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Buondì.
(N.B. Our ebooks store is running its January Sale. Scroll right on down to see my ebook picks for your level.)
Since the weekend, when Stefi took Bug to Rimini to visit her parents, so allowing me some rare free time, I’ve been reading an ebook, more or less every spare minute.
This for two reasons, firstly because I’m trying to avoid the news, except via radio in the languages I’m learning. And EasyItalianNews.com, of course.
Secondly, because the MLOL Ebook Reader app, via which the Bologna public library system makes ebooks available to library card holders, only allows me a miserly two weeks to read them.
Last time I downloaded an ebook I selected a swashbuckling story of naval derring do, which was engaging but over four hundred pages long. Before I week had passed I realised that I had no hope of finishing it (in Italian, I could have done it easily in English, despite Bug) so quit trying.
Failure. Lesson learnt!
La legge del contrario, STARE BENE CON SE STESSI SENZA PREOCCUPARSI DELLA FELICITA’
by British writer Oliver Burkeman is just 186 pages long, and I’m already up to page 140 in just a few days!
What’s it about? Translate the title back into the original English and you’d get something like:
“The law of the opposite, BEING OK WITH YOURSELF AND NOT WORRYING ABOUT HAPPINESS”
I just Googled ‘books by Oliver Burkeman’ and found the actual title, which is:
“The Power of Negative Thinking and how it can be a powerful route to joy, success and satisfaction”
The gist of it is as follows: we’re all going to die, we can’t prevent bad things happening, and trying to avoid the inevitable just stresses us out.
Even as a long-time, dues-paid pessimist (my mother used to tell me “I never expect anything from you. That way I won’t be disappointed”) I admit I did a double-take at the idea that being a miserable git is “a powerful route to joy, success and satisfaction”.
But who am I to argue? Score one to Team Pessimists!
Burkeman’s basic thesis is that the advice given by many ‘self-help’ book writers, with their emphasis on the power of positive thinking, setting ambitious goals for our lives, refusing to consider the possibility of failure, and so on, is wrong.
Worse, following their advice might end up making us feel even more unhappy with life. Convince ourselves that we’ll be successful and good things will follow, we’re advised.
When money, prestige and happily-ever-after does not then result, it’s our own fault for doubting the advice, and/or for not trying hard enough.
Whereas, if we accept that life is short and then we die, the effect can be liberating.Why worry about staving off the inevitable? Instead, enjoy the present! There is no past or future in any case.
Find out more by buying a copy of Burkeman’s book, or borrowing one from your local library.
Agree or disagree as you might, I can’t help noticing some psychological lessons for language learning, and how we might most usefully feel about the learning process as we engage in it and with it.
First of all, and perhaps most importantly, just as we will certainly not live for ever, just as we can only avoid bereavement by never falling in love (or if we do, by dying first), so it is with learning a foreign language.
We won’t be perfect at our chosen foreign language, ever. But even if we are, the language will change over time, and we will inevitably fall behind (and then die…)
I know of an Italian learner, advanced-level, a very able man, intelligent and determined, who doesn’t appear to be able to get past a fixation with a particular (admittedly difficult) advanced grammar topic, one which I admit to never having bothered with myself.
What’s the point of striving towards some hypotetical future in which he’s mastered the grammar? With his attitude, there’ll just be something else to stress about. Focusing on trying to ‘understand’ everthing means he certainly never will.
If you’ve been around language learners as long as I have (nearly forty years) you get used to hearing them despair at how difficult everything is, how they’re not making any progress – in fact they feel like the’ve forgotten everything they once knew – how native speakers’ speech is impossibly fast, and so on.
I’ve done quite a lot of despairing myself.
So??
The problem is partly the expectation that something better, perfection even, is achievable, along with a self-defeating reluctance to rethink how to measure success.
My aim is (to understand everything I hear, to express myself as easily as in my own language, to speak without making mistakes, to have an ‘Italian’ accent, to read Dante in the original – choose one), and I won’t be happy with anything less!
Don’t measure what you can do in Italian against what you can do in your native tongue, I tell them. That’s foolish. It’ll never be equivalent, not even for bilingual people (I have four in my family…)
Thinking positively, aiming high, refusing to consider the possibility of failure, just guarantees you’ll fail.
Instead, set easily-manageable goals, focus on studying regularly (in other writing Burkeman suggests working towards your objective ‘dailyish’, so allowing that you might not always manage to).
Evaluate progress in steps (levels, exams, pages read, chapters studied) and celebrate even small successes.
Above all – and this is my own tip, not Oliver’s – look back at how far you’ve come, at the progress you’ve made, at how much more you can do now than you could when you started.
