Dreaming in Hindi: Coming Awake in Another Language |  | Author: Katherine Russell Rich
Publisher: Mariner Books
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
Buy New: $7.45
as of 9/5/2010 04:39 CDT details
You Save: $7.50 (50%)
New (30) Used (12) from $6.93
Seller: honestbook43
Rating:  6 reviews
Sales Rank: 143,239
Media: Paperback
Edition: Reprint
Pages: 384
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.8
Dimensions (in): 7.9 x 5.2 x 0.8
ISBN: 0547336934
Dewey Decimal Number: 954.0531092
EAN: 9780547336930
ASIN: 0547336934
Publication Date: June 10, 2010
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
| |
| Features:
| • | ISBN13: 9780547336930 | | • | Condition: New | | • | Notes: BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed |
|
| Similar Items:
| |
| Editorial Reviews:
Product Description
At a time when her life seemed to be crumbling, Katherine Russell Rich took on a writing assignment in India, where she was seduced by the idea of learning to speak Hindi, the language she heard swirling all around her. In a rash moment, she determined she’d go live and study in the ancient city of Udaipur. That decision lead to unexpected reclamation. In this beautiful and spirited memoir, she documents her experiences, from the bizarre to the frightening to the full-out exhilarating. Seamlessly combining her courageous (and often hilarious) personal journey with reporting on the science of language acquisition, Dreaming in Hindi offers an eye-opening account of what learning a new tongue can teach us about distant worlds and, ultimately, about ourselves.
|
| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 6
 A Most Satisfying Read July 17, 2010
E Wharton (New York, NY)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I LOVED this book! I picked it up on the advice of a friend who'd read it and was not disappointed. Rich evokes India - the heat, the HEAT!, the people, the culture - effortlessly, elegantly, and in vivid color and detail - I wanted to just keep reading for the gorgeous prose in the pages. But there are plenty other reasons to read, not least of which is the fascinating science behind language acquisition. It's terrific - 5 stars!
Extraordinary! July 14, 2010
book lover (new york, ny)
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
This book takes you into intriguing corners of India and the brain, and the journey is just fascinating. I've never read anything like it. Rich is a compelling writer and while the book is dense, the writing is rich and beautiful. I loved this one.
I have to say, though, I'm puzzled by the bitter review another reviewer gave this book. If you google Rich, you'll find that she teaches at Harvard and writes frequently for the New York Times. She's hardly the bimbo that reviewer paints her as. And why is the reviewer indignant about where the author was born and how much rent she pays-- and would he (she?) even KNOW how much rent she pays?? Guy's a weirdo, if you ask me.
 Dream to awake July 3, 2010
Ackland Smith (Australia)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Dreaming in Hindi reads like a dream--full of discontinuities and bizarre encounters. By the end however one is truly awake to the puzzles of language learning and the social and psychological adjustments the learner must make. That some of the adjustments are unconscious adds to the sense that learning a language is like passing through a mirror.
As someone who is learning Hindi and has travelled widely in India I attest that every chapter evokes the sounds, smells and distinctiveness of South Asia.
This is a mesmerizing diary of a mental and spatial journey in which the author makes the reader feel they are there too.
Bob Smith
Ackland Smith Consulting
 All over the place... hard to follow July 19, 2010
Jennie
I really found this book tough to follow. I felt that she was all over the place and sometimes repeated the same information. I also had trouble following how she met some of the people and exactly who they were. Anna Karenina was a quicker read than this. Disappointed that it was not a better book.
Not for me July 12, 2010
krebsman (New York, NY United States)
4 out of 8 found this review helpful
As a language learner, language teacher, and traveler I expected to love this book about an American woman who goes India to study Hindi. But I did not. I found this book a chore to read. I would not have finished I not gotten it through the Amazon Vine program. But I felt compelled to finish it and to review it fairly.
DREAMING IN HINDA tells the story of Katharine Russell Rich's year of studying the Hindi language in India, the people she meets, and how the experience changes her. The major problem with the book is that I simply did not like Ms. Rich. Her prose managed to make me feel envious of her. I do not like this emotion. But Ms. Rich has led a privileged life and seems compelled to rub it in. She tells us right off the bat that she grew up in Philadelphia Main Line society. She has a cheap apartment in New York City. She works in publishing, a field that is like the performing arts and media in that it is an overcrowded profession in which one is lucky to even have a job, much less real success. The worst humiliation she has ever suffered is that she is the person on the staff of her women's magazine who has to test the moisturizing creams. I imagined her as an older version of the AUNTIE MAME character, Gloria Upson.
Ms. Rich is intelligent and sometimes makes some interesting observations, but I don't really think Ms. Rich knows how to write for a male audience after all her years at the women's' magazine. She spills a lot of ink describing what she and other people wear.
The most interesting parts of the book for me were about the school for the deaf where the children invent their own language, but she only goes into this superficially, like she does with everything else. This book isn't sure what kind of book it wants to be. Is it a personal memoir? Is it a study of how people acquire a second language? A study of how people acquire language period? It's all and none of the above.
I respect Ms. Rich's ambition, but I found her book tough reading. Three stars.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 6
|
|
|
