100 days of reading (2025)
This is the fourth year of me embarking on a 100-day journey to work on one of my languages. It started back in 2022 when, having breakfast at the the tiny but cozy apartment I was staying at in Krakow, I came across a tweet suggesting that if you start learning a language on September 23, by the time new year comes, you'll have been learning it for 100 days. I immediately took the opportunity to dive into Polish (and abandon my Greek 😭), and although I fell off somewhere around day 86, I enjoyed the process so much that I knew I would be doing it in 2023 as well.
And I did! However, instead of starting a new language, I decided to dedicate the last 100 days of the year to reading in Spanish. Every single day. Did I end up skipping a day or two here and there? Absolutely. That said, I consider my 2023 challenge a success and a real beginning of this little tradition of mine.
By September 2024, I had read 4-5 books in Italian, but reading in the language was still challenging and I had to make a lot of concessions when it comes to what type of books I was reading and what medium I was reading on. I was also not very familiar with Italian literature, besides Dante, Boccaccio and Manzoni's "I promessi sposi" (all not very good for a novice reader, I must say). All of this made Italian a perfect candidate for my 100-days-of-reading challenge (yes, at that point I decided that it was going to be reading-focused). This was probably my favorite year of all because the improvement in my comprehension was almost tangible. (Although, paradoxically, the more experienced I become as a reader in Italian, the more I realize how much I still don't know).
Finishing up my 2024 challenge, I was sure that 2025 would be reserved for a new language (most likely German). And yet, as September approached, I was starting to realize that I actually don't need to pick another language. More than that, I WANTED to do it with Italian again.
This time around, I am very different as a reader: I have a long list of authors I'm very excited to go through. I have some favorite authors to whom I'm eager to return. I read faster and get less tired when reading. I don't rely on e-readers and e-dictionaries as much. If anything, this year I'm trying to only read physical books from my own shelves (I've accumulated 30+ of those in the last two years).
I love that together with my ability to read, understand, place in historical context and otherwise interpret Italian literature, I've also grown to appreciate consistency and the concept of going deeper rather than wider. I've spent a lot of time between 2020 and 2024 hopping from one language to another (almost all at different stages of 'beginner') , which more often than not would leave me deeply unsatisfied and craving for something more meaningful (?).
Now it feels great to be nurturing not just my languages skills, but also my connection to the culture. I have talked about this shift from mechanically acquiring a language to fostering an emotional connection to it a little more in depth in this video about my Italian commonplace book.