What are you currently reading? (part 2)

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Re: What are you currently reading? (part 2)

Postby Yasna » 2017-06-20, 14:29

vijayjohn wrote:What about literature in Sanskrit, Persian, and...well...English? (Okay, I'll admit the English stuff is generally crappy, but there are some good Indian English works out there. Tagore wrote in English, too, after all!).

Sanskrit literature falls under Indo-Aryan literature that I hope to one day read in Hindi translation. I need another intensive period of Persian study before I can attempt literature in Persian. Hopefully I'll get around to that later this year once I'm satisfied with my Korean level.

As far as Indian English works go, I'm not terribly fond of the genre. To quote Kai Friese about Ghachar Ghochar: "A taste of the virtues of well-translated ‘Indian-language’ fiction over the familiar contortions of ‘Indo-Anglian’ novels or ‘IWE’ or whatever they’re calling it these days.” I am open to reading it here and there though, and I enjoyed The White Tiger by Aravind Adiga.
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Re: What are you currently reading? (part 2)

Postby linguoboy » 2017-06-20, 16:31

Had to look up who Kai Friese was.

Some of my favourite authors have been Indians writing in English--Mistry, Roy, Rushdie, Singh. I'm still looking for examples of the "well-translated ‘Indian-language’ fiction" your man talks about. So far, I haven't been too impressed with most of what I've read.
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Re: What are you currently reading? (part 2)

Postby Osias » 2017-06-21, 1:55

My brother newest short stories and laughing out loud.
2017 est l'année du (fr) et de l'(de) pour moi. Parle avec moi en eux, s'il te plait.

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Re: What are you currently reading? (part 2)

Postby vijayjohn » 2017-06-21, 3:59

Yasna and linguoboy, I think I kind of agree with both of you. Like I said, most material written in Indian English is crap (and I know this because I spent most of my childhood reading such material on a daily basis) but definitely not all. Arundhati Roy, Salman Rushdie, Rabindranath Tagore, etc. are surely towards the top end of the scale. I think our vernacular literature is important; obviously, Malayalam literature is important to me, for example. I think a large part of the reason why it's underappreciated is because (most) foreign readers don't pay attention to it enough. But I also find writers of Indian vernacular literature to be underappreciated even in their own home states, and this limits the range of topics that are explored in such literature.
linguoboy wrote:Had to look up who Kai Friese was.

Me, too. He's Marathi? That doesn't sound like a very Marathi name to me. How is it even supposed to be pronounced? :?

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Re: What are you currently reading? (part 2)

Postby mōdgethanc » 2017-06-21, 4:35

[ˈmoːdjeðɑŋk]

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Re: What are you currently reading? (part 2)

Postby vijayjohn » 2017-06-21, 4:48

I'm afraid not; it just has his name in English just like the English Wikipedia article does. But thanks anyway!

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Re: What are you currently reading? (part 2)

Postby Yasna » 2017-06-21, 5:44

vijayjohn wrote:Me, too. He's Marathi? That doesn't sound like a very Marathi name to me. How is it even supposed to be pronounced? :?

It's a German name.

"The new magazine's editor-in-chief is Kai Friese, an Indian journalist with German ancestors."

link
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Re: What are you currently reading? (part 2)

Postby vijayjohn » 2017-06-21, 6:44

Okay, that makes much more sense! Thanks, Yasna!

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Re: What are you currently reading? (part 2)

Postby vijayjohn » 2017-06-26, 4:30

I appear to have memorized the first 40 quatrains of Mayura Sandesham by now. I also read the reading passages in the first four chapters of Practical Chinese Reader III (but I forgot until now that there's an extra one at the end of Chapter 3!). The passages from Chapters 3 and 4 are actually kind of hard already. That's probably in part because they're about Chinese geography, which I know very little about apart from being able to label the provinces, knowing where a bunch of its languages (Sinitic or otherwise) are spoken, and say, "The north is mostly flat, mostly dry, great for growing wheat and probably impossible to grow rice in, and the south is mountainous with lots of rivers, great for growing rice, and perhaps not very good for growing wheat." I intend to go through some of my other language-learning resources, too.

