Boring job

No time to read this? Why not find something to study instead? A1 – Beginner/Elementary | A2 – Pre-Intermediate | B1 – Intermediate | B2 – Upper-Intermediate | C1 – Advanced | C2 – Proficiency | What’s my level? | Italian level test

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Buondì.

My ‘To Do’ list is so massive (actually multiple lists, for different companies/business areas) that I rarely, if ever, have the time to actually look at it/them.

Picking from a thousand different jobs, some of which have been queued for years, has a demotivating effect, to the extent that I rarely manage more than adding new jobs to the correct list before closing them all in relief, as it’s time to go pick up Bug from his petting zoo.

Late last week – it would have been Thursday, probably, as that’s usually a day I have time to do things (having covered all the urgent stuff Monday thru Wednesday) but no more energy – something unexpected happened…

I was thinking to myself something along the lines of “It’s raining, I have two hours to fill before the work day is cut short by taxi duty, but good grief, where to start??” when I had an idea – pick something really unstressful to do, something time-consuming, but that I barely even need to think about.

I needed something that would fill the available time, that would be useful, but NOT something that would require planning ahead, and definitely nothing stressful, not on a rainy Thursday afternoon.

Something useful but BORING.

Turns out I have lots of things like that on my ‘To Do’ lists, but scrolling through them, compiling a shortlist, prioritising them in order of importance, and so on, would get me right back where I began.

So I just got started on what felt like it would be easiest of the half dozen or so major boring jobs which I have been meaning to get to for years but haven’t touched – the catalog/catalogue in our online ebooks store.

When I first put together the ebooks store, I’d never done a Catalog page before. Selling lessons, courses, and so on, there hadn’t been the need, as the options were usually few. Do you want a regular Italian course, a more intensive one, evening classes, or individual lessons? How long for? With or without accommodation? It didn’t get more complicated than that.

But we had big plans for ebooks, and there was scope for much more complexity. I needed a ‘taxonomy’ (Wikipedia explains that ‘taxonomy is the practice and science of categorization or classification’) before I began.

Without over-thinking it, I went for (in descending order, obviously) LANGUAGE > TYPE > LEVEL, so for instance Italian ebooks, organised by type (‘easy readers’, grammar workbooks, etc.), then listed in level order, from easiest to hardest.

Italian came first, obviously, but then French, Spanish, German, and some other (minor, if only from a marketing point of view) languages.

Done, dusted, forgotten about. Except not. While I just added ebooks to the Catalog/Catalogue page as I published them, as the page rapidly grew bigger, it was hard not to see the limitations of my carelessly-chosen taxonomy.

For instance, if someone was looking for a language other than Italian, would they be likely to scroll ALL THE WAY DOWN, like Alice down the rabbit hole, until reaching German-English parallel texts, or whatever? Possibly not.

And while a student of Italian might be keen on, say, Opera or Film, both of which had their own ‘Types’, with titles listed by level, might it be less than obvious to a casual browser that the first ‘Opera easy reader’ in the list was the easiest, and the last the hardest?

People can be dim, so I worried. But – for many years – I had other, more important and significant things to keep me awake at night. And then there was the pandemic, which sucked hope from life, and Roomie and Bug and their predecessor, who needed my time.

My ‘To Do’ lists multiplied like rabbits, while growing larger, more complicated, and increasingly demotivating. Just like the Catalog/Catalogue page, actually. But sorting that mess out, while useful and boring, would be anything but a two-hour Thursday afternoon job.

What would, though, be quick to do, while still being useful and boring, would be to add a link to each ebook listed.

Last week/This week’s ‘Half-price eBook of the Week’ offer looks like this in the Catalog/Catalogue page:

Il calendario di Laura (A2/B1) £9.99 Download FREE sample (.pdf, .epub, .mobi/Kindle)

If you look you’ll find it in ITALIAN > EASY READERS, after the A2-level ebooks, before the B1-level ebooks, partying together with its A2/B1-level friends.

People mostly don’t look, as I said, as the catalog/catalogue is as boring and confusing as catalogs/catalogues tend to be.

But sorting that out would be daunting, so my ‘useful but boring’ challenge would simply be to add this link ‘Free online audio!’, where applicable.

I mention this often, but it’s not obvious from the catalog/catalogue, or from the product information pages (for example Il calendario di Laura) that all our ‘easy reader’ ebooks have free online audio.

Anyone who downloads the free sample chapter (.pdf), scrolls as far as the top of Chapter 1, and clicks the ‘listen online’ link (so not most people…) would know that there is online audio.

But given that they’d be looking at a single free chapter, rather than the entire text (currently just £4.99…), it would be natural that they’d assume that the audio was only for the free chapter, not the entire ebook.

Wrong! For reasons that I barely remember, the whole audio for all our ‘easy readers’ is available online to anyone who wants to listen to them. We only actually SELL the text, which is of course hugely useful.

But – and I often try to point this out – if you are, say, at an intermediate level in Italian, then listening to the lower level ebooks, even without the texts (so FREE!) would be excellent listening comprehension practice.

Start, why don’t you, with the A1-level audios and work your way up until it gets too hard, at which point it might be worth spending some cash, though that’s up to you.

Anyway, my boring but useful Thursday afternoon job was to go through all the Italian ‘easy reader’ ebook sample chapters and to copy/paste the audio links into a text file, with the idea of then creating links to add to the Catalog/Catalogue pages, so making it marginally more likely that people like you would realise they could listen to the ENTIRE TEXT online, and maybe even do so. Which would please me.

