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Thanks for the recs Franchescanado you have a different werewolf avi now Maybe I should try a diff translation of yon Iliad. I just nabbed the Pope one off of Project Gutenberg. Is there a thread favorite? Fagles sounds good for readability's sake
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Mar 23, 2021 14:41
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Fagles is readable, Chapman is fun. Pope sucks.
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Mar 23, 2021 14:46
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pope's is pretty good so long as you are willing to take the 8 years required to read it in small enough chunks to not find it grating and are not particularly interested in reading the iliad. read lattimore or fagles - i prefer the lattimore but a bunch of people without consistently terrible opinions prefer the fagles
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Mar 23, 2021 14:50
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just to get ahead of the inevitable debate over homer translations. Carthag Tuek posted:personally, i would translate polytropon as "twiztid"
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Mar 23, 2021 16:17
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Wild how the odyssey begins 'muse sing to me of the man who became The Joker (2019)'
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Mar 23, 2021 16:50
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I invoke the muse before my every post, as any man of legend must
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Mar 23, 2021 17:20
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I re-read Chapman's Iliad recently and it still rips. Not as much into his Odyssey, the change to pentameter is underwhelming.
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Mar 23, 2021 17:53
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apophenium posted:Also, my desire to read more short stories led me to Dubliners by Joyce and it's exceptional. Have been jumping around in it and my favorite's Ivy Day in the Committee Room. Makes me wish Joyce had written more in that style rather than whatever Finnegan's Wake is (I haven't read it and I'm sure it's good but it's definitely not the same as Ivy Day) There is no wrong way to read of course but just jumping around in Dubliners might lead you to miss the structural element of age progressing through the stories from beginning to end. Also The Dead is probably one of my favourite bits of writing ever
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Mar 23, 2021 18:55
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someone explained the rhythm of the illiad to me and i reread it by sort of singing out loud
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Mar 23, 2021 19:47
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I started Omeros and it hurts my brain. I know it's an epic poem, but I didn't imagine I'd had this much of a problem. Can't get into the flow at all.quote:as eels sign their names along the clear bottom-sand
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Mar 24, 2021 03:39
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Reading Doppelganger by Dasa Drndic. So far it's about two old people who poo poo their diapers and then give each other handjobs. And also Nazis
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Mar 24, 2021 05:40
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thehoodie posted:Reading Doppelganger by Dasa Drndic. So far it's about two old people who poo poo their diapers and then give each other handjobs. And also Nazis That book loving owns and I keep forgetting to read more Drndic
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Mar 24, 2021 11:45
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Drndic is fantastic. Her masterpiece is Trieste, probably one of the best books about the Holocaust I've read. Understandably a tough read
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Mar 24, 2021 15:21
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Okay somehow i've never heard of Drndic and now i need to read all her books. this will never end will it
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Mar 24, 2021 15:59
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apophenium posted:That book loving owns and I keep forgetting to read more Drndic Ya I've read EEG and Belladonna, which were both fantastic. Looking forward to cracking into this one and eventually Trieste. Doesn't look like she has any more that have been translated, unfortunately?
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Mar 24, 2021 16:16
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There's another translated novel called Leica Format apparently but idk anything about it except that it's probably good
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Mar 24, 2021 17:11
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oh boy, Sonnenschein was just last year translated to Norwegian, I think this might end up in my shelf soon
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Mar 24, 2021 17:13
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derp posted:Okay somehow i've never heard of Drndic and now i need to read all her books. this will never end will it nope just think about all the incredible literature you've never read because it was self-published or because it never got into the right hands of the right critic to talk it up
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Mar 25, 2021 02:24
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ulvir posted:just to get ahead of the inevitable debate over homer translations. 
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Mar 25, 2021 05:56
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Declan MacManus posted:nope There’s all that, along with the works that are just lost to negligence or spite. The literature we have access to is like 1% of 1% of what’s been written. And from that, maybe 10% is worth reading, and it’s still more good books than a person could read in a lifetime.
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Mar 25, 2021 18:09
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For comfort, imagine all of the horrible fantasy that gets rightfully rejected.
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Mar 25, 2021 18:11
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Carly Gay Dead Son posted:10% is worth reading huge overestimation, i think there's something like a million books published per year in the US alone. i somehow doubt that 100k of them are good. it's a firehose of poo poo with a few diamonds sprinkled in, good luck if you can find them.
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Mar 25, 2021 19:35
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derp posted:huge overestimation, i think there's something like a million books published per year in the US alone. i somehow doubt that 100k of them are good. it's a firehose of poo poo with a few diamonds sprinkled in, good luck if you can find them. Yeah I didn’t really crunch the numbers, I was just lazily applying Sturgeon’s law.
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Mar 25, 2021 19:44
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One thing I forgot about The Iliad is just how much sadness really hangs over this whole poem, really tempering the more exciting battle bits and such. Dudes don't just die (And often in ignoble ways like a spear through a buttock), they're also the son of so-and-so, a father still waiting to pass their wealth onto an only child that now will never return home. And like christ, every rando's death is like this. Hector returning to Troy in book 6 to see his wife and child and wondering just what the hell is going to happen to them once Troy falls is particularly one of the sadder, more human things I've seen in an ancient story like this.
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Mar 25, 2021 20:53
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Raxivace posted:One thing I forgot about The Iliad is just how much sadness really hangs over this whole poem, really tempering the more exciting battle bits and such. Dudes don't just die (And often in ignoble ways like a spear through a buttock), they're also the son of so-and-so, a father still waiting to pass their wealth onto an only child that now will never return home. And like christ, every rando's death is like this. In my opinion it is exactly this quality which has enabled the Iliad to survive as the first major work in Western literature, and so not an accident when viewed from that perspective. Much of the Iliad is psychologically alien to us, but that quality of empathy is not, and the sense of personal pride/responsibility is not. In many ways it grounds the entire culture, because the culture chose to preserve it as an iconic work.
