What are you currently reading? (part 2)

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Rí.na.dTeangacha
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Re: What are you currently reading? (part 2)

Postby Rí.na.dTeangacha » 2022-02-24, 18:45

Update of what I've read since the last proper update I did:

"日本人の知らない日本語" by 蛇蔵 & 海野凪子
"ダーリンは外国人" by 小栗さおり
"Japanese: A linguistic Introduction" by Yoko Hasegawa
"Read Real Japanese: Short Stories" by Michael Emerich
"Identity" by Francis Fukuyama
"How Not To Be Wrong" by James O'Brien
"The Year of Magical Thinking" by Joan Didion
"The Wisdom of Crowds" by James Suriwiecki
"A Warning" by Anonumous (Miles Taylor)
"Treasure Island" by Robert Louis Stevenson
"Woke Racsim" by John McWhorter
"Ageless" by Andrew Steele
"Jogador N⁰ 1 (Ready Player 1)" by Ernest Cline
"How to Avoid a Climate Disaster" by Bill Gates
"How to Read a Book" by Mortimer J Adler & Charles Van Doren
"The Power of Babel" by John McWhorter
"Make it stick" by Peter C Brown, Henry L Roediger, Mark A. McDaniel

I'm now half way through "Crer ou não Crer" which is a written version of a conversation (or conversations, I think it was spread over several sessions) between Padre Fábio de Melo (a Catholic priest who is famous in Brazil for being a song writer, writer and realistically for being too handsome to be a priest...) and Leandro Karnal (a historian, professor and publicly atheist figure). It's pitched as a debate between an atheist and a Catholic, but actually so far it reads as two friends quoting classical philosophers at each other, making extremely esoteric "arguments" and making sure to give off positive vibes the whole time.
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Re: What are you currently reading? (part 2)

Postby Rí.na.dTeangacha » 2022-02-26, 19:31

Finished Crer ou não Crer (it wasn't a long book), about to start reading Vivendo como um Gurreiro, a biography of Whindersson Nunes, a Brazilian comedian / YouTuber who I went to see twice when he came to Ireland.
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Re: What are you currently reading? (part 2)

Postby vijayjohn » 2022-02-27, 1:22

Well, I'm almost halfway through the second chapter of A Ditadura Envergonhada. I got through the sixteen pages of pictures. :lol: If you count those, then I'm more than halfway through.

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

Postby Rí.na.dTeangacha » 2022-02-27, 21:59

Finished Vivendo como um Guerreiro, quite a short book also, and much less challenging than Crer ou não Crer.

Based on the discussion here, I decided to buy The Language Construction Kit and Advanced Language Construction a couple of weeks back, the former of which I'm going to start on next.
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Re: What are you currently reading? (part 2)

Postby vijayjohn » 2022-02-28, 19:32

I am now definitely more than halfway through the second chapter because I read the first 21 pages plus the captions for the pictures and now have just under 21 pages minus the end of one paragraph left. :P It's pretty much a blow-by-blow of the coup at this point. Jango has escaped, to Uruguay according to one person in the palace, which the military is now storming.

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

Postby linguoboy » 2022-02-28, 19:34

Rí.na.dTeangacha wrote:Based on the discussion here, I decided to buy The Language Construction Kit and Advanced Language Construction a couple of weeks back, the former of which I'm going to start on next.

I'm so glad! On Mark's behalf, thanks for the support. I think you'll be quite pleased with them.
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Re: What are you currently reading? (part 2)

Postby Rí.na.dTeangacha » 2022-02-28, 21:14

linguoboy wrote:I'm so glad! On Mark's behalf, thanks for the support. I think you'll be quite pleased with them.


I'm glad you're glad, thanks for the recommendation. I'm into the chapter on "Grammar" in The Language Construction Kit and I'm definitely liking it. Linguistics, as with any challenging intellectual endevour, can at times be a little tedious even for enthusiasts, but the author does a good job of keeping the reader engaged with humour and an informal tone injected at just the right moments, he's a good writter as well as a good linguist by my mesure. Chonaic mé gur luaigh sé thú sa réamhrá, tá an-cháil ort anois! haha
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Re: What are you currently reading? (part 2)

Postby linguoboy » 2022-02-28, 21:31

Rí.na.dTeangacha wrote:Chonaic mé gur luaigh sé thú sa réamhrá, tá an-cháil ort anois! haha

Mo cheathrú uair clú, aGOA.
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Re: What are you currently reading? (part 2)

Postby Osias » 2022-03-01, 13:50

vijayjohn wrote:I am now definitely more than halfway through the second chapter because I read the first 21 pages plus the captions for the pictures and now have just under 21 pages minus the end of one paragraph left. :P It's pretty much a blow-by-blow of the coup at this point. Jango has escaped, to Uruguay according to one person in the palace, which the military is now storming.

I suppose the palace it's the "Palácio do Planato".
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Re: What are you currently reading? (part 2)

Postby vijayjohn » 2022-03-01, 14:21

Osias wrote:
vijayjohn wrote:I am now definitely more than halfway through the second chapter because I read the first 21 pages plus the captions for the pictures and now have just under 21 pages minus the end of one paragraph left. :P It's pretty much a blow-by-blow of the coup at this point. Jango has escaped, to Uruguay according to one person in the palace, which the military is now storming.

I suppose the palace it's the "Palácio do Planato".

I think so, yes.

