This reminds me of that one time in 1st grade I was at the after school program. I had a bit of a cold and started coughing and this girl I was talking to goes “why do you cough like a teacher?” Then, she walked away and never spoke to me again. Same energy. Your friends sound like 8 year olds.

I read Heart of Darkness in high school and I’ll be honest I don’t remember the language of it very well. I don’t remember it being particularly difficult (well, any more than other 18th-19th century works anyway).

What I DO remember is going from having never heard of it before, to suddenly seeing references to it everywhere. It was like a whole new secret code language was unlocked.

It’s pretty short. I would crack a dictionary and maybe read a literary analysis or two and struggle through it. It’s worth it.

It depends. Availability, (my) fluency, quality, age (of both the translation and the original) are all factors. All these being equal I would choose the language closest to the original. For example, a Korean novel translated into Chinese or English, I would probably choose Chinese, as the two languages/cultures have some overlap, and are easier to translate between, especially when it comes to cultural concepts/idioms etc.

For the most part I choose English, though as it’s my native language, and is usually easier to find.

Sure, but there are plenty of ebooks, web fiction, fan fiction, fan-translated works that are unlikely to get an official release, extra chapters/short stories that were only published in an obscure magazine and/or on Twitter, etc that just aren’t available in a physical format. I’ve considered getting into bookbinding for precisely this reason, but I’m not sure where to even start.