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Re: What are you currently reading? (part 2)

Postby linguoboy » 2017-06-27, 20:07

Three years back, I bought an English translation of Doktor Glas by Hjalmar Söderberg. And two years in a row, I picked it up in autumn to start reading only to realise that it was set in summertime. This year I remembered and started it last week. It's an epistolary novel and I've been reading each chapter on the date it was ostensibly written. So even though it's a short novel, I won't be finished with it until September.

Meanwhile, I started reading L'Attentat in English translation because I didn't realise it had originally been written in French. I also picked it up because I'm trying to read more works by female authors only to discover that "Yasmina Khadra" is a pen name for Mohammed Moulessehoul. So I've been doubly fooled. But it's got me hooked now.

I also started Lagoon by Nigerian-American author Nnedi Okorafor. Unfortunately, it's just not grabbing me like I hoped. I previously read her Who Fears Death and thought my issues with it stemmed mostly from it being a YA novel, but I'm beginning to think I just don't care for Okorafor's style.
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Re: What are you currently reading? (part 2)

Postby Yasna » 2017-06-28, 1:50

linguoboy wrote:I also started Lagoon by Nigerian-American author Nnedi Okorafor. Unfortunately, it's just not grabbing me like I hoped. I previously read her Who Fears Death and thought my issues with it stemmed mostly from it being a YA novel, but I'm beginning to think I just don't care for Okorafor's style.

That's unfortunate. I was thinking of making that novel my first attempt at African science fiction.
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Re: What are you currently reading? (part 2)

Postby Yasna » 2017-07-03, 14:35

I finished Ghachar Ghochar, which was a concise and enjoyable novella.

Now I'm reading 沈黙 (Silence) by Shusaku Endo.
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Re: What are you currently reading? (part 2)

Postby vijayjohn » 2017-07-04, 3:54

So I've started picking up my other language-learning materials and also moved on to the next two quatrains of Mayura Sandesham. This evening, I was trying to recite quatrain #41 aloud in front of my dad (and kept forgetting part of it). This particular quatrain has lots of obscure Sanskrit words/morphemes, so naturally, my dad had no clue what it was supposed to mean. I talked about it with him (which basically means I just read out whatever the book said it meant :P). It's basically warning the titular peacock not to get distracted while hiding in the local British government official's garden. Then my dad realized that this was the same way he feels about me staying up too late at night. Now this has possibly become his favorite quatrain, and he even copied it out by hand, something I'm not sure he's ever done in his whole life with any part of this epic poem despite having had to study all of it at school.

Then he said to me, "How many young people these days know poetry like this? Do they even know it exists? And yet this is so much more fun than watching some dumb movie." This is a recurring theme in his thoughts about me learning Malayalam. He also sometimes tells me that he would have never imagined that his American-born son would know Malayalam quite this well and be an avid reader of Malayalam literature.

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Re: What are you currently reading? (part 2)

Postby linguoboy » 2017-07-24, 21:29

Yasna wrote:
linguoboy wrote:I also started Lagoon by Nigerian-American author Nnedi Okorafor. Unfortunately, it's just not grabbing me like I hoped. I previously read her Who Fears Death and thought my issues with it stemmed mostly from it being a YA novel, but I'm beginning to think I just don't care for Okorafor's style.

That's unfortunate. I was thinking of making that novel my first attempt at African science fiction.

Don't assume you won't get into it just because I haven't. After all, you like Inoue Yasushi, don't you?

I finished the Goytisolo last week and began some short stories by Carlos Fuentes. Oddly I seem to be reading them faster even if, if anything, there's more in the way of descriptive passages. I guess maybe it's because Goytisolo was describing traditional activities in parts of rural Spain I've never seen while the first Fuentes story was set aboard a cruise ship.
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Re: What are you currently reading? (part 2)

Postby vijayjohn » 2017-07-24, 23:43

I read a few things by Carlos Fuentes in my Spanish literature class in high school. From what I vaguely recall, they were both among the easiest works we had to read for that class and among the most forgettable. (That's not to say I didn't like them anyway, though! Definitely more than the stupid beginning of "¡Adiós, Cordera!").

