UniLang

Still making slooooooooow progress with Ulitskaya. Maybe I should just switch to something else.

I made a stab again at Barbery's L'Élégance du hérisson but I'm not sure I'm interested in reading that much dense French right now. I also tried Goytisolo's Fin de fiesta, but I beached on the reefs of all his nautical terminology. Seriously, there's a sentence on page four or five that I read aloud to one of my native-speaking friends and he had no idea what was being described either.

In the meantime, I bought and read The wallcreeper by Nell Fink, which is a curious little novel about two Americans coming to Europe and having wacky adventures in Bern, Berlin, and the Balkans. It's fairly picaresque, though there is something of a character arc and bits of philosophising, but I was reading mostly for the narrator's odd point-of-view and aperçus.

I've been slowly reading two books (very slowly, as in, it's taken months due to university readings taking priority). One is Radclyffe Hall's "The Well of Loneliness" from 1928, which the Irish Times described as "the Bible of lesbianism" and was promptly banned on publication. Its' the first book in YEARS that has made me cry in public. The other book is a historical novel in Dutch, that my girlfriend's mother gave me as a Christmas gift, Simone van der Vlugt's "Rode sneeuw in December". It's really rather easy, though it uses some antiquated lexicon here and there, definitely a good, easy read (I have also been reading bits out loud to my girlfriend to improve my pronounciation) I'm quite excited to have more time for recreational reading this summer, just today I gave the last exam of my whole undergraduate degree. Unread books, here I come.

I still haven't finished writing out my grandfather's diary and have temporarily abandoned (trying to read, recite, and memorize) Mayura Sandesham. I'm struggling to review the huge laundry list of vocabulary words I've been getting out of his diary (while simultaneously coming to realize that most of these words are kind of useless to me...).

One is Radclyffe Hall's "The Well of Loneliness" from 1928, which the Irish Times described as "the Bible of lesbianism" and was promptly banned on publication.

Well, now I have to read this!

I finished To the Lighthouse, which I really enjoyed. There's hardly any plot, but the superb writing easily carries this short classic. I also read 나는 나를 파괴할 권리가 있다 (I have the right to destroy myself) by Young-ha Kim, which was my first novel in Korean. This was my second attempt at it, after failing years ago due to my poor Korean level. It was still a struggle this time, but manageable. I liked it, but I'll have to reread it once my Korean is good enough to fully appreciate it.

Now I'm reading The Player of Games by Iain M. Banks, the second novel in the Culture series.

Still haven't gotten back into Mayura Sandesham but I've been rereading some of the dialogs from the Practical Chinese Reader (实用汉语课本), but in Traditional Chinese as written in my course packets (which I still have) because I find Traditional harder to read than Simplified and want to try the more challenging possibility. (I still read stuff in Simplified, too, though).

In other news, I JUST FINISHED THE FIRST DRAFT OF MY TRANSLATION OF MY GRANDFATHER'S MEMOIRS!

vijayjohn wrote:In other news, I JUST FINISHED THE FIRST DRAFT OF MY TRANSLATION OF MY GRANDFATHER'S MEMOIRS!

お疲れ様でした！

Yasna wrote:

vijayjohn wrote:In other news, I JUST FINISHED THE FIRST DRAFT OF MY TRANSLATION OF MY GRANDFATHER'S MEMOIRS!

お疲れ様でした！

Thanks! (There isn't really an appropriate response to お疲れ様でした, is there?) Now all I have to do is go through the whole thing with my dad whenever he's ready, make sure I didn't mistranslate anything, find an editor or two, go through it all over again (or maybe a few more times) with them as well, find a way to get this thing published, and send/sell copies to people!

vijayjohn wrote:Thanks! (There isn't really an appropriate response to お疲れ様でした, is there?)

There are some context-specific responses, but no one size fits all response AFAIK.

Yasna wrote:

vijayjohn wrote:Thanks! (There isn't really an appropriate response to お疲れ様でした, is there?)

There are some context-specific responses, but no one size fits all response AFAIK.

Is there one that would fit this context?

I'm just about to start reading a few short stories from the anthology The Best Fantasy & Science Fiction of the Year: Volume Ten. It came out last year so the stories were first published in 2015.

In other words, I can't say anything about it yet, but it will be a nice change of pace to read short fiction instead of novels, especially since my patience isn't the greatest nowadays. Although, I guess that I should ignore the one by Neil Gaiman until I've read American Gods, or finished the first season of the TV series at the very least; I read the first couple of paragraphs and it seems centred around the same main character.

Speaking of, I think this is the first time I've ever seen "raining cats and dogs" in actual prose and not just as an example of English idioms

vijayjohn wrote:Is there one that would fit this context?

おかげさまで出来上がりました would work.

Then おかげさまで出来上がりました

linguoboy wrote:I also tried Goytisolo's Fin de fiesta, but I beached on the reefs of all his nautical terminology. Seriously, there's a sentence on page four or five that I read aloud to one of my native-speaking friends and he had no idea what was being described either.

That was an absolutely devastating review.

Yasna wrote:

linguoboy wrote:I also tried Goytisolo's Fin de fiesta, but I beached on the reefs of all his nautical terminology. Seriously, there's a sentence on page four or five that I read aloud to one of my native-speaking friends and he had no idea what was being described either.

That was an absolutely devastating review.

Daaaaaaaaaaamn.

Well, I've since picked it up again and am on page 50. It's the least I can do, I guess.

I finished reading The Player of Games. Iain Banks can simply do no wrong. I wouldn't have trusted any other author even with the premise (it involves encountering a civilization which is built around a complex game), but Banks pulls it off with aplomb.

Now I'm reading 채식주의자 (The Vegetarian) by Han Kang and Ghachar Ghochar (ಘಾಚರ್ ಘೋಚರ್) by Vivek Shanbhag.

Yasna wrote:Now I'm reading 채식주의자 (The Vegetarian) by Han Kang and Ghachar Ghochar (ಘಾಚರ್ ಘೋಚರ್) by Vivek Shanbhag.

I'll be curious to hear what you think of the former.

I'm feeling very stalled out right now. I tried reading a bit more of the Ulitskaya yesterday but it's a slog. The Goytisolo is more enjoyable but the unfamiliar vocab is frustrating. I'll be cruising along for pages and then I'll hit another paragraph of description and not have the least idea what is being described.

Yasna wrote:Now I'm reading 채식주의자 (The Vegetarian) by Han Kang and Ghachar Ghochar (ಘಾಚರ್ ಘೋಚರ್) by Vivek Shanbhag.

Is there some reason why you've been reading books (that were originally written) specifically in Kannada? Have you tried reading any other Indian literature? Bengali literature for instance? Tagore? Premchand?

vijayjohn wrote:Is there some reason why you've been reading books (that were originally written) specifically in Kannada? Have you tried reading any other Indian literature? Bengali literature for instance? Tagore? Premchand?

There's no reason other than chance that I've been reading Kannada literature as opposed to other Dravidian literature. I ran across Ghachar Ghochar in a local bookstore, and the source language and synopsis piqued my interest. I am however avoiding Hindi and other Indo-Aryan literature until I can read Hindi.

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!).

Also, oops, I meant to add what I was reading, too!

I'm finally getting back into Mayura Sandesham. I also memorized the entire Ballad of Mulan with a Mandarin reading. Again. I've been rereading dialogs from the Practical Chinese Reader I and II, but I'm starting to get bored with that. I need something a bit more challenging. I have a number of options right here in my room, but I'll have to decide which one to pick. I'm kind of tempted to just read Volume III of the same series.