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Mar 25, 2021 21:13
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Has this thread spent much time discussing Philip Roth? I just read American Pastoral in a week and was blown away. I loved the writing, the deep dive into these characters, and the tension in some of the key conversations. Wondering what else I should read of his that is similar.
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Mar 26, 2021 01:43
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derp posted:huge overestimation, i think there's something like a million books published per year in the US alone. The vast majority of those are re-prints.
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Mar 26, 2021 02:10
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the majority of american printing goes to novelty rolls of toilet paper with various assortments of political enemies on it. the rest goes for printing ikea instructions for assembling guns, or waffle house menus
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Mar 26, 2021 02:44
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Tree Goat posted:the majority of american printing goes to novelty rolls of toilet paper with various assortments of political enemies on it. the rest goes for printing ikea instructions for assembling guns, or waffle house menus None of those get ISBNs so probably aren't counted.
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Mar 26, 2021 02:49
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3D Megadoodoo posted:None of those get ISBNs so probably aren't counted. If it weren't for Kallax shelves and cheesesteak omelets, I would never complete my Goodreads reading challenge (69 books)
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Mar 26, 2021 03:25
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blue squares posted:Has this thread spent much time discussing Philip Roth? I just read American Pastoral in a week and was blown away. I loved the writing, the deep dive into these characters, and the tension in some of the key conversations. From the reviews definitely not his most recent. Or his biography, lol
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Mar 26, 2021 05:51
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blue squares posted:Has this thread spent much time discussing Philip Roth? I just read American Pastoral in a week and was blown away. I loved the writing, the deep dive into these characters, and the tension in some of the key conversations.
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Mar 26, 2021 08:38
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really liked ‘in a bamboo grove’, ‘death register’ and ‘the life of a stupid man’. does anyone have any recommendations for a well-translated akutagawa collection?
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Mar 28, 2021 17:28
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artism posted:really liked ‘in a bamboo grove’, ‘death register’ and ‘the life of a stupid man’. does anyone have any recommendations for a well-translated akutagawa collection? i read most of his work in random compilations and japanese learning textbooks and stuff so i dont have a recommendation, akutagawa is probably my favorite japanese writer though and if you like him i also recommend ogai mori. "the wild geese" and "sansho the bailiff" (which the mizoguchi movie was based on) are good starting points
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Mar 28, 2021 18:30
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i dunno what it is about akutagawa that i like so much, i guess because it's a bit like reading soseki if he'd had a better sense of humor and was less up his own rear end
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Mar 28, 2021 18:34
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I like the same thing that I like about Mishima: He barely made it through each day in the gloom, leaning as it were upon a chipped and narrow sword. and then sentences that made me laugh a lot: ‘You fellows still have a strong will to live, I suppose?’ ‘If I needed a corpse, I’d kill someone without the slightest malice.’ Of course the reply stayed where it was - inside his heart. There was nothing out there but a brick wall topped with embedded broken bottles. It did, though, have thin growths of moss in dull white patches. artism fucked around with this message at 19:27 on Mar 28, 2021 |
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Mar 28, 2021 19:23
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i love "the nose" just a guy who's so self serious and pious but can't stop caring about his nose: "This Buddhist priest was now in his fifties. From the time he was an apprentice in the inner hall, climbing the ranks, even until the present day, he was constantly worrying about his nose. Of course, during all this time, he continued to pretend that he didn’t care about it in the least. It wasn’t just that as a monk he should’ve been completely focused on the Pure Land awaiting him in the afterlife, it was that he didn’t want other people to know he was so concerned about his nose. Nothing terrified him more than the idea that someone would bring up his nose in conversation."
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Mar 28, 2021 20:41
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sounds like I’m going to have to piece together what I can. I’ll check out Mori, as well
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Mar 28, 2021 23:02
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i misremembered, i forgot i actually do have a compilation of just akutagawa in english: https://www.amazon.com/Japanese-Short-Stories-Ryunosuke-Akutagawa/dp/0871409933 i dont remember what the quality of the translation was though
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Mar 28, 2021 23:15
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Today i finished Blood Meridian, by Cormac McCarthy. Most of the time I was busy trying to translate what I was reading into simpler language. Some of the descriptions evoked amazing landscapes. And what traversing them under those circumstances must have felt like. At other times my eyes just wanted to skip ahead, because you really don't need that many words to describe a sandy plain. I appreciated the non focus the violence got. Like, the same tone was used for the passage where a man is walking around a town, and for the one were two babies get their heads smashed. Serves the point of violence being part of every man's life. I also liked how we never knwo the internal thoughts of the characters (except once i think) or an explanation of why and what exactly they are doing. The text is emrely the description of actions and landscapes. At points it was very confusing, and I didn't understand what happened, I just powered through. I'm thinking of fixing a cart for example, or other daily life stuff. Another example would be when four men are unable to ride, and the enemy is closing in. The text doesn't say "They decided it was better to give them a swift death, than to leave them for the soldiers". It simply goes to Galton putting the ribbons on the arrows, and two of them being murdered right there. (Side note: for a while i thought the Delawares were brothers with that as their last name, my bad!). The use of spanish was good for immersing oneself in the story, probably wouldn't have felt the same if i didn't speak spanish though. My version for some reason didn’t have the 3 opening excerpts, which I found out exist while checking Wikipedia. I also didn’t know that the Glanton Gang was a real thing, apparently the research he did for the book is a whole thing. I 100% didn’t get the epilogue.
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Mar 29, 2021 03:32
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