Everyone can profit from that approach, even beginners, who’ve done just a lesson or two, know more now than they did before.
It’s so much more motivating to be able to say, as I can about my Swedish, that I’ve been learning for seven or eight years and I’ve got to (approximately) B1-intermediate level (yay me!) than to admit that despite having been learning for seven or eight years I’m nowhere near being mistaken for an actual Swedish person, or even for a Syrian migrant who’s lived in the country since arriving illegally in 2015, while I’ve been wasting my life in Italy…
With language-learning the important thing is, as the translator of Burkeman’s book put it, to STARE BENE CON SE STESSI SENZA PREOCCUPARSI DELLA FELICITA’, substituting ‘worrying about being perfect’ for ‘worrying about happiness’, maybe.
Negative thinking may or may not be “a powerful route to joy, success and satisfaction” (I didn’t have a particularly joyous childhood despite the intensive gloom training) but being realistic about what’s achievable and celebrating what you can do rather than what you can’t is a pretty good way to motivate yourself to keep learning.
And perhaps, given the right pyschological approach, you’ll still be learning years hence, long after all the positive thinkers with their lofty goals have quit in disgust!
Alla prossima settimana.
2025 January Sale: ‘easy reader’ ebook picks at your level!
(This article was published on our ebooks store’s website yesterday. If you’d just like to see details of the promotion, scroll right down to where it says P.S.)
On January 10th we announced that our 2025 January Sale had begun. You’ll find full details about how to save 25% on your learning materials in the P.S. at the end of this article (scroll right down!)
So today, as part of this promotion, I’m going to give you my top ebook picks for beginner, intermediate, and advanced-learners of Italian – I hope there’ll be something here that grabs you!
Not learning Italian? Then follow these links to browse our selection of graded material for the language you’re learning: Italian | Spanish | French | German
OK, so when I say ‘my top picks’, what I mean is the ebooks that I have enjoyed the most (I read them all, multiple times, during the editing and publishing process).
My criteria is just that: enjoyment. Why?
Because as a language-learner myself, I find that if there’s a story that engages me (whether it’s a news article, or fiction, like most of our ‘easy readers’), I’ll keep turning the page.
And if I can’t (metaphorically) put an ebook down, my reading comprehension skills improve, and with them my knowledge of vocabulary, and my confidence with the grammar of the language I’m learning.
As any teacher (or student) knows, boredom’s the enemy! So a writer who knows how to craft a text so that it pulls you in and won’t let go, even if it’s ‘just’ language-study material, is indeed a useful ally!
Don’t forget, the 2025 January Sale is on! To get 25% off everything in your shopping cart, copy/paste the coupon code, which is:
2025-January-Sale-25%-Off
Bene, let’s get to it. I’m on the Catalog page of our online shop, starting a little way down, where it says ‘Italian Easy Readers’ (if you’re learning another language, you’ll need to make your own selections: Spanish | French | German )
So we have seventeen easy reader ebooks for A1 and A2 students, six at A1 (the lowest level), eight at the ‘half-level’ A1/2, and three at A2 (the harder ones). If you’re not sure which level is right for you, use the Free Sample links and take a look. You should be able to get the gist of the story with only occasional use of a dictionary.
N.b. This article was written a couple of years ago. Since then we’ve published other ebooks, so the selection at your level is probably even more ample than described below. Our Catalog page is always up-to-date, so includes the most recent titles, and free sample chapters!
So honestly? I enjoyed all seventeen. but I’ve been strict with myself and whittled the total down to just two at each level, concentrating on the ones I liked the MOST – the stories that made me actually care about the characters, and about what happened to them next!
(These are extracts from our Catalog page, so you can also see the price, the available formats, and a link to the free sample chapter for each title…)
A1 
Colpo di forbici (A1) £9.99 Download FREE sample (.pdf, .epub, .mobi/Kindle)
Rosa la cuoca disastrosa (A1) £9.99 Download FREE sample (.pdf, .epub, .mobi/Kindle)
A1/2 
Il giocoliere (A1/2) £9.99 Download FREE sample (.pdf, .epub, .mobi/Kindle)
L’ascensore (A1/2) £9.99 Download FREE sample (.pdf, .epub, .mobi/Kindle)
A2 
Cielo libero (A2) £9.99 Download FREE sample (.pdf, .epub, .mobi/Kindle)
L’amore ai tempi del supermercato (A2) £9.99 Download FREE sample (.pdf, .epub, .mobi/Kindle)
What if those were too easy for you? Nessun problema. For ‘intermediate’ learners we have loads and loads of materials – twenty-two separate titles!
