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https://thebookerprizes.com/booker-prize/news/2019-booker-prize-longlist-announced
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Jul 24, 2019 10:36
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Watching the 2019 Booker Prize judges arrive at this wonderful list has been an invigorating experience. Firstly because they deemed the calibre of the submissions to be extremely high overall. Secondly because they reached far and wide in their search for the best fiction of the year, calling in (among others) Young Adult novels and books that are sometimes dismissed as ‘commercial’.
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Jul 24, 2019 10:40
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still, some good stuff on there 
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Jul 24, 2019 10:42
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I just finished Martha Nussbaum's "Monarchy of Fear", a look at fear in politics from an anthropological, historical, and psychological perspective. You'll find her dissecting greek drama as well as the racism, sexism and misogyny of the Trump era. And it ends with a chapter on why not to lose hope. I think it's a pretty good read for everyone disillusioned with current day politics, a spin on Marianne Williamson's message, but without the hocus pocus and from a more scholarly position. Nussbaum's writing is very accessible without being dumb, to me it should be the gold standard of "pop philosophy" writing for the masses.
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Jul 24, 2019 11:47
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Sham bam bamina! posted:Watching the 2019 Booker Prize judges arrive at this wonderful list has been an invigorating experience. Firstly because they deemed the calibre of the submissions to be extremely high overall. Secondly because they reached far and wide in their search for the best fiction of the year, calling in (among others) Young Adult novels and books that are sometimes dismissed as ‘commercial’. Hey sham bam you're the Russia Guy right? I'm reading Alexander Etkind's Internal Colonization and it's absolutely beautiful, one of the best non-fiction books I've read in years
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Jul 24, 2019 20:47
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Thanks, I will definitely read that. Dovetails right into a lot of the research I did for one of my final projects.
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Jul 24, 2019 22:21
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Booker is one of those prizes which does the obviously weird thing of having books which haven't yet been published on the longlist, I don't know why that's seen as an ok thing
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Jul 25, 2019 00:13
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Driven by the well meaning and very necessarily robust criticism I was delighted to receive when I last posted about something I'd written I'm returning to this thread, and the wonderful posters who brook no poo poo, to link to my feedback-request thread in CC for the latest story I've written. https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3894903 It's about mental health/psychosis, and while wordy I hope it's meaningfully wordy and approaching the standards people here hold. I'd love for you to tell me how it compares to those standards.
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Jul 28, 2019 01:49
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snagged "rings of saturn" on kindle thanks to this thread and its all right but there's an awful lot of world-building, when does the plot start to pick up
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Jul 29, 2019 17:28
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finally close to finishing 'the idiot' and the part where the General is complaining about Lebedev's story about how his leg was shot off by a canon (that specific cannon, third from the left, right there) and he buried it in the cemetery and visits it every year (when he clearly has both legs intact, btw) , holy poo poo I haven't laughed so hard at a book in i don't know how long.
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Jul 29, 2019 17:31
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Tim Burns Effect posted:snagged "rings of saturn" on kindle thanks to this thread and its all right but there's an awful lot of world-building, when does the plot start to pick up i'm triggered by this
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Jul 29, 2019 17:32
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Tim Burns Effect posted:snagged "rings of saturn" on kindle thanks to this thread and its all right but there's an awful lot of world-building, when does the plot start to pick up Come on... Get to the dragons already!
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Jul 30, 2019 01:30
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Tim Burns Effect posted:snagged "rings of saturn" on kindle thanks to this thread and its all right but there's an awful lot of world-building, when does the plot start to pick up N'ghaaa! This book is heavier than I thought! It'll take me 5 months to get to the plot!
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Jul 30, 2019 08:36
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Don't worry, I've heard that the pace picks up after Sanderson takes over.
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Jul 30, 2019 10:10
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Pro tip op; skip the off-world chapters, they have no effect on the plot
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Jul 30, 2019 10:40
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Heath posted:Has anyone read Against the Day? I finished it and had already forgotten most of it by then, because I couldn't tell if anything was tying anything together. I enjoyed the process, though, especially the final sequence.
