Learning a Language? Here's Five Tips for Picking Books that "Blitz"

I just finished the nightmarish, heartwrenching book and audiobook Wrony by Czech writer Petra Dvořáková, and it reminds me of what makes a good pick for a Bimodal Blitz. I'll share five tips with you now.

When starting out with Bimodal Blitzing, it's best to choose audiobooks that are no longer than five hours. Wrony is three hours and 20 minutes, right in the sweet spot. As you become more comfortable with reading and listening to your target language at faster speeds, you can gradually increase the length of the books you blitz. The audiobook's duration is a quick way to gauge the book's length and complexity.

To avoid discrepancies between the written text and the narration, always make sure that the book cover design and the audiobook cover design are identical. If they have different designs, they may be different translations of the same story, which can lead to confusion and hinder your blitzing experience. As you can see, Wrony has the same design.

Bimodal Blitzing is like drinking from a firehose of your target language. Go ahead and blitz fiction and non-fiction, classic literature and pulp, even content that seems "over your head." If you think the topic is going to slake your thirst, drink up! The Bimodal Blitz is not about finding perfectly comprehensible input; it's about exposing yourself to a wide range of vocabulary and ideas.

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