In German, I have the entire set of Harry Potter (Die Gesamtausgabe), for instance.

Now, within the past year I've already done some German. As a family, we listened to J K Rowling's books in English and in Japanese. At that time, I tried following along by reading German while we listened to the English or Japanese. And I could manage to some extent.

I've read first Harry Potter book, and some of the second, in German. Why not continue? Why fix something that ain't broke?

As long as I'm familiar with the stories, and as long as they are geared toward younger readers, I'm confident that I can tackle German 'by the book'.