When I was asked if I wanted to write a Shelfie Bio and talk about how books have shaped life, there was one particular cubby on my shelf that came to mind.
This is my cubby of non-English books. It’s two rows deep and piled up in the back. Oh, and there are more in storage.
I was born and partially raised in Denmark, then in Greece, and then came to the U.S. as a teenager. By that time, I had already learned, at least in part, three different languages. Then I took Spanish in middle and high school. So when I went to university, it made sense that I would study linguistics and continue to learn new languages and develop the ones I already had studied.
Because of this obsession of mine, I’m in the habit of picking up books in as many languages I can, whenever I can. Non-English books are not easy to come by the U.S., so when I can find them I usually get as many as I can – and when my friends go on vacations they’re usually persuaded to bring back a few for me. Some I can read; others are in languages that I aspire to read one day, some not – but all of them bring me tremendous joy.
The first book on the shelf is Milan Kundera’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being in the original Czech, a book I aspire to read one day. I visited Prague with my mom when I was a small child and it’s been in my head ever since. So when one of my best friends from college spent a summer in Prague I had him pick up a copy of the legendary author’s book. El Jarama (Ferlosio) and Hija de la Fortuna (Allende) were the first books I read in Spanish and were my first real linguistic achievements in reading books in a language that I had studied.
A couple of years ago I was visiting family in Denmark, and I knew that I had to pick up some books while I was there. It is nearly impossible to get Danish books in the U.S. – stores don’t stock them (even stores that specialize in non-English books), and the shipping from Europe to America is prohibitive. I’m about halfway through the dozen or so books I picked up while there, and then it’ll be time for another visit!
French is another language I’m hoping to learn one day, and when I was in Canada for my best friend’s wedding I took the opportunity to pick up a few French books from the book stores – one of the advantages of having a country which is both functionally and officially bilingual is that literature in both languages is widely available. Cartes Postales du Canada will be a great start once I’ve got some basics down!
I feel tremendously privileged to be in the situation to read books in several languages, and access stories in the original languages of the authors. But there’s nothing special about my abilities – anyone can learn enough of another language to read a book! So next time you come across a book in French, or Arabic, or German, pick it up. You never know, one day soon you might know enough to read and enjoy it.
Tino Bratbo, Library Associate-Reference
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