The last thing you read

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linguoboy
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Re: The last thing you read

Postby linguoboy » 2015-04-18, 2:57

That would probably be The Yacoubian Building by Alaa al-Aswany, or at least two subplots of it. It's one of those novels which tells the stories of several individuals all casually linked in some way (in this case by the building they live in). There isn't a single main character, but one protagonist is a wealthy industrialist marries a second wife on the sly in order not to upset his first wife and another is a newspaper editor who takes up with a married police officer. Both of these stories end unhappily.

The last thing you read in which a same-sex romance ended happily.
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Re: The last thing you read

Postby Varislintu » 2015-04-19, 12:03

linguoboy wrote:The last thing you read in which a same-sex romance ended happily.


The Engelsfors Trilogy. (I guess specifically Nyckeln, the last one of them.)

The last thing you read in which the main character ponders their own aging.

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Re: The last thing you read

Postby Lada » 2015-04-22, 19:19

Lev Tolstoy's "Childhood, Adolescence, Youth". However, I didn't read it till the end.

The last thing you read where one of the main characters is immortal and not a vampire.

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Re: The last thing you read

Postby linguoboy » 2015-04-22, 19:25

The hundred thousand kingdoms by N.K. Jemisin. Several of the main characters are gods.

The last thing you read written in a regional language variant or dialect.
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Re: The last thing you read

Postby vijayjohn » 2015-04-22, 20:59

A somewhat strangely spelled version of the lyrics of the Kajkavian song "Veselo, veselo Zagorci" :P

The last thing you read by a humorist.

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Re: The last thing you read

Postby TheStrayCat » 2015-04-22, 21:57

Pretender to the Throne: The Further Adventures of Private Ivan Chonkin by Vladimir Voynovich, a Russian novel (in my case, in Ukrainian translation), but I've just started it. ;)

The last thing you read where a character commited a suicide for no apparent reason.

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Re: The last thing you read

Postby vijayjohn » 2015-04-23, 19:15

TheStrayCat wrote:The last thing you read where a character commited a suicide for no apparent reason.

Maybe Hamlet? I'm not sure.

The last thing you read in which one of the characters runs for political office.

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Re: The last thing you read

Postby linguoboy » 2015-04-23, 20:46

Morning and evening talk (حديث الصباح والمساء) by Naguib Mahfouz. No, wait, I don't think any of the characters in that actually runs for office, they're all just appointed to their positions. In that case, Yacoubian Building again. (Unless you want to count the coverage of the UK elections I've been reading online and in newsmagazines.)

The last thing you read in which someone receives a gift of flowers.

By the way...
vijayjohn wrote:학 by Hwang Sun-won, translated into English as Cranes by Peter H. Lee. It's a really nice short story. :) It's also the one I like to use to show just how shitty Google Translate can be.

I'm not sure how I missed this before. Hwang Sun-wŏn is my favourite Korean author. I've read everything from him available in English except for The descendants of Cain (카인의 후예). If you like his short fiction, you should definitely give one of his novels a try.
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Re: The last thing you read

Postby vijayjohn » 2015-04-24, 7:22

linguoboy wrote:The last thing you read in which someone receives a gift of flowers.

Still not sure, but the only thing that comes to mind for some reason is Astérix légionnaire (British English translation by Anthea Bell as Asterix the Legionary). :oops:
I'm not sure how I missed this before. Hwang Sun-wŏn is my favourite Korean author. I've read everything from him available in English except for The descendants of Cain (카인의 후예). If you like his short fiction, you should definitely give one of his novels a try.

I'm more than willing to believe his novels are great, so I will. :) Hopefully. :para:

The last thing you read in which at least one of the characters was a priest.

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Re: The last thing you read

Postby IpseDixit » 2015-04-24, 9:31

Q by Wu Ming (to be precise there are cardinals rather than priests).

The last thing you read in which there are at least three characters who are from different countries or different worlds.

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Re: The last thing you read

Postby vijayjohn » 2015-04-25, 5:04

Unless the novel I'm still in the middle of reading counts, I think my answer would be "The Great Khans," a February 1997 National Geographic article.