And yet…

Soon I realised that just adding my several hundred ‘Free online audio!’ links would make the off-putting Catalog/Catalogue page even more so, and without touching any of its obvious taxonomic flaws.

But by this time I’d invested several hours in compiling my pasted list of audio links and was no longer in the mood to be easily put off… The clouds of demotivation and helplessness had magically dispersed. I was up for a challenge!

So there you go: Thursday, Friday, Monday, Tuesday, and I’m still going with my mammoth ebook Catalog/Catalog page reorganisation (now with PICTURES!). Naturally, it’s far from finished, but do take a look.

At the top of the ‘old’ catalog/catalogue page, we now have this:

Italian ebooks by level: A1 | A1/A2 | A2 | A2/B1 | B1 | B1/B2 | B2 | B2/C1 | C1 | C1/C2 | C2

Clicking on the C1/C2 link will get you to this page ( Italian C1/C2 (Advanced/Proficiency) Ebook Catalog ), and yes, I know that level C1/C2 is probably way too hard for most club members, but we have fewer titles at the higher levels, so I started with those.

See Italian C1/C2 (Advanced/Proficiency) Ebook Catalog? Pretty, isn’t it? At least, I think so.

If you want to hear what C1/C2 audio sounds like, go ahead and click a link, be my guest. As I said, all our ‘easy reader’ ebooks have free online audio, FOR THE ENTIRE TEXT, and now it’s easier to find.

But better still, take a look at this (much easier) level Italian A1/2 (Elementary/Pre-intermediate) Ebook Catalog, which is not so pretty yet, as I haven’t manually added the descriptive texts that the other one has. That’ll be a boring job for another day.

The ‘old’ Catalog/Catalogue page is here if you want to compare, and judge for yourself if I’ve wasted whole afternoons of my life.

You can find your current level, by the way, using these links:

Italian ebooks by level: A1 | A1/A2 | A2 | A2/B1 | B1 | B1/B2 | B2 | B2/C1 | C1 | C1/C2 | C2

If you’re in doubt about your level, besides reading the club’s ‘What’s my level in Italian?‘ page, use the free sample chapters and free online audio to find out where you feel comfortable.

Start low and work up. Where you feel comfortable, which doesn’t mean understanding everything but at least the gist, well that’s your ‘level’!

And the next half-level up, which should be slightly more of a challenge, is probably where you should spend your ‘learn Italian’ budget, if you have one.

E così. Adding descriptions to the eight catalog/catalogue ‘level’ pages that don’t yet have them will take ages. To find out more about any ebook title in the meantime, just click on the one that interests you and read the longer descriptions on the ‘product information’ page.

Tomorrow is Thursday, but I won’t be doing any boring jobs. It’s a public holiday so Bug’s petting zoo is closed.

If it’s not raining, he and I will be in the local park watching the pigeons. He likes pigeons more than ducks, geese, chickens or swans, for some reason. Perhaps because they’re small, like him.

Bite-sized!

Alla prossima settimana.

Half-price eBook of the Week, same as last week’s!

This week’s Half-price eBook of the Week offer is the same as last week’s, the A2/B1-level ‘Il calendario di Laura‘.

Read/listen to it and you’ll improve your Italian comprehension skills, but better still, it’s a great way to learn about Italy’s many, confusing public holidays, some of which are coming up in the next few weeks.

Goodness! We’ve just got done with Easter, you might be thinking (n.b. ‘Good Friday’ is NOT a holiday in Italy, but ‘Easter Monday’ is…)

Well great – at least it is if you live in Italy –  as now we have April 25th and May 1st to look forward to.

Who knows, if the days fall right, we could combine them and have a really long break! And then there’s June 2nd, of course, and August 15th, and…

Read how Laura and her husband like to spend each ‘giorno festivo’, from Epiphany on January 6th, through the spring, summer, fall and winter months, to the climax of the Christmas holidays, followed by New Year, and then, to begin all over again!

• .pdf e-book (+ audio available free online)
• .mobi (Kindle-compatible) and .epub (other ebook readers) available on request at no extra charge – just add a note to the order form or email us
• 14 chapters to read and listen to
• 14 exercises to check your understanding
• Italian/English glossaries of ‘difficult’ terms for the level
• Suitable for students at elementary level and above
• Download your Free Sample Chapter (.pdf)

Remember, this week ‘Il calendario di Laura‘ is 50% discounted, so just £4.99 rather than the usual ‘easy reader’ ebook price of £9.99!

Buy Il calendario di Laura, just £4.99 | FREE sample chapter (.pdf) | Catalog

How do I access my ebook?

When your order is ‘completed’ (normally immediately after your payment), a download link will be automatically emailed to you. It’s valid for 7 days and 3 download attempts so please save a copy of the .pdf ebook in a safe place. Other versions of the ebook, where available, cannot be downloaded but will be emailed to people who request them. There’s a space to do that on the order form – where it says Additional information, Order notes (optional). If you forget, or if you have problems downloading the .pdf, don’t worry! Email us at the address on the website and we’ll help. Also, why not check out our FAQ?

P.S.

And here’s the usual reminder to read/listen to Tuesday’s FREE bulletin of ‘easy’ Italian news from EasyItalianNews.com, which was published yesterday. I’ve been busy, so haven’t. But I’m going to get to it, promise. Today!

The ‘easy news’ bulletins are published each Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday and contain simplified articles with an online audio recording.

They’re free to access on the website, with no registration required. But subscribers (subscribing is free) get each bulletin via email as soon as it is published, which is a helpful thrice-weekly reminder to work on your Italian reading and listening skills…

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