Our parents always read to us. I learned to read in kindergarten and always read books, growing up.

I learned to read French in school. Started reading French books in college.

I finally joined a book club a couple of years ago, which has been fun because it’s a great group of open-minded friends.

Currently reading:

“Mémoires d’Hadrien” (Hadrian’s Memoirs) by Marguerite Yourcenar. A highly praised, fictional account of the Roman emperor, looking back on his life. Hadrian was one of the five best Roman emperors, say historians.

It’s a bit of a slow moving slog, but it’s well written and I’m learning a lot about Roman history.

Do you need to pay for books at all and then have them clutter your house?

What about borrowing from libraries?

Apart from public libraries, university libraries usually offer community borrower cards and lend e books too.

I read in French if the book was originally written in French. I deliberately seek out great French books to read.

For any other language, I read an English (my native language) translation.

I can speak and read some other languages (Spanish, Italian, Portuguese , German) at a pretty basic level but not well enough to read novels without investing a lot of extra time.

When a famous book has multiple English translations that are equally available, I might research to choose which one most people think is the best one, but that’s rare. I usually just read whatever English translation I can get at the library.

If I can’t find an English version of something originally written in, say, German, Spanish, Italian or Japanese, I read it in French. I did that with a Stephan Zweig book.