Reading in another language?

I'm going to be a college freshman this fall and I won't be taking the same language that I really immersed myself in highschool, German, and I don't want to lose my German, so I've picked up a book in German. The problem I'm running into is that reading in German is much, much harder than I expected; my vocabulary, which far exceeded that of any of my classmates in my AP class, is still lacking when it comes to reading an average German novel.

Does anyone have some tips on how to read a book in a foreign language to improve your skills? The way I'm reading now is doing it in chunks, one time without a dictionary, then another time with a dictionary. How do you guys do it?

Well, your method certainly is valid. Another way is to read the text, all the way through or otherwise, and write down all of the words you don't know. Then just look them up and take notes.

Also, be mindful of expressions that only exist in German and other things. A dictionary may not be able to help you with those.

When you've looked up all of the words you didn't understand, read it through one more time without your notes to see if you remember.

>>1
Well... All i really do when reading stuff in Japanese is jot down any vocab I don't know and look it up later if it's not too important or right away if it seems to be.