So, I was (as many of you probably were) watching the Oscars tonight. It was a very well done show, and one of my favorites in years past. The nominees this year were a host of dramatic films, set in different time frames all across the globe. One of these films was "The Reader." I've been hearing about this film for, oh I don't know, about four months now. I always thought the name was interesting, and that there was something vaguely familiar about it...and I was right. My last year of college (which was just last year), my German class was assigned to read a "real German book" - "Der Vorleser" by Bernard Schlink. Guess what Der Vorleser translates to? Yup - The Reader :)
Hearing the film do so well (Kate Winslett won for best actress in the film), brought me back to German 300 class where we would jokingly critique what we thought was an odd German book. The instructors told us (after making silly remarks about the book's subject matter) that they picked this book because it was a real book (as opposed to the graduated readers we had read in lower level classes) and that it would encourage us to think and develop our reading comprehension skills in German. It is this book that I owe many laughs (not from the book itself, but from classroom discussions), and my entire comprehensive reading ability in the German language.
It was nice to see that a book we were forced to read in class actually turned into something, and eventually became much more than just a reading assignment to a bunch of 18-22 year-olds. It also makes me smile a little bit knowing that the instructors will never be able to assign that book again because now there's a movie. Perhaps they'll pick out 2015s next winner.
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