UniLang

Probably Between clay and dust by Musharraf Ali Farooqi. It focuses on a retired courtesan who is the last of her kotha and a retired wrestler who's the last great champion of his akhara.

The last thing you read that took place on a farm.

linguoboy wrote:Probably Between clay and dust by Musharraf Ali Farooqi. It focuses on a retired courtesan who is the last of her kotha and a retired wrestler who's the last great champion of his akhara.

Oh, this is the one where I thought they were the same person!

The last thing you read that took place on a farm.

It depends.
The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver largely takes place on a farm, and I've been rereading somewhat arbitrary parts of it in no particular order lately.
If that doesn't count, then lesson 8 of Practical Chinese Reader III, 在老队长家里做客 (apparently meaning something like 'visiting the old team leader').
If it has to be a whole book, then Randidangazhi by Thakazhi Sivasankara Pillai.

The last thing you reread parts of (any amount of time) after having already read the whole thing cover to cover.

That would be Nate Silver's The Signal and the Noise. I read it almost two years ago but recently decided to re-read some parts of it since it might be related to my work in the future - just today I mentioned it to my interviewer on the phone.

The last thing you read in a really, really bad translation.

I think that would be 100 சுவையான சிற்றுண்டிகள் by Mallika S. Badrinath, which I have in its English translation 100 Snacks Special (even the title is an awkward translation). I'll admit I never read it all the way through, but her recipes seem at least as terrible as her English. She seems really overrated in Tamil Nadu. I wonder why. Maybe she's a Brahmin or something.

The last thing you read that was written by a non-native speaker of the language they were writing in.

One book of my trilogy - say "Lovers live a little longer" that I wrote in English

The last thing you read featuring one of the Baltic States.

france-eesti wrote:One book of my trilogy - say "Lovers live a little longer" that I wrote in English

Do you mean to say "called" or "titled"?

france-eesti wrote:The last thing you read featuring one of the Baltic States.

The man who spoke snakish by Andrus Kivirähk, an English translation of the Estonian novel Mees, kes teadis ussisõnu. It all takes place in a fantastic version of mediaeval Estonia.

The last thing you read that moved back and forth between different time periods.

Le vieux qui ne voulait pas fêter son anniversaire, by Jonas Jonasson. Swedish novel, I loved it with passion, although I never read the "must-read", I gotta say this one was fantastic. The man is 100 in the 2000s but goes back and forth in time periods telling us about wars and Cold war and North Korea and Franco and Mao Zedong and Stalin... Very entertaining!

The last thing you read that taught you some medical advice you didn't know anything about and you're now applying.

Does it must to be a book? I can't remember any. But if by 'thing' we can say 'medicine leaflet', then the leaflet of a skin medicine I'm using.

The last thing you read featuring Spartans and Persians.

Empires of the word: a language history of the world by Nicholas Ostler.

The last thing you read which made you shiver.

The number of calories at the back of a bag of peanuts

The last thing you read that you had to hand back to their owner before having the chance to finish it.

The last one in reality is probably some book my advisor gave me, but the last one I remember is The Indo-Aryan Languages by Colin Masica. Luckily for me, my advisor later bought me a copy and even autographed it with a short note addressed to me in Romani. (Of course, I'm still nowhere close to finishing it).

The last thing you remember thinking you should read, but never did.

The Handmaid's tale by Margaret Atwood...
Started but couldn't carry on, I dunno why...

The last thing you read that fascinated so much you had to get up in the night to carry on reading sitting on the loo.

france-eesti wrote:The last thing you read that fascinated you so much you had to get up in the night to carry on reading it sitting on the loo.

It's been a long time since I last had that much trouble sleeping, but my best guess is Nehru and the Language Politics of India by Robert L. King, a professor of mine here at the Department of Linguistics at the University of Texas. The complexities India's first prime minister had to face in navigating the linguistic situation in his country are fascinating. He came up with the unusual solution of officially recognizing dozens of languages and really doesn't get enough credit for that at all.

The last thing you remember thinking you should read but never even started reading.

vijayjohn wrote:The last thing you remember thinking you should read, but never did.

Hi Vijay, didn't you post kind of the same proposition last time already?

Kind of, but this time, I'm asking for something you never even started reading!

I finally finished Sense and Sensibility in Dutch on LingQ. God, I'm glad to be done with that. Maybe not the best choice for my first book in Dutch, but I was the course with the lowest % of new words left at the time (by now there are some new courses which basically don't have any new words for me ).
Elsewhere, I'm reading Asterix in French these days. The word plays really aren't easy.

I might want to check when I posted here last and then look if anything I read since then was particularly good.

Er, wrong thread?

vijayjohn wrote:The last thing you remember thinking you should read but never even started reading.

I was sure this happened with something nonfiction recently, but I can't remember what it was. So I'll say Absalom, Absalom, which I saw in a bookstore Saturday and remembered buying but never cracking open.

The last thing you read by an author from Africa.

linguoboy wrote:The last thing you read by an author from Africa.

The Elements of Statistical Learning by three authors one of whom is from South Africa; however, I didn't read all the chapters of it. Speaking of books I have read cover to cover, that must be Born a Crime by Trevor Noah.

The last thing you read after putting it off for a long time.

I think I put almost everything off for a long time before reading it. So in my case, that would be more or less the last thing I read: a few stories from Sara Joseph's novel in Malayalam, Alohari Anandam.

The last thing you read in which at least one of the characters gets sick.