Hi, everyone and welcome back to Happy Hour. 歡迎回來(lái)酒館. Hi, 安瀾.

Hi, lulu, hi, everyone.

Okay so we just covered some of the different types of reading, like skimming, scanning, extensive, intensive, what kind of books would you recommend?

Well, to be honest, I would say any books that you're interested in, for example, if you're interested in novels, then read novels. If you're interested in history, then read history. I don't like to ever say to a student. Okay, You have to read this type of book because if you do, then you're basically saying what you think they should read and anything that you read anything in English will still be helpful.

Exactly. I mean this is one thing that I tend to agree with you. Interest is always the first and foremost, because without interest, you are really just forcing yourself to read. And you're not going to really stick with it.

No. So you have people that say I want to read the classics or I want to read the news. But if you don't read the classics in Chinese, if you don't read the news in Chinese, then why would you do it in English?

You're just basically lying to yourself.

Exactly.

So you can show off on social media today I am going to start reading 名著, but 3 days later you give up.

To be honest I wouldn't recommend reading 名著 to language learners anyway because the language is usually very very old fashioned, it’s very complicated and it's not how people would speak nowadays.

Yeah, I mean in general obviously you need to read classics but not if you just say want to improve your English skills like speaking skills, or vocabularies. There are many different ways that you can do that works much much better.

Exactly.

That's why we were doing this名著掃盲班so that you can have like a shortcut to understanding all of these classics without really intensively reading them.

Well, yeah. There are, I would say if you really do want to understand the classics, then you can use adapted readers

Or abridged readers.

Abridge readers and also films, TV shows, and not to mention our course.

Our course, yes, exactly. But what are you reading... or like what are you interested in?

I would say in terms of books, I like history, any books about history I'm really really interested in, at the moment I'm reading a book about ancient cities.

So I also like travel literature as well. So stories of people who go to faraway places and their experiences. And I have to admit as I'm getting a bit older, I do like novels a bit more, I never used to, but now I do.

It's very interesting because most people I think like the other way round, when you were younger, like for me, I started off only reading novels and fiction and then as I grow older, I start to read nonfiction. You're the other way round. Aren't you?

I generally read a lot more nonfiction than fiction.

So even when you say history is more like maybe like biography or just history books rather than historical novels.

I do read some historical novels. But again, really I would say anything that I see is normally kind of about travel and history because those are my two loves. And what about you?

Well. I have specific genres that I'm really, really interested in. So, obviously, I read a lot of crime, mystery, suspense, horror, that genre. That is my favorite genre. However, I'm also just interested in everything.

So for example, I read psychology, I read, let's say, anthropology, anthropological books, I read literature like pure literature, or like poems all of that. I do read some history books obviously not compared to you. As I grow older, I feel like I should read also more natural science.

Okay.

So I start reading natural science books, I started to do that a few years back and it's fascinating. I feel like I'm missing out a lot on the STEM subjects, because the way I used to learn STEM subjects was so boring.

Okay, yeah.

Yeah, and now I've obviously found books that can give me information and knowledge on natural sciences in a much more interesting way.

That's it, and that is the key, find books that interest you.

Yeah, exactly, like recently I have been reading this really bizarre book written by a Japanese writer.

Yeah.

So basically, he is imagining what humans would look like if they have animal anatomy.

Oh, I've seen that book. It's so weird. It is a bit creepy.

So bizarre, but obviously you learn a lot about animal physical structure, anatomy and so on and so forth. So each type of book, each genre, gives me new inspirations, just really keep your life exciting.

Yes.

Okay, so that's the books that interest us, but for our language learners, I think I would recommend definitely first of all, interest.

Second of all, if you are to read English books, don't try bilingual.

No.

Bilingual is just a lie to yourself.

Yeah. It's the same as watching TV show with subtitles. For example, if I watch a Chinese TV show with English subtitles or bilingual subtitles, I can say "oh, yeah, I can understand." But as soon as I take the English off, then, that’s it..

It's a false sense of security.

It is a false sense of security.

Exactly.

And I would also say when you're reading apart from just passively reading it, you need to do some active reading as in you need to take some notes, maybe highlight a few key points, summarize and retelling. That's actually very good.

Yeah. You don't have to do this with another person. You can just do this to yourself.

Keep a reading journal.

Keep a reading journal.

Whether it's a written form or maybe just tell your phone about it or practice it with AI.

Well, there we go.

Nowadays talk to AI, talk to your AI boyfriend or girlfriend or AI teachers about what you have read today.

Yeah.

That's a fantastic way.

And obviously you can join a book club. I know it sounds a bit old fashioned, but酒館自己也有酒館讀書(shū)會(huì), 對(duì)吧? 隔一段時(shí)間我們會(huì)根據(jù)我們的名著掃盲班, 然后在我們的直播里面去做一個(gè)小的 reading club, when I go through some of the classic stories, classic texts. And I would also set a reading goal, but maybe achievable one.

Yeah. 10 minutes a day, one book a month, something like that, you don't want to go too far, because ultimately this is to kind of help you, and motivate you, it’s not meant to kind of make your life into a misery.

Exactly.

And also just chasing numbers. It's a bit silly. I've seen people just say " oh, this year I've read 300 books. "

How many of them do you remember.

Exactly. So to finish this off, I thought 安瀾, we can share with our audience, a few expressions in English relating to reading.

Okay.

For example, everyone knows “judge a book by its cover”. This is not really about books but about people.

So you make a quick judgment without knowing the details.

中文叫不要以貌取人and as I said earlier, “we’re both book worms”書(shū)蟲(chóng). In Chinese we say the same.

Yeah. And we love to “just curl up with a good book”.

Curl up with a good book. I love that imagery. Curl up就是蜷曲身體, 好像你舒舒服服的那種蜷在沙發(fā)上面, 或者床上with a good book, just quiet time, down time with yourself.

Yes.

Or “l(fā)ose yourself in a book”.

Well. Yeah, that means to just become completely focused on the book. So you're ignoring everything else and it's such a nice feeling. It's a very rare feeling nowadays to be honest to lose yourself in a good book.

Because it's so hard to concentrate.

It is.

But I've seen you losing yourself in a book and when I called you, you seemed really annoyed.

Yes. But those type of books we would call “page turners”.

A page turner, a book that is so exciting, we just keep turning the pages and wanted to see what's going on next.

Yes.

Those books are also books that you devour.

Yes. So you devour something. So if you say you devour a book, that means you read it very quickly because it's interesting. But devour actually means food, so you devour food. That means that you eat something very quickly and you eat all of it.

In Chinese we also would use that reference, use that imagery.

And the last one I would say “read between the lines”.

Yes. So if you read between the lines, you understand the hidden meaning. So for example, if someone sends you a message or someone says something to you, and it's not quite what it seems. Then you have to read between the lines.

So if I say thank you, read between the lines, maybe I am annoyed.

There we go.

Okay. So that ends our episode or episodes on reading. So 安瀾 and I shared how we started reading, and how our passion grew, and also what we are interested in respectively, and shared with you some of the tips on reading.

Leave us a comment in the comment section. Tell us what you are reading at the moment, and also put in any request for any topics that you want us to talk about on the show.

So until next time.

We'll see you next time.

Bye.

Bye.