(no subject)

The point I'm at with my Chinese learning is a tough part -- if I want to read things, the volume of unknown vocabulary isn't overwhelming; but reading things is ridiculously, painfully slow. It's a problem of integrating and making automatic the knowledge I already have, more than a problem of learning new things.

I know how I got through this when I was learning Japanese. It was by reading tons of manga, and tons of Fujimi Orchestra novels.

But the kind of things that I want to read in Chinese -- manga, and cheesy romance novels, and fantasy novels -- are mostly in traditional characters, which are even more painfully slow for me to read than simplified characters. (And I suspect there are some mainland vs. Taiwan dialect differences that are causing me problems too.) And the materials aimed at Chinese learners are mostly too easy for me by this point.

I suspect this will probably work out for me similarly to how it worked out in Japanese, where I buy a lot of books I don't end up reading in the quest for something both interesting enough and easy enough, and eventually things get easier, bit by bit.

But I sure wish that the nearest really good Chinese bookstore wasn't all the way in Flushing. (The ones in Chinatown keep closing!)