The last thing you read that had either a math problem or some kind of logic puzzle in it.

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Re: The last thing you read

Postby Lada » 2015-05-04, 13:54

I don't recall any math problem in any books I've ever read, however logic puzzles are often met in detective stories. I haven't been reading detectives for ages, the first one that comes to my mind is "And Then There Were None" by Agatha Christie.

The last thing you read containing thoughts about God or spiritual development of a person.

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Re: The last thing you read

Postby vijayjohn » 2015-05-12, 20:38

Malakal by E. M. Kovoor. It's set in the community my parents come from, and priests and the church play a large role in that community (and thus in this novel, too).

The last thing you read in which a new city/town was founded.

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Re: The last thing you read

Postby linguoboy » 2015-05-12, 20:56

Wow, good one!

"El guardagujas", a (literally and figuratively) fantastic short story by Juan José Arreola (which for odd reasons I ended up reading in German translation).

The last thing you read in which a significant sequence took place on a train.
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Re: The last thing you read

Postby vijayjohn » 2015-05-19, 20:57

Well, not counting Pithaamahan, that would be...hmm...

You know what, actually, I think that would be Learn Tamil in 30 Days by N. Jegtheesh. :lol:

The last thing you read in which one of the characters owns a boat.

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Re: The last thing you read

Postby linguoboy » 2015-07-07, 17:11

Have we reached the end of this game already?

vijayjohn wrote:The last thing you read in which one of the characters owns a boat.

I think that would be Bliss (Mutluluk) by O. Z. Livaneli. The main character escapes from his stultifying life in Istanbul by running to the shore of the Aegean, buying a boat, and casting off for points south.

The last thing you read which features a contract killing.
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Re: The last thing you read

Postby Aurinĭa » 2015-07-07, 20:12

That would probably be № 9 of the graphic novel series De Killer / Le Tueur, in which the titular character is a contract killer, consequently the series features many contract killers. The series seems to be up to 13 now, I have some catching up to do.

The last graphic novel you read that wasn't a superhero comic.

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Re: The last thing you read

Postby vijayjohn » 2015-07-08, 0:47

linguoboy wrote:Have we reached the end of this game already?

Nah, I was just waiting for somebody to answer. Maybe I should have just answered my own question and come up with an easier one.
Aurinĭa wrote:The last graphic novel you read that wasn't a superhero comic.

I'm not sure I've ever really read a graphic novel. There's one in Malayalam called Thakara (തകര [t̪əˈgəɾa]) written by P. Padmarajan and published in the Malayalam literary magazine മാതൃഭൂമി ആഴ്ചപ്പതിപ്പ് [ˈmaːd̪rɯbʱuːmi ˈaːɻt͡ʃəpəd̪ipɯ]. Unfortunately, I only have a few issues of that magazine, so I've only read the parts of that graphic novel that were in some of those issues. I also vaguely remember flipping through a graphic novel in Catalan about the history of Barcelona probably more than a decade ago. I don't remember the title or author. Apart from those, the closest thing I've ever read to a graphic novel is probably the Illustrated Classics; if they even count, the last one I read in its entirety must have been their version of The Count of Monte Cristo.

The last thing you read in which one of the characters was in a chemistry lab at some point in the story.

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Re: The last thing you read

Postby Varislintu » 2015-07-08, 5:58

Alan Bradley's The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie.

The protagonist is a girl who has inherited a Victorian era chemistry lab. Or shall we say, the lab is in the family mansion they live in and she has claimed it since she is obsessed with chemistry.

The last thing you read where Charles Darwin was mentioned or somehow featured.

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Re: The last thing you read

Postby vijayjohn » 2015-07-09, 0:38

Probably my world history textbook in high school, which I still have because I did that through a correspondence course. :P (I skipped one year of high school because I couldn't fucking wait to get into college :lol:). It's world History: Connections to Today by Elisabeth Gaynor Ellis and Anthony Esler. I'm sure it has its flaws, but it's still probably the best book on world history I've ever had the opportunity to read.

The last language-learning textbook you read.


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