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

Postby linguoboy » 2022-05-31, 15:18

Since last I posted, I've been on a contemporary Ukrainian literature kick. I've read Grey bees/Серые пчелы by Andrey Kurkov/Андрей Ю́рьевич Курков, Fieldwork in Ukrainian sex/Польові дослідження з українського сексу by Oksana Zabuzhko/Оксана Забужко, and now I'm starting in on Mesopotamia/Месопотамія by Serhiy Zhadan/Сергій Жадан. All very interesting, all rather different in tone and style.
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Re: What are you currently reading? (part 2)

Postby md0 » 2022-06-27, 12:23

Two of my former course-mates started a German book club, so today we are discussing the first chapter of (de) Der Vorleser.
It's the first time I'm undertaking long-form text reading in German. I got too comfortable with podcasts.
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Re: What are you currently reading? (part 2)

Postby linguoboy » 2022-06-27, 15:13

md0 wrote:It's the first time I'm undertaking long-form text reading in German. I got too comfortable with podcasts.

I'm interested to hear what you think. One of my German friends loves that book so much he mailed me a copy so I could read it in the original.
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Re: What are you currently reading? (part 2)

Postby md0 » 2022-06-27, 15:25

Being only one chapter in (and those chapters are very short), I still can't comment on the literary merits or the story yet (it's probably going to be a topic for the UL blogs eventually), but the language so far feels very accessible and although I tend to not enjoy first person narration, here it works.
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Re: What are you currently reading? (part 2)

Postby Fruchtenstein » 2022-08-12, 11:18

Reading my third book in French, 'La confrérie des chausseurs de livres' by Rafaël Jerusalmy. It's a story about the hypothetical travel of François Villon to Jerusalem in search of rare books. First I heard about this book in a Russian article "Saviour of the world François Villon" (Спаситель мира Франсуа Вийон). The plot looked intriguing. I love Villon both as a poet and as a character (in works by R.L.Stephenson, Ursula le Guin, Mandelshtam and others), but I felt deeply put off by phrases in the article like 'secretive moral power of Jerusalmy's novel' (тайная нравственная сила романа Жерусальми) or 'eternal spiritualizing Christian thought' (многовековая животворящая мысль христианской культуры). But then I found this French blurb: « Palpitant comme un roman d’aventures, vif et malicieux comme une farce faite à l’histoire des idées, regorgeant de trouvailles et de rebondissements, La Confrérie des chasseurs de livres cumule le charme et l’énergie de Fanfan la Tulipe, l’engagement et la dérision de Don Quichotte et le sens du suspense d’un Umberto Eco »
And then I immediately knew it's worth reading :) Well, it's not that good as it may sound. Much closer to Fanfan than to Cervantes or Eco, much closer to lowbrow pulp fiction, but still pretty absorbing. Wouldn't start reading it in the native language, but for learning purposes it's good enough.
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Re: What are you currently reading? (part 2)

Postby Antea » 2022-10-31, 0:14

" L'âme du violon " de Marie Charvet

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

Postby linguoboy » 2022-11-01, 15:23

Everything I Know about Zombies I Learned in Kindergarten by Kevin Wayne Williams.
"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: What are you currently reading? (part 2)

Postby vijayjohn » 2022-11-03, 15:02

Update:
vijayjohn wrote:I finished reading all of these books and have lately been reading the following:

A novel in Malayalam by Ekalavyan called കടലാസുപൂക്കൾ [kəɖəlaːsɯˈbuːkəɭ] 'Paper Flowers'

Still reading this
Practical Chinese Reader V

Almost done reading this
经商宝典, also available in English translation as Golden Rules of Business Success

Almost halfway through this. I'm deliberately reading this and the Malayalam novel slowly.
Teach Yourself Ancient Greek

Six chapters left in this (there are 25 in all)

Have not touched this in months!
Ourika
Querschnitt: Dichter des Zwanzigsten Jahrhunderts

A bunch of Uncle Scrooge stories in German

Finished all of these and also Learn Oriya in 30 Days but plan to read another bunch of Uncle Scrooge/Donald Duck stories in German soon. Reading Learn Oriya in 30 Days all in one stretch was not a great idea IMO.
A Ditadura Envergonhada

Slowly but surely finishing this (much like Teach Yourself Ancient Greek)
La muerte de Artemio Cruz

Currently reading this, not even halfway through yet
An old bilingual Croatia Airlines in-flight magazine :P

I think I only have three actual articles left to read in this and the rest of the bilingual content is like "Croatian olive oil is so great but yeah forget about that. Now that we got that out of the way, look at our airline."
A trilingual travelers' guide to Yakutsk, I think originally written in Russian and then translated into Sakha and English, with the text being presented in those languages and that order

Finished reading this months ago, now also read the first two chapters of The Development of Russian Verse: Meter and its Meanings by Michael Wachtel
Kızlarıma Mektuplar, a set of letters by a Turkish professor to his daughters I think after they grew up and left to study abroad
ألف ليلة وليلة (known in English by such titles as One Thousand and One Nights and Arabian Nights, but the edition I'm trying to read is in Arabic)
نابینا شہر میں آئینہ Nabina Shehr Mein Aaina, a book of Urdu ghazals by Ahmad Faraz

Still reading all of these

I don't feel like I ever read this very carefully, but I've gone through it enough times that I'm ready for Year Two.

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

Postby Linguaphile » 2022-11-15, 5:07

Just finished Metsik lingvistika by Valdur Mikita, still reading Con pies de plomo by Jorge Viñuela, so my goal now is mainly to finish that one as well. But I will also start reading something else in Estonian, maybe Raudrästiku aeg by Indrek Hargla (fiction), but Lapsepõlv Nõukogude Eestis by Imre Siil (memoir of the 60's and 70's) looks interesting too. Either one will be a lighter read than either Metsik lingvistika or Con pies de plomo, which I think is what I am looking for in my next one.
No idea yet what I'll read in Spanish after Con pies de plomo, I still have about 75 pages left of that one.

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

Postby lu:ka » 2022-11-15, 21:09

I am reading Ceux qui grattent la terre by Patrick Eris
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