The hard part was choosing between them, but again, I’ve been strict and narrowed it down to two stories at each half level…
A2/B1 
2 giugno 1946 (A2/B1) £9.99 Download FREE sample (.pdf, .epub, .mobi/Kindle)
Il campo di papaveri (A2/B1) £9.99 Download FREE sample (.pdf, .epub, .mobi/Kindle)
B1 
Caccia all’autografo (B1) £9.99 Download FREE sample (.pdf, .epub, .mobi/Kindle)
Dante, gatto vagante (B1) £9.99 Download FREE sample (.pdf, .epub, .mobi/Kindle)
B1/B2 
L’imperatore e i giochi (B1/2) £9.99 Download FREE sample (.pdf, .epub, .mobi/Kindle)
Segreti e polpette (B1/2) £9.99 Download FREE sample (.pdf, .epub, .mobi/Kindle)
B2 
Natale a sorpresa (B2) £9.99 Download FREE sample (.pdf, .epub, .mobi/Kindle)
Le italiane (B2) £9.99 Download FREE sample (.pdf, .epub, .mobi/Kindle)
Hope there was something there that called out “Read me!”
But if you looked at the sample chapters and they were STILL to simple for you, firstly, well done for reading Italian for such confidence, and secondly, brace yourself now for the hard stuff!
B2/C1 
Prometeo e la guerra dei titani (B2/C1) £9.99 Download FREE sample (.pdf, .epub, .mobi)
Il bar (B2/C1) £9.99 Download FREE sample (.pdf, .epub, .mobi)
C1 
La commediante (C1) £9.99 Download FREE sample (.pdf, .epub, .mobi)
I racconti della vestale (C1) £9.99 Download FREE sample (.pdf, .epub, .mobi)
C1/C2 
Anselmo e l’omicidio di Giovanni Borgia (C1/2) £9.99 Download FREE sample (.pdf, .epub, .mobi/Kindle)
Il vulcano (C1/2) £9.99 Download FREE sample (.pdf, .epub, .mobi/Kindle)
C2 
La Via Francigena (C2) £9.99 Download FREE sample (.pdf, .epub, .mobi/Kindle)
La carriera – dietro le quinte del Palio di Siena (C2) £9.99 Download FREE sample (.pdf, .epub, .mobi/Kindle)
Bene. Hope you found lots that will keep you reading in and listening to Italian in 2025!
The prices marked above are the usual, year-round prices, but with the 2025 January Sale promotion (details below) everything in our online store, EasyReaders.org, is 25% cheaper!
To get your discount, just copy and paste coupon code 2025-January-Sale-25%-Off into your shopping cart, then scroll down to check the cart total has been reduced by 25%.
P.S. Don’t forget the 2025 January Sale!
Don’t forget the 2025 January Sale is running this month!
Save a quarter on graded material for learning Italian, Spanish, French or German.
Everything in our online store, EasyReaders.org, is 25% cheaper until midnight on Sunday 2nd February 2025.
But only if you remember to use this coupon code:
2025-January-Sale-25%-Off
Browse Italian ebooks by level: A1 | A1/A2 | A2 | A2/B1 | B1 | B1/B2 | B2 | B2/C1 | C1 | C1/C2 | C2
Ebooks for students of French, Spanish and German can be found in our Catalog, where everything is organised by language, type, and level. Scroll down past Italian, or follow these direct links:
Make your selection from our range of ebooks, which have been especially written to keep you interested and making progress.
Apply coupon code 2025-January-Sale-25%-Off in your shopping cart to reduce the cart total by 25%!
Stock up on online easy readers, parallel texts and grammar workbooks – at an unbeatable price!
Here’s that coupon code again:
2025-January-Sale-25%-Off
Don’t forget to use it when you order to save 25% on the price of everything in your cart!
Italian | French | Spanish | German
P.P.S.
And of course, don’t forget to read/listen to Tuesday’s FREE bulletin of ‘easy’ Italian news.
Their regular text + audio bulletins are a fantastic, FREE way to consolidate the grammar and vocabulary you’ve studied, as well as being fun and motivating.
Take a look at their website (it’s FREE!)
Why not get all three text + audio bulletins of ‘easy’ news emailed to you each week, on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays?
That’s also FREE. Just enter your email address on this page then click the confirmation link that’s sent to you.
No longer interested?
All bulk emails we send (including this one) contain an unsubscribe link, usually at the bottom. Scroll down to find it, click the link and select ‘unsubscribe’. That will permanently remove your email address from whichever mailing list sent the unwanted email.
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