Many self-taught polyglots highlight the importance of reading books in your target language as a strategy to develop our vocabulary and writing skills. Currently we have access to graded readers that are materials designed to readers at differents levels of language mastery and they already have a clasiffication according to the number of words needed to understand the text.
My problem with graded readers is that they spoil my further reading of the original book, turning it into a less satisfaying experience. That said, I did a search looking if it already existed book recommendations based on difficulty level. Luckily I found this website called Goodreads, it's a social website made for readers and full of book recommendations, there you can find lists of books that organize books according to reading difficulty.
So what makes a book easier or more difficult to read than another book besides of the reading skill of the reader? One obvious factor is the amount of vocabulary used, another could be the complexity of sentence structure, also is important the structure of the story, a non linear story like in "One Hundred Years of Solitude" and "Pedro Páramo" makes it harder to understand if you're not a hundred percent focus.
After reading some books in English an in Portuguese I would classify them as follows:
Beginner: The Diary of a Young Girl, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, The Color Purple, the two first books of Throne of Glass
Intermediate: His Dark Materials trilogy, the first two books of Game of Thrones, She's never coming back, Frankestein, The Old Man and the Sea
Advanced: Blindness by the portuguese author José Saramago, this book was difficult although I already had read it in my native language.
What books do you consider to be in an intermediate level?
Lastly I want to share a list of difficult novels, the day I would be able to read these books in another language, I will consider myself to be in an advanced level.
https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/827.Most_Difficult_Novels
I think that's a really good idea to try and read original novels by finding ones at a comfortable level for you vs. graded readers. These days I am trying to read Spanish novels and sometimes I just can't cope with them (e.g. One Hundred Years of Solitude) and give up quickly, but with others the level is much more appropriate (e.g. Cómo Agua Para Chocolate). I looked at that list of the most difficult novels which was quite interesting to see! English is my first language but sometimes I have a headache reading novels by certain writers too haha... And I often find myself using the dictionary on my Kindle when I read in English too. I hope you find more books that you can enjoy! I am currently reading Children of Blood and Bone with a student, which is a young adult book, and I would say that is an intermediate level book. I think young adult books often are...
Reading is such an important part of language learning that it deserves more attention on the “how” of reading in a new language. What I am doing currently in my German is reading both very intensively graded readers for my level, as well as reading one advanced adult book. The intensive reading includes translating every unknown word and studying the grammar being applied. The advanced book I am reading more for enjoyment and context and flow. I have written a post elsewhere on Journaly on how I am doing this successfully.
Thank you for your help grapefruit. One Hundred Years of Solitude is a very difficult book to follow because of the non linear narrative and temporal jumps, besides the recurrent names of different characters but it´s worth reading it. As you pointed out, many books from that list are hard to read even for a native speaker. Thanks for your comments Peet, I use a similar approach for my writings here in Journaly, I copy my corrected writing in a notebook and then study the grammar and vocabulary corrected. I will apply this also when I read books.
En mi estrategia de autodidacta, me doy permiso para testear el libro y no siento culpa de abandonarlo al primer capitulo si veo que es muy dificil para mi nivel, o si noto que no me atrapa la historia. Estoy convencido de que si la historia atrapa y realmente la deseamos recorrer, podemos lograrlo, teniendo en cuenta que tal vez iremos lento o leyendo cada capitulo dos o tres veces....pero que apuro hay. Creo que el principal testeo es la autopercepción que tenemos de nosotros mismos sobre si estamos disfrutando el proceso de leerlo. Yo estoy en un nivel de 8 meses de inglés, y me siento muy cómodo leyendo una novela llamada Never Let Me Go de Kazuo Ishiguro, muy interesante, con dialogos, descripciones sencillas y maravillosas, y una trama atrapante...te lo recomiendo.
Gracias por tus recomendaciones Elgrandanes