The one year long friendship ends today. How do I feel about it?
As always in life and university there were some parts I liked and some parts I did not like about these tasks. I liked that over time I really started to get some kind of connection with the book, because all tasks where referring to that one specific book I wrote about in the tasks before, too. It’s funny to see that after two or three tasks it really started to become MY book and in a way I have to admit there was some way of friendship coming up.
My biggest problem probably was that my book was written in French. As my French stays back at Baguette, Tour Eiffel and Fromage (not even sure how to write it), we could not really get into deep conversations. I was able to take a look at the sketches and understood a bit what it was about, but still the language barrier was in the way.
Having such an old book in the hands was an event I personally enjoyed. Making a video of yourself going through the book was a bit stupid, but still it was nice to visit the library, have the booked handed out, touching it, looking at it from different angles. It is definitely one of the oldest books I ever had in my hands, if not even the oldest book (333 Years old to become specific).
It was also good to gather some more information about the book like how many editions there were on the market as well as where it comes from and who was the author.
The translation exercise did not work at all. I found It interesting to learn a bit about a program that can transfer analog letters into digital letters. But same time I have to say – looking at the translations from google – there was a disappointing number of mistakes.
My favorite task was the last one because it gave us some creative space to work with the book we got to know in the first months. Although the explanation was pretty confusing – I listened to it from beginning to the end and was more confused about Friends with an Old Book than before – I started reading the task, got it, and then we had a pretty good time in group. We connected via zoom and spoke a little about ours books. Afterwards we decided to work in a blind date setting and it was pretty fun to have the books in a flirty conversation. It was a new, playful and refreshing way to be working with the book.
Coming to a conclusion I would say that at sometimes I felt like the whole “friends” idea was a bit over the top and I never was really motivated to start the tasks, but same time now I feel like it was nice to get to know such an old book and have a bit more free and creative chance to work with it.