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Jul 30, 2019 11:15
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Solitair posted:I finished it and had already forgotten most of it by then, because I couldn't tell if anything was tying anything together. I enjoyed the process, though, especially the final sequence. Isn't that on par for every Pynchon book? (At least the ones I read, Vineland and Gravity's Rainbow)
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Jul 30, 2019 11:29
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Finished 'the idiot' and started 'the loser' (any other pejorative classics?) I'm cracking up every time he says '...I thought, as I entered the inn' it's been 20 pages of rambling bitterness and this guy is still entering the inn. I love it edit: are all his books this good? hot drat i love this derp fucked around with this message at 21:09 on Aug 1, 2019 |
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Aug 1, 2019 17:11
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Reading his Frost rn and it’s awesome. Just look at this opening:quote:A medical internship consists of more than spectating at complicated bowel operations, cutting open stomach linings, bracketing off lungs, and sawing off feet; and it doesn't just consist of thumbing closed the eyes of the dead, and hauling babies out into the world either. An internship is not just tossing limbs and parts of limbs over your shoulder into an enamel bucket. Nor does it just consist of trotting along behind the registrar and the assistant and the assistant's assistant, a sort of tail-end Charlie. Nor can an internship be only the putting out of false information; it isn't just saying: "The pus will dissolve in your bloodstream, and you'll soon be restored to perfect health." Or a hundred other such lies. Not just: "It'll get better"—when nothing will. An internship isn't just an academy of scissors and thread, of tying off and pulling through. An internship extends to circumstances and possibilities that have nothing to do with the flesh. My mission to observe the painter Strauch compels me to think about precisely such non-flesh-related circumstances and issues.
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Aug 1, 2019 23:15
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One way to distinguish good books from bad ones is that bad ones will talk about "the body" while good ones just say "flesh"
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Aug 1, 2019 23:20
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derp posted:Finished 'the idiot' and started 'the loser' (any other pejorative classics?) Akutagawa's The Life of a Stupid Man
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Aug 3, 2019 02:21
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im really sad i missed the white guy posting about how rupi kaur was good for dsa reasons
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Aug 5, 2019 00:13
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Got a couple of Faulkner books (The Sound and the Fury and Intruder in the Dust), Animal Farm and Always Coming Home from a book fair this weekend. I've only read a short story by Faulkner that I really liked so I'm looking forward to reading them
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Aug 5, 2019 19:08
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Anyone here who liked Stanislaw Lem, I found a guy who makes illustrations based on the novels that are actually pretty cool and similar to what I pictured while reading, deviantart is normally bad and all but these are decent: https://www.deviantart.com/alexandreev/art/The-Old-Mimoid-640701925
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Aug 7, 2019 16:02
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Take the plunge! Okay! posted:Reading his Frost rn and it’s awesome. Just look at this opening: The Loser was really good, and i just ordered Frost based on this post alone. what a lol opening. I'm almost finished reading The Silent Angel by Heinrich Boll based on Sebald's recommendation and holy moly, really powerful, beautiful and ugly at once. Need more Sebald recs
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Aug 7, 2019 16:47
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I can report that emily wilson's version of the odyssey is too proud of how un-flashy it is, but isn't without merit because of its directness, making it a resolutely OK translation. Some things that annoyed me: in Book One 'the gods formed/ a firm decision'; Odysseus has a 'great big scar' in Book 19; the iambic pentameter is taken too rigidly so the lines don't vary in their rhythm a lot, unless she inadvertently breaks it by mistake. I also think the idea of translating 'polyptropon' as 'complicated' says a lot: it has this kind of weird attitude that's pretending to be hard-nosed and realistic about what homer is but ends up sucking some of the literary fun out of it, it just seems like a kind of cynical tack to take, equating the emotional force of the story with restrained and simplified verse. The quotes on the back seem to uncritically take the PR line that in order to experience the full weight of the story we have to sacrifice nice words. It's like austerity economics but with explicitly privileging plot over verse. And also I'm pleased to announce that my general rule of waiting 5 years before the hype on contemporary stuff dies down has been vindicated, as I caved and read this seemingly under the impression that it was a groundbreaking work that will completely reshape the way we view homer (it won't)
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Aug 9, 2019 16:54
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This definitely seems to be a trend at the moment. I've read a lot of reviews and quotes from other authors praising, "clear, precise prose" with all its directness and impact. It's like people are afraid of lyrical or "pretentious" or to be more cynical they're afraid of praising something ambitious both in language choice and prosody in case others think it's a dud. I've read a few chapters in these "acclaimed" styles, and it comes across as cold and distant, which a lot of reviewers seem to be considering as a millenial approach to life, that's filled with intelligence and restrained but justified anger. Counter to that Samanta Schweblin's Fever Dream hasn't gotten near enough praise, outside of hailing her South American roots, for showing that the overall effect of storytelling in language can make a small book deal with much larger feelings than some zeitgeisty novel told clinically.
