斑斓阅读 (Very Short Introductions series)

[Demonic_Duck]

"Very Short Introductions" is a series of introductory books on a variety of (mostly) interesting and (often) technical subjects from Oxford University Press, with the emphasis on making them understandable to laymen. I dipped into a few of them in my time as a university student and found them really useful.

I recently discovered that a good number of them are available as dual language English-Chinese readers in a series called 斑斓阅读, published by 外语教学与研究出版社, and promptly acquired the one on consciousness (《意识新探》), which is a topic I'm somewhat familiar with and find very interesting. It's fair to say that the Chinese used is leaps and bounds above my level, but I've resolved to struggle through, and hopefully pick up a ton of academic terms and somewhat specialised vocabulary along the way.

Does anyone else have any experience with these?

[陳德聰]

These look extremely interesting thanks for posting this!

[XiaoZhou]

I'm familiar with "Very Short Introductions," but I never knew that they were available as English-Chinese readers. Where did you get them? DId you purchase online or in a brick-and-mortar store? I'd love to get a hold of some of these!

[Demonic_Duck]

I've seen them in both 西单 and 王府井 bookstores in Beijing. To be honest, my initial optimism notwithstanding, the one I bought has been shelved (literally) in favour of simpler material for the moment. I feel the rate of progress isn't satisfactory and I'd probably be best off working on lower-level vocabulary, as well as improving my reading speed, first. Still, I'm sure I'll go back to it in a few months' time and hopefully make some more substantial headway. It certainly makes for fascinating reading.