The last thing you read

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Re: The last thing you read

Postby TheStrayCat » 2015-11-21, 15:03

Some scientific and historic articles in "Muy Interesante", a Mexican journal which I bought in Texas last week.

The last thing you read that truly shocked you.

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Re: The last thing you read

Postby linguoboy » 2015-11-21, 23:30

Antea wrote:The last thing you read by a Spanish or Spanish-speaking author

Last thing I read by a Spanish-speaking author was The hummingbird's daughter by Luis Urrea.

Last thing I read by a Spanish-speaking author in Spanish was a short story by Gabriel García Márquez.

Last thing I read by a Spanish author would've been one of the selections in Our Wars: short fiction on Basque conflicts, an anthology of Basque authors in English translation. If I'm not mistaken, it was an excerpt from Soinujolearen semea by Bernardo Atxaga.

The Stray Cat wrote:The last thing you read that truly shocked you.

Really good question. Maybe an account of the Texas Slave Ranch and the subsequent murder trial.

The last thing you reread.
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Re: The last thing you read

Postby vijayjohn » 2015-11-22, 0:59

Antea wrote:The book of "Slumdog Millionaire". I didn't see the film but the book is awesome.

I've never seen it, either. :)
linguoboy wrote:The last thing you reread.

Oh man, I've reread so many things...so I guess I'll just go with "Harischandra" from the Amar Chitra Katha series edited by Anant Pai and illustrated by Pratap Mulick (they never specifically list anyone as the author).

The last thing you read in which one character scolded another for being racist.

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Re: The last thing you read

Postby Aurinĭa » 2015-11-22, 1:05

That would be two books by one of my favourite authors, De brief voor de koning and Geheimen van het Wilde Woud by Tonke Dragt. I know the stories almost by heart, but I reread them every couple of years, because I love the way the author uses language. Every sentence is like a little sweet to savour and enjoy.

Edit: my internet disconnected just long enough to let someone else post first.
The last thing you read in which one character scolded another for being racist.
Hmm. I'm not sure.
Ah, the graphic novel series Namibia by Rodolphe, Léo and Marchal. It's set in 1950s Namibia and features nazis, white colonial characters and black characters, so it's not really surprising that racism comes up more than once.

And while we're on the topic of Dutch literature, what was the last thing you read by a Dutch-speaking author?

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Re: The last thing you read

Postby vijayjohn » 2015-11-22, 2:39

Well...the last thing I remember reading by a Dutch-speaker is The European Roma: Minority Representation, Memory, and the Limits of Transnational Governmentality by Huub Van Baar. I'm not sure whether this guy counts as an author per se...but he is the author of his own PhD thesis! :mrgreen: The only other book I even have that's by an author who obviously speaks Dutch (because it's in Dutch :lol:) is Megatrends humor by Adjiedj Bakas. That's also the only publication I own in Dutch that isn't either a newspaper or a translation of Astérix. :P

EDIT: Btw, I was wrong about not having read anything about conflicts between settler populations and indigenous peoples recently. The correct answer to that question on my part was "The Rescue Mission," an article in this month's issue of Smithsonian.

The last thing you read in which someone eats an unusual breakfast at some point.

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Re: The last thing you read

Postby Lada » 2015-12-24, 8:23

I suppose that was a book about travelling into the wild (maybe Heart of Darkness) - I can't recall what exactly characters were eating but if we imagine that than it would be something unusual at some point...

The last thing you read where characters tried to create something ideal.

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Re: The last thing you read

Postby TheStrayCat » 2015-12-24, 9:15

That would probably be "Bot" by Ukrainian writer Max Kidruk. In that book, a group of American-funded researchers tried to create a group of intelligent robots programmed to learn from their own experience, but they quickly went out of control and started killing people and turning them into similar robots.

The last thing you read where you could identify yourself with one of the characters.

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Re: The last thing you read

Postby vijayjohn » 2015-12-24, 10:01

TheStrayCat wrote:The last thing you read where you could identify yourself with some of the characters.

I'm not sure I've ever read anything where I couldn't on some level. :hmm: But the last thing I read where I really could identify with some of the characters (in fact, probably most of them) was surely Babel No More by Michael Erard, though I never finished reading it. In fact, it's precisely because I can relate to the characters more than I can relate to the author that I put it down.

The last bad learning resource you read. (e.g. last bad book for learning a language, last bad book for learning some area of math, last bad science textbook...)

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Re: The last thing you read

Postby Lada » 2016-01-03, 14:15

That was Finnish self-studying book. I think that was the worst resource I've ever read. Poor explanations of grammar, tons of new words and big texts definitely not for beginners. Though I still remember "moskovassa" as this case was given in the 1st lesson.

The last autobiography or biography you read.

