Rdearman 2016-24 You Can't Have Your Kate and Edith Too.

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Re: Rdearman 2016-21 [Presto e bene non marciano insieme]

Postby rdearman » Fri Jul 02, 2021 1:50 pm



Houston, we have a problem....




Let's have a read of some reviews of this book from Native English speakers who read this book in their native language.

Arrive at Easterwine is either fiendishly good or criminally terrible. It would take several readings to know for sure. On its surface, Arrive is about the creation of a self-aware supercomputer tasked with three problems: find true leadership, true love & the true shape of the universe. The narrative style is reminiscent of Russia's Olesha, or perhaps a William Faulkner with talent. One can never be sure if the events being related are real or metaphorical. The machine itself, Epikt, drives this home early on. Just when the reader is about to throw the book down in disgust over characters as "tigers" eating "goats", Epikt declares, "You know, don't you, that there aren't *really* tigers, this is just a metaphor that perhaps has gone on too long" (paraphrase). This blurring between real & metaphor, with unique turns of phrase, make Arrive a challenging read, which not everyone will have the energy to get thru.


This is a mad, fever dream of a book, full of erudite nonsense. At points, it felt like a crazy cut up of the works of Aquinas and Bazooka Joe comics.


This one started out almost like a science fiction story, but quickly delved deep into all-ass craziness and never looked back. Like all stylistic authors I like, I've come to realize R.A. Lafferty is good in small doses- undiluted hits of him in quick succession drive me a little wacko.


Now imagine if these people had to read this in a second language... You see my problem, I'm sure. If someone took 5 scrabble games and threw all the letters at a wall with glue on it, then you had to read and comprehend the resulting mess of letters, you would have some feeling for what it is like for me to read this book in French.

I've made a bit more than a quarter of the way through it, and haven't killed myself or anyone else, so I'm coping pretty well, I think. Plus, I am having periodic quilt trips because I shouldn't be reading books, I should be writing them. I promised people on the mailing list a serialized novel over 18 months ago. :oops:

Anyway! I'm 1/4 of the way through and it is only a short book. So just have to muddle through. You want to know something ironic? I gave myself a SciFi book as an easy gift for completion of "La Scribe". :roll:
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Re: Rdearman 2016-21 [Presto e bene non marciano insieme]

Postby rdearman » Mon Jul 05, 2021 8:18 pm


Worst book ever written? Quite possibly. But I'm done with it now. I did wonder if it was the worst book I have ever read, and while I cannot remember many this bad, there were some that I just stopped reading. Is this the worst book I have ever read to the end? Yes. As some of the quotes I put in my last post said, the books starts out crazy, and the crazy train just keeps picking up speed the whole time. I understood the words, I understood the sentences, but there just was not a lot of understanding happening. Anyway, I'm done, and I can now go outside and burn this book.

So on to the next book! This book was written by my neighbour's father and is 271 pages of French. I think he must have self-published, since I cannot find any ISBN or reference to this on any of the book sites. Anyway, we'll see. I seriously doubt it is possible for it to be a horrible as the last book.

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Re: Rdearman 2016-21 [Presto e bene non marciano insieme]

Postby rdearman » Sat Jul 10, 2021 2:33 pm

OK! I completed The saga of the Hasskeiths. It was a really good book! It was written simply in nice easy modern French. It told the story of an arostocratic family in England. If you can find it, then it is worth reading. Lots of historical facts and events starting from 1700s to 1990s and the family members involvement.

On to the next book. I have been considering just reading Stendhal because like Brian Tracey said "Eat the frog", e.g. if you do the thing you're dreading first then everything else is easier. So if you have to eat a frog during the day, eat the frog first because nothing else is as bad. Reviewing the book made me realize that I wasn't going to read the postface and all the notes (this is obviously a copy used to punish students who're required to read it.) So that means there are 77 pages which I had counted previously, which I'm not going to read. However, regular readers will remember I had to swap out an Italian book that had sneaked into my French reading, and had to be swapped out. The swapped in French book had more pages. So the recalculated total for the 21 books will be 7198 pages. (or 143.9 super challenge books)

But I decided I don't want the eat a frog today, so I'm going to read this instead.



While I have this book in print, I also have it on my kindle, since it is a public domain book. I might read it on the kindle since lookups are easier, or might stick to the paperback. But either way it is next on the list.

:)
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Re: Rdearman 2016-21 [Presto e bene non marciano insieme]

Postby MorkTheFiddle » Sat Jul 10, 2021 4:37 pm

Your pile of books to read may end up being my pile of books to read. I just ordered the Kindle Trois hommes en Allemagne! Which was rated the highest possible with 5 stars. Albeit only two raters. ;)
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Re: Rdearman 2016-21 [Presto e bene non marciano insieme]

Postby rdearman » Sat Jul 10, 2021 6:43 pm

MorkTheFiddle wrote:Your pile of books to read may end up being my pile of books to read. I just ordered the Kindle Trois hommes en Allemagne! Which was rated the highest possible with 5 stars. Albeit only two raters. ;)

If you like that one, you might like "Three Men in a Boat: To Say Nothing of the Dog.", