Book blogging in a second language; Review Requests
As a book blogger, there’s a few responsibilities that we have; towards other bloggers and our readers, of course, but also towards authors whenever we choose to do blog tours and/or review requests.
But what happen when those books are in your second language and you are having some difficulties understanding said book? What do you do then?
Generally speaking, our other languages may not be as strong as our primary one – like my english isn’t as strong as my french. Truth be told, there are some instance where even in french i’m having some struggles 😂
I’ve only started reading in english last year, opposed to reading in french that i’ve been doing ever since i’ve learned how to read. Even when I started, there was a few cases where I needed to re-read the past paragraph/sentences to try to understand what I just read, or a word I hadn’t seen before so I had to “guess” what the meaning was – but there it could easily be shrugged and it wouldn’t change the overall understanding of what was happening in the story.
Until recently. Although the story has been interesting me from the start, and I agreed to review it for the author; when I started reading, I just became more and more lost onto what was happening – kind of like what happened when I read “The Night Circus” (but that one was in french).
Hence that question .. the most sensible thing would be to contact the author and explain the situation, right? but that makes me feel kind of bad .. it’s not the book’s fault, nor my brain’s for not understanding, but I had still agreed to do this ?? (though of course I couldn’t know i’d be having difficulties beforehand) – I’m still less than halfway through, so I shall just keep going and hopefully it would become clearer as I go, because really – as much as I don’t wanna do it, I can’t do a review if I has NO. IDEA. of what’s going on in the book now, can I ?
Has this happened to you before ? What did you (or would you) do then ?
14 thoughts on “Book blogging in a second language; Review Requests”
Comments are closed.
Yup in Strange The Dreamer and I have been completely honest in my review. Hope that works for you too 🙂
Was that a review request though? Or just a normal book you had purchased? 🤔
Oh wow! This hasn’t happened to me. My first language is Spanish, but I learned English right after because my mom wanted me to learn English, as well, even if I was in a Spanish speaking country. So I wouldn’t really know how that would be :/ I do know that fantasies or sci-fi can be harder to read because of the terminologies and all of that. Maybe try reading a contemporary novel 🙂
For some reason english has been really hard for me to learn ! It took me years of school classes before I actually started to understand .. 😅
Wierdly, that one is a thriller :/ not even fantasy or scifi… contemporaries do feel easier though! Generally I also go back to my french to « reset » my brain after a while :p
I feel you! My first language is French and Arabic, I just learned English and a bit of Spanish. I guess we should see it as an advantage because we can access other literature works in the world 🙂
indeed ! How nice that we can read books that others can’t necessarely as it may not be translated in english ??
But at the same time … I might struggle on “easy” books that others wouldn’t xd AND double (or quadruble, for you!) the books on our tbr ahaha .. the price to pay.
That’s a very interesting thought, Kristina. Even though my first language is English, I have felt like this before when reading an Afrikaans piece of work. My brain then has to work overtime to read the sentence and translate it into English 😄
If you do think the book will get more interesting for you, definitely carry on. But otherwise, don’t feel bad about having to not finish the book.
I’m kinda happy to hear others get that aswell, and i’m not alone in that!
Thank you – I will definately carry on for now, though if it gets too complicated i’d drop it. for some reasons I always fear it might not be valid enough??
That’s a dilemma. I wonder have you read any other reviews of the book? I mean perhaps other people have mentioned finding the story confusing and it’s not just you. Otherwise your best bet is probably to let the author know. Maybe if you did find the story interesting just tell them it’s going to take you some more time? Good luck regardless!
Thank you!
I actually don’t typically read the other reviews, but im 100% sure it’s just my understanding- like some sentences just dont make sense in my brain kinda thing? XD or my brain just don’t hold the information ive just read..
I think I would contact the author and explain the language difficulty, and that you do not feel qualified to write a truly honest review. Good luck, whichever the choice!
Thank you! Being honest seems to always be the best answer, eh? Just gotta hope it’ll be received good!
In this particular scenario, it did ended up turning around and I was able to produce a review though 🙂