I recently changed my Portuguese book tuber of choice. My new favourite is called Cat in the Net. She makes shortish videos (5-7 minutes or so) about books she has read, and that’s perfect for me. She talks at a frenetic pace but I find I can follow her accent well enough, and she is very funny, so I don’t tune out. Her latest video is about a Christmas reading challenge she’s doing with some other youtubers. There are 5 hosts and about 40 people involved on Facebook.
I don’t think I want to join the group itself, partly because I don’t want to get into Facebook (Twitter is addictive enough, thanks) but mostly because they are all in their twenties and I am easily old enough to be their dad. Well, you know, if I’d been a bit of a slag in about 1994. That’s the thing about youtube: the people who make the videos tend to be young and have young person tastes, so as much as I enjoy it as a way of honing my listening skills, I often feel a bit out of place, bordering on creepy. Hi ho.
So anyway, although I won’t be signing up, I might just follow along with the challenge and read five books – two English, three Portuguese – and make my own video (for this blog, not wider consumption) in which I talk about them in Portuguese for the practice. It’ll give me a fun structure for my language learning over the Christmas break.
The challenge is
- Ler um livro que te transmita um sensacao de conforto [I thought I’d read The Small Bachelor by PG Wodehouse in English because Wodehouse is totally in my comfort zone]
- Ler um livro do teu género favorito [Walking Dead book 6 in Portuguese]
- Ler um livro que te faça de alguma forma lembrar o natal [A Child’s Christmas in Wales, by Dylan Thomas, in English]
- Ler um livro que te faça lembrar a infancia [Histórias da Terra e do Mar by Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen]
- Ler um livro que te tenha* sido oferecido [Romance da Raposa by Aquilino Ribeiro]
*I’m interested in the use of the present subjunctive here. I wonder why they’ve written it this way. I guess it’s a slightly fancy way of saying it: “read a book that you might have been offered” rather than “read a book that you have been offered”
