Today I went back to the Hague public library and decided to sit down and read one of the makkelijk lezen (easier reading) books. The series I picked up is called “Fast Lane” and the particular book I had was In Het Donker – In the Darkness. As you can see below, the format of the lines is definitely different than a regular book, with short lines that can’t even really be called paragraphs:
The book was about 65 pages long, but as you can see there wasn’t much text per page. Some of the pages were grouped with half a picture, and some of the pages were entirely a picture with no text. I managed to finish the entire book in about an hour and a half or so.
This particular book was rather formulaic in its vampire theme, but nonetheless I enjoyed reading it. I used the Google Translate app and the Dict Box app which has multiple dictionaries for NL-EN and EN-NL. You can also customize which dictionaries show up (I quickly removed the image dictionary as it was only for English words).
Life in the Hague 
I need to work on my language skills. I’m starting a course next week, but knowing there are specific books (and apps) that can help me is really wonderful!
Cool. What city is your course in?
Another thing they mentioned on the library site was that the main collection was at the central library (the one I usually visit). So you might have to hunt around for a good library to visit – I assume the branch libraries do not have nearly as many books on learning Dutch.
I have another iPhone app to write about (today or tomorrow) but it’s more of the beginner-intermediate level for a Dutch game – it is more frustrating than Words Maker Pro and tends to crash sometimes.
http://www.appannie.com/app/ios/dutch-words-nederlandse-woorden/
Keep in mind the instructions in the actual app are non-existent, so if you do download it, stare at that link before doing so. The least obvious thing is you can move a square anywhere (tap square and then tap its new location), provided it can get there on an unblocked path. My high score is 43, so I am doing horribly at it so far. 😉
Amsterdam. I’m going to register here – http://www.bltc.nl/pagina/4/Dutch_Courses/?PHPSESSID=085fdb1f7ee6b46d43fecb189ba5459c
I got a couple of “learn the language” apps before I moved (and need to study them more thoroughly!) and I have been learning basics on Pimsleur. But it’s not as useful when you get here as I was hoping it would be. Especially when everyone here speaks English!
My main library would be the massive one at Amsterdam Centraal. So I think I’m right for libraries 😉
Yep, a lot of people speak English. 😛
I haven’t quite nailed down a good course to take yet. We’ll see.
Do you have any Dutch game apps or anything? I downloaded a few more really random ones, but have not tried them yet.
I have – https://itunes.apple.com/hk/app/quick-dutch-!/id460698479?mt=8 (this is the wrong country store, but that’s the app) So you learn, and then do tests on what you’ve learnt.
But that’s as far as I’ve gotten until I enroll next week 🙂