What Book Are You Reading XV - The Pile Keeps Growing!

[Smellincoffee]

I'm reading Paul Among the People, a book from a Quaker who realizes that Puritanical and modern reads of Paul are highly inaccurate in that they ignore his historical context.

 

[Aiken_Drumn]

I am collecting quotes for plumbing work. I have to translate them into comparable pieces of art. Or at least that is what the price tags would suggest.

Or perhaps they are short comedies?

 

[Birdjaguar]

I am collecting quotes for plumbing work. I have to translate them into comparable pieces of art. Or at least that is what the price tags would suggest.

Or perhaps they are short comedies?

Plumbers can be artists, contortionists, skilled at making two hands into four and making the impossible look simple. Pay them well!

 

[Takhisis]

Finished reading Edé K11 by Gabriel Fagundes, a Brazilian author. Highly recommendable.

Acquired another one of Fontanarrosa's anthologies, ‘Una lección de vida y otros cuentos’ (A life lesson and other stories), which is as idiosyncratic as his works always have been. Still remains one of the greatest Argentine authors I've ever read.

Acquired another one! No sé si he sido claro y otros cuentos, again a collection of brilliance from an author that was sadly taken from us too soon.

That's bound up with the thesis, that the hostility of the Christian church to the figure of the bear lead to it being excluded from the emerging symbolism of statehood in Medieval Europe in favour of lions and eagles, which were understood as more appropriate symbols of Christian kingship than the wild, pagan bear which had been exalted by the tribal leaders of the pre-Christian North.

A bit belatedly, but I have to point out that the symbol for Madrid in ridiculously uber-Catholic Spain is the bear.

 

[Josu]

Ended Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond
Masterpiece. Food for thought.

Started Babel by R.F. Kuang
I have read about the 10% and for now, although I am enjoying it, is one of the worst translations I have seen in years.

 

[Bonyduck Campersang]

Started Corum: The Prince in the Scarlet Robe, my very first Moorcock story. Can't say I'm impressed. So far the story is straightforward and the dialogue dull. Maybe it gets better later on?

Ended Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond
Masterpiece. Food for thought

I've seen that book ripped to shreds by the historians on r/badhistory

 

[PhroX]

It's been a long time since I read GGS, but my memories of it are that Diamond made some interesting points, but overextrapolated them into a general theory which doesn't really hold up.

As opposed to Collapse in which he was just repeatedly wrong and seemed to ignore any advances in our knowledge of history more recent than the 1960s....

 

[AmazonQueen]

Started Corum: The Prince in the Scarlet Robe, my very first Moorcock story. Can't say I'm impressed. So far the story is straightforward and the dialogue dull. Maybe it gets better later on?

Not really. The 2nd Corum trilogy is better than the 1st but still no classic. Moorcock has admitted quite a lot of his work in this period was written in a weekend when he needed the advance.
He has written more serious works such as the Cornelius Quartet and the Pyat Quartet but although I enjoyed his work in my teens/twenties I can't reread most of it. I do quite like Gloriana still, but that is very much a hate it or love it novel.

 

[Kyriakos]

Seems to be mostly fun stories. Read chapter 1, which was lively. Too bad he had to give up using his own symbols

 

[Josu]

Ended Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond
Masterpiece. Food for thought.

Started Babel by R.F. Kuang
I have read about the 10% and for now, although I am enjoying it, is one of the worst translations I have seen in years.

I have reached the 20%. Not worst tranlation in years, worst translation ever. Translated to spanish.
Sentences in which the subject is "You" the translation changes from you singular, you plural or the spanish formal "Usted", sometimes in the same paragraph.
It also changes gender of adjectives.
Some place names as Silver City or Twisted Root is sometimes translated, sometimes not and other times partialy translated (just one of the worlds)
The word bar, meaning stick, at a point is translated as tabern.
The climax is when a character named Anthony is introduced, in the next conversation is refered as Antonio, and in the nex paragraph again as Anthony.

I am pretty sure that for this edition they have used something like google translator and nobody has reviewed it.


Nonetheless, I am enjoying it

 

[Birdjaguar]

^^^ I'm waiting for my "on hold" copy from the library. IIRC I am like 9 of 22

 

[Josu]

^^^ In the library which is 5 minutes from my home they have several paper copies.
If I continue getting frustrated I will go to check wether this is a spanish edition fault or just ebook format fault.

In any case it is quite ironic that a book that relates about a translation department of a university has such a bad translation

 

[dusters]

My pupil in English class had to read Portrait of Dorian Gray, so I had to re-check it as well. The book seems to be more tragic than I remembered.

 

[EnglishEdward]

Last week I finished reading a hard copy of:

A Gathering of Widowmakers

copyright 2005

by Mike Resnick

a Sci-Fi western.

Interestingly enough the cover has a
WITHDRAWN
stamp from Winnipeg Public Library.

 

[AmazonQueen]

Last week I finished reading a hard copy of:

A Gathering of Widowmakers

copyright 2005

by Mike Resnick

a Sci-Fi western.

Interestingly enough the cover has a
WITHDRAWN
stamp from Winnipeg Public Library.

2nd hand copy?
Must've been an interesting journey to end up in a 2nd hand bookshop in East Anglia.

 

[bene_legionary]

I'm starting to like crazy books, so I'm trying to read Catch-22 again. It's easier now that I've read the crazy bird book, I'm actually enjoying it, even if Yossarian seems like the type of guy I'd like to punch for constantly being a smart guy, repeating everything. Otherwise he's pretty cool.

Oh and I can use Catch-22 to compare it with the crazy bird book in my finals. That will be worth some marks I bet : )

 

[EnglishEdward]

2nd hand copy?
Must've been an interesting journey to end up in a 2nd hand bookshop in East Anglia.

Yes; sometimes; I wonder about previous readers and what they thought of the book.

I have now started on "The Call of the Weird" by Louis Theroux.

 

[Kyriakos]

( @Samson )

It's from the Feynman book.
Though it's pretty terrible. If you are wondering what a "french curve" ruler looks like:

So yes, obviously at the lowest point of the curve, the curvature is zero, because it has to switch to the other side => the tangent is horizontal. So Feynman got the other students to examine if effectively every point in a curve that can be the lowest has a curvature of zero compared to those on either side.
He might as well have said that the ruler is "special" because all of its points satisfy the intermediate value theorem.

 

[Takhisis]

Wait until he tells them the great discovery that any point that forms a circumference is at the exact same distance from the centre as each and every one of the infinite others.

I have reached the 20%. Not worst tranlation in years, worst translation ever. Translated to spanish.
Sentences in which the subject is "You" the translation changes from you singular, you plural or the spanish formal "Usted", sometimes in the same paragraph.
It also changes gender of adjectives.
Some place names as Silver City or Twisted Root is sometimes translated, sometimes not and other times partialy translated (just one of the worlds)
The word bar, meaning stick, at a point is translated as tabern.
The climax is when a character named Anthony is introduced, in the next conversation is refered as Antonio, and in the nex paragraph again as Anthony.

I am pretty sure that for this edition they have used something like google translator and nobody has reviewed it.


Nonetheless, I am enjoying it

Ah, yes. ‘Translations’ in Spain are depressingly regularly made like that, but since the country has quite successfully rebranded Castilian as ‘Spanish’ (contradicting even its own constitution) then all translations seem to be sourced to -hilariously- Catalonia.

 

[Kyriakos]

These are 'special' circles, where every point in the periphery can have a horizontal tangent.