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Re: The last thing you read

Postby linguoboy » 2016-01-03, 15:32

I can tell you the next one, which is Hugo Hamilton's The speckled people. I'll probably start that in March. But I read them so seldom I honestly can't remember the last. Perhaps Nuala O'Faolain's Are you somebody? Or maybe her father's biography of Constance Markievicz?

The last thing you read in which a bear is killed.
"Richmond is a real scholar; Owen just learns languages because he can't bear not to know what other people are saying."--Margaret Lattimore on her two sons

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Re: The last thing you read

Postby vijayjohn » 2016-01-03, 18:11

That would probably be a section in the Wikipedia article on bear worship about the Nivkh Bear Festival, though just now, as I was desperately trying to remember what the last such thing I might have read was, I was reading about Ainu bear festivals as well.

The last thing you read in which men fight each other.

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Re: The last thing you read

Postby Lada » 2016-01-08, 16:37

That was Children's Past Lives by Carol Bowman. Author's son remembered how he had been killed during American Civil War.

The last magazine you read.

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Re: The last thing you read

Postby linguoboy » 2016-01-08, 16:49

The Economist. It's the last one we still subscribe to, and I read a bit almost every day either in print format or online.

The last thing you read which gave predictions for the years ahead.
"Richmond is a real scholar; Owen just learns languages because he can't bear not to know what other people are saying."--Margaret Lattimore on her two sons

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Re: The last thing you read

Postby vijayjohn » 2016-01-08, 17:12

Probably something in Time magazine :P

The last thing you read in which a woman marries a man she does not love.

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Re: The last thing you read

Postby Aurinĭa » 2016-10-03, 21:39

Not many such marriages in the literature UniLangers read, apparently. :P

I've recently taken up One Thousand and One Nights again, and there's of course Sheherazade, as well as other women marrying or getting engaged to a man they don't love.

The last thing you read in which a woman marries a man she does love.

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Re: The last thing you read

Postby linguoboy » 2016-10-03, 21:47

Aurinĭa wrote:Not many such marriages in the literature UniLangers read, apparently. :P

Quite the contrary, but my rule of thumb with these games is not to reply to someone replying directly to me.

Aurinĭa wrote:The last thing you read in which a woman marries a man she does love.

That's actually a bit hard to say, since most of the novels I read are from the man's point of view and it's often not entirely clear what the woman's feelings are in the matter. But the marriage of Krömeier und Sawatzki, supporting character's in Timur Vermes' Hitler parody Er ist wieder da is presented as a love match.

The last thing you read in which a disagreement involving children divides a family.
"Richmond is a real scholar; Owen just learns languages because he can't bear not to know what other people are saying."--Margaret Lattimore on her two sons

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Re: The last thing you read

Postby vijayjohn » 2016-10-04, 4:03

linguoboy wrote:
Aurinĭa wrote:Not many such marriages in the literature UniLangers read, apparently. :P

Quite the contrary, but my rule of thumb with these games is not to reply to someone replying directly to me.

This is a pretty common theme in Indian literature, so there is such a marriage in one of the Malayalam novels I read. :)
The last thing you read in which a disagreement involving children divides a family.

I guess Pithaamahan by V. K. N. Towards the beginning of the novel, for example, the main character's mother criticizes him for not attending his father's funeral. He tries to excuse himself, but it's clear from the story that he has virtually no respect for his father to begin with...for reasons related to caste dynamics in a Malayalee context. Following a brief argument with his mother, his wife criticizes her, and his mother is never mentioned again AFAIR. He has a number of disagreements with other family members as well.

The last thing you read in which a minority language was mentioned.

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Re: The last thing you read

Postby Johanna » 2016-10-04, 10:09

vijayjohn wrote:The last thing you read in which a minority language was mentioned.

Barring articles online and fantasy novels set in secondary worlds where the minority languages are imaginary or at the very least constructed, that should be Outlander. Although you could argue that Gaelic wasn't a minority language in the Highlands in the 1740's I guess :P

The last thing you read in which a minority language isn't only mentioned, but also contains some dialogue in it.
Swedish (sv) native; English (en) good; Norwegian (no) read fluently, understand well, speak badly; Danish (dk) read fluently, understand badly, can't speak; Faroese (fo) read some, understand a bit, speak a few sentences; German (de) French (fr) Spanish (es) forgetting; heritage language.

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Re: The last thing you read

Postby opipik » 2016-10-04, 16:45

The last thing you read in which a minority language isn't only mentioned, but also contains some dialogue in it.


Probably the Czech translation of Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World by Nicholas Ostler.

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The last thing you read that wasn't in English

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Re: The last thing you read

Postby TheStrayCat » 2016-10-04, 20:18

"En busca de milagros" by Julia Alvarez, but I'm still reading it.

The last thing you read that instantly made you feel better.


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