EDIT: Oh, and lately, in addition to reading Practical Chinese Reader and having memorized Mayura Sandesam up to the 44th quatrain, I've been reading (parts of) Caractères chinois by Léon Wieger translated by Leo Davrout.
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Re: What are you currently reading? (part 2)

Postby linguoboy » 2017-07-25, 2:49

vijayjohn wrote:I read a few things by Carlos Fuentes in my Spanish literature class in high school. From what I vaguely recall, they were both among the easiest works we had to read for that class and among the most forgettable. (That's not to say I didn't like them anyway, though! Definitely more than the stupid beginning of "¡Adiós, Cordera!").

The first work I read from him was Terra nostra in English translation. I don't think I would have gotten through all 800 pages in Spanish; the prose was striking and dense, some of the settings were quite bizarre, and the action shifts unpredictably between centuries.

So I was quite surprised when I read La cabeza de la hidra--written only three years later--how conventional it was. So I would say he's got quite a range. I'm already seeing that in the short story collection. The last story is a richly narrated but fairly conventional tale of larceny and deception on a cruise ship whereas the first (I'm skipping around) is completely different in style and theme.
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Re: What are you currently reading? (part 2)

Postby vijayjohn » 2017-07-25, 3:10

linguoboy wrote:
vijayjohn wrote:I read a few things by Carlos Fuentes in my Spanish literature class in high school. From what I vaguely recall, they were both among the easiest works we had to read for that class and among the most forgettable. (That's not to say I didn't like them anyway, though! Definitely more than the stupid beginning of "¡Adiós, Cordera!").

The first work I read from him was Terra nostra in English translation. I don't think I would have gotten through all 800 pages in Spanish; the prose was striking and dense, some of the settings were quite bizarre, and the action shifts unpredictably between centuries.

Ah, we never read any of his novels, just two short stories, I think. Or maybe just "Chac Mool." That might explain it.

In fact, I just realized we never read any novels in that class at all. We did read one novella, though.

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Re: What are you currently reading? (part 2)

Postby linguoboy » 2017-07-25, 15:13

vijayjohn wrote:Ah, we never read any of his novels, just two short stories, I think. Or maybe just "Chac Mool." That might explain it.

As I say, his style varies in his short stories as well. It makes sense that they would pick one of the more straightforward and simply-written ones for a language class. The selections from Mann and Kafka in my German language classes were not their most difficult works by any means.
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Re: What are you currently reading? (part 2)

Postby france-eesti » 2017-07-28, 18:02

Dr Montignac's "Je mange donc je maigris!" (I'm eating therefore I'm getting thinner)
I've finally understood the theory of carbohydrates and lipids... Wow... But makes you feel guilty if you eat a slice of bread of one single spaghetto!
But then I also understand better how the body works to manage sugar. And now I know my cells aren't sensible to insulin so if with the diet it doesn't get any better, there's a chance it'll remain this way!

He's so critical about sugar and its industry - and I do agree - people use it as a drug, and it's not only the white cube of sugar in the coffee, but also the soda and the potatoes and the hot-dog and the white pasta!

OK, I try not to listen to him too much :D
(fr) Native - (en) Fluentish - (pt) Fluentish when I was younger - (hu) Can sustain a conversation with a patient and kind magyar or order some beer and lecsó in Budapest - (it) On Duolingo ma posso ordinare uno Spritz ed antipasti in un ristorante :blush:

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Re: What are you currently reading? (part 2)

Postby Yasna » 2017-08-04, 6:33

I finished 채식주의자, which I enjoyed. It's a story with extreme yet believable plot twists that led me to think more deeply about the border between sanity and insanity. I'll be keeping an eye on Han Kang.

I also finished 沈黙, which was an absolute highlight of my reading year so far. The journey of two Portuguese priests to 17th century Japan sets the stage for a grand clash of cultures and religions on multiple dimensions. And despite tackling very big questions, there is also sharp tension as the priests hide from hostile authorities who are notorious for torturing and killing Christians. Even as an atheist I found this novel's handling of religious themes fascinating. Linguistically it was also a treat. There are occasional phrases in Portuguese and Latin, dialogues in Kyushu dialect, and the last few pages are entirely in Classical Japanese. I'm looking forward to watching the film adaptation made last year by Scorsese, who is a devoted fan of the novel.

Now I'm reading Independent People by Halldór Laxness.
Ein Buch muß die Axt sein für das gefrorene Meer in uns. - Kafka


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