This Week I are mostly reading (contd)

SusanWhite wrote: »

I am looking forward to start with The Mocking bird. Please give me a feedback for the same.


Thanks

I presume you mean To Kill A Mockingbird?I've just finished it and it is both heartwarming and beautifully written. Well worth the read.

MagicMarker wrote:

I assumed she meant mockingjay, the 2nd hunger games.

The third Hunger Games

emeraldstar wrote: »

Hmm, I don't know. Undoubtedly the worst of the three.

Mockingjay is great, but I tend to think of the Hunger Games all as one.

Einhard wrote: »

Just finished Jamrach's Menagerie by Carol Birch. Quite enjoyed it. It's very much a bok of two halves though- there's quite a shift in tone between the first part and the latter chapters. Would recommend it though. Now on to HHhH by Laurent Binet, which apparently is a fictionalised account of the plot to kill Reinhard Heydrich, the head of the wartime Gestapo. Have heard great things about it, so here's hoping.

I have Jamrach's Menagerie, might give it a go over Christmas. I want to read HHhH, interested to hear what you think.

I have been reading mostly stuff about the 1913 Lockout for my final essay this semester....so close to finishing.

Otherwise I read Enchanted Glass by Diana Wynne Jones for escapism. Also the Wildflower Path by Sarah Harrison, the third in a family trilogy. I read the first two and loved them twenty or so years ago. I enjoyed this one, but I didn't love it.

I also started Cockroaches by Jo Nesbo. I think I prefer his earlier books, the later ones are too grim.

I usually have an aversion to reading anything translated, it just feels wrong in my head to be reading what is effectively an interpretation rather than the original words of the author. The only real exception was Crime and Punishment which I really got sucked into and felt the feeling of claustrophobia.

Is Notes on the Underground worth traversing back into translation for?

Call Me Jimmy wrote: »

I usually have an aversion to reading anything translated, it just feels wrong in my head to be reading what is effectively an interpretation rather than the original words of the author. The only real exception was Crime and Punishment which I really got sucked into and felt the feeling of claustrophobia.

Is Notes on the Underground worth traversing back into translation for?

Can you remember the translator? Because if you liked it with the older, now shunned translations (Garnett/Magarshack) you'll surely enjoy his work with the latest Peavear and Volokhonsky translations, widely considered the most accurate and faithful to the original style.

Here's a link from an earlier post I had on the subject:

Also I read this New Yorker piece from 2005, about the English translations of the classic Russian novels. After reading this I checked my old copy of Crime and Punishment (Penguin Classics) to find it bore no mention of a translator! A quick google told me that it was translated by Constance Garnett who is completely vilified by the article. Comparisons with other translations show how she bent the meaning of the works to suit her, and even omitted parts (!), bilingual authors such as Brodsky and Nabokov hated her translations and made it known. This is probably why she's not credited on my copy. Interesting stuff.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Pevear_and_Larissa_Volokhonsky#Bibliography

SusanWhite wrote: »

How about starting with Atlas Shrug?
I am not a very big fan of Ayn Rand after reading The Fountainhead. That is a cult novel and I am expecting lots of people here to advocate about that novel..:P

Have you read We The Living?

Reading Dark Places by Gillian Flynn. Not sure I really like it. About half way through. there is a lot of jumping back and forth in time which I am not too fond of. I dont like any of the charaters even in the slightest. Going home for Christmas so bringing My Cousin Rachel which I have been dying to read for ages. and Im am going to try read the Kite Runner.

Traitor's Field by Robert Wilton

I felt the same about The Gathering.

The most recent thing I have read is Letters from the Doig River School: To My Dear Ones in Ireland, 1955-1958 by Charlotte Groake. I probably wouldn't have encountered if the author was not a family member, but I am interested in immigrant, memoirs and frontier life so I enjoyed it (the references to people I know helped as well:))

I also read Who Betrayed Elizabeth Bennet? by John Sutherland, also enjoyed it.

I'll probably go back to Cockroaches or The Maias next.

(OT and apologies for it, but this is the only book thread I post in here - I am expecting my Kindle Fire to come any day, hopefully tomorrow )

TICKLE_ME_ELMO wrote: »

Eventually finished Let The Great World Spin. Thought it was pretty poor, to be honest. It felt like a bunch of short stories very loosely tacked together by one irrelevant event. Can't believe all the praise it got.

Same. Really thought it dragged.

I have just read the new novel A Mad and Wonderful Thing by Mark Mulholland (available initially in Australia and New Zealand). I think this novel is likely to create some debate in Ireland and I have a friend here in Australia who somehow liked it and yet didn't like it???

I loved it!! And I loved its captivating voice. It tells the story of the IRA sniper Johnny Donnelly, a passionate young man in love with Ireland and the beautiful Cora Flannery.

It’s told from a unique angle, a tale on the troubles from south of the border, and the story meanders through the island, history, folklore, and peoples of Ireland. It’s a powerful piece of work, uplifting as it is real, and, at times, hard. And there are many pockets of beauty in the writing.

The ending too is unusual and again links to ancient tales of Irish mythology. But there is magic there.

A Mad and Wonderful Thing isn’t, perhaps, for all. But it was for me. I recommend it. :cool: