How to enjoy a good book written in English, for non-native English speakers

It was in 2010 when I purchased a copy of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain, and when I began to read it, I found verbs and expressions I could only understand if I looked them up in a dictionary. Up until that day I thought I would be able to read the book in a few hours because it is meant to be written for kids. I have some experience reading technical articles, which are written by engineers and scientists and I understand them all perfectly, so reading a book for kids was not going to be big deal. I was totally wrong. The first three pages are full with many words that I had to look up in a dictionary and soon I felt as though I did not know enough English. But, wait a minute, the book was written for children! Why did not I, a student of the Intermediate program of an English course at that time, understand those words? This was too disappointing.

At first I looked up every word whose meaning I did not know, but this took a lot of time and hurt the pleasure of reading because I had to stop doing it for a while. I did this for some days but then I realized it would take me too long to finish the book and was getting bored. I was not enjoying the reading. I used to read the book one page a day every two days until I had to travel to Lima for work. I had read the first chapter of the book and three pages of the second.

This year I took the English lessons again and wanted to read a good book in English once more. I bought copies of other novels and decided to read one written by a renowned English writer. This novel is not intended for children and is regarded as one of the greatest novels of all times, so I was sure I was going to discover a good fountain of joy for my hunger of culture. There was I seeing the book, touching it and wondering what wonderful stories it would bring, when I opened it and started reading. To my surprise, I found myself looking up in a dictionary again. Would the story repeat again? It appeared so.

One day I decided to read without using a dictionary each time I encountered a new unknown word. I realized it was a good way to read. I would try to understand the words in their context and read continuously; this way I would appreciate more the stories and my brain would work more. What is better, I would not stop many times and could enjoy the reading much more.

I have found this system works well and when I had read two chapters of this English novel, I remembered I had stopped reading the Mark Twain's book. So, I put the English book on the bookshelf and took the American one. This time I started it over, without stopping when finding a new word.

Now I have read six chapters and in applying the system described above I have been relishing reading this great American piece of writing. I have decided to look up the unknown words when I finish the book, and then I will continue with the English novel.