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Aug 9, 2019 18:20
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writing my extremely timely response to how annoying pope's odyssey is because thankfully nothing has happened in the past 300 years
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Aug 9, 2019 19:23
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the best translation of the iliad and odyssey is omeros
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Aug 9, 2019 19:24
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All Day Permanent Red.
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Aug 9, 2019 19:36
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In the last 400 years, the word has been translated as “prudent”; “crafty”; “by long experience tried”; “full of resources”; “of many fortunes”; “tost to and fro by fate”; “deep”; “sagacious”; “adventurous”; “shifty”; “ingenious”; “restless”; “clever”; “never at a loss”; “of wide-ranging spirit”; “cunning;” and many more. Wilson translates it as “complicated”. She wanted a word that sounded like something a modern reader might say, but which also shows that “Maybe there is something wrong with this guy.”
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Aug 9, 2019 20:14
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CestMoi posted:the best translation of the iliad and odyssey is omeros stately, plump maud plunkett came from the stairhead,
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Aug 9, 2019 20:16
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smh if you don't absorb books in whole sentence-confused chunks. Look at these rubes, farting towards word choice.
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Aug 9, 2019 20:37
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Tree Goat posted:In the last 400 years, the word has been translated as “prudent”; “crafty”; “by long experience tried”; “full of resources”; “of many fortunes”; “tost to and fro by fate”; “deep”; “sagacious”; “adventurous”; “shifty”; “ingenious”; “restless”; “clever”; “never at a loss”; “of wide-ranging spirit”; “cunning;” and many more. Fine, and that seems to justify it, but then the first line is: 'Tell me about a complicated man'. It's all a bit flat and prosaic. Fagles has it as 'Sing to me of the man, Muse, the man of twists and turns' and surely that's just better on every level as Homeric first lines go. Fagles seems to have intuited the feeling of reading homer and that's a good thing imo: quote:With the Odyssey ... I have tried to vary my voice in even more ways, modulating it to fit the postwar world, the more domestic, more intimate world of the later poem. I mean you know nobody is writing odes about how amazing Fagles' Homer is but I felt more with his version, even if it isn't as literal or academic as Wilson's, and it's probably down to that conscious effort at variety
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Aug 9, 2019 21:04
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personally, i would translate polytropon as "twiztid" e: Faygo's Homer
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Aug 9, 2019 23:18
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I always found Faygo’s Homer accurate, easy to follow and a little bit dry. I must admit I enjoy Chapman’s translation the most, although it takes a bit more concentration and effort.
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Aug 10, 2019 00:22
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looking at a comparison of first lines now and lattimore, fitzgerald and fagle all translate πολλῶν δ᾽ ἀνθρώπων ἴδεν ἄστεα καὶ νόον ἔγνω as something like '[tell me how he] saw the towns and learned the minds of many men' and wilson translates it as '[tell me] where he went and who he met' which is just shite
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Aug 10, 2019 00:38
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I haven't read the Odyssey, but after reading all thru the Iliad in Greek as well as several translations: Fagles and Lattimore both go for the dactylic hexameter, Lattimore pulls it off and Fagles doesn't. Lattimore is really pretty astonishing, as he keeps the line count the same and translates almost word for word, which keeps the text as dense as the original, but he also has perfect meter and diction. Fagles seems more slapdash with lazy syntax that makes use of repetition and sentence fragments, to keep the pace up for the reader I guess. If you never intend to read in greek and just want a really good English poetry experience, go for the man, George Chapman.
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Aug 10, 2019 00:51
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J_RBG posted:Fine, and that seems to justify it, but then the first line is: 'Tell me about a complicated man'. It's all a bit flat and prosaic. oh sorry that was a quote from an interview. I think going with "tell me about a complicated man" in order to indicate a flawed hero sucks poo poo, like on par with "i'm gonna talk about war stuff and also a dude"
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Aug 10, 2019 01:40
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Wilson's essays about how she translated it the way she did are interesting, but "Tell me about a complicated man" sounds like a teenager wrote it.
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Aug 10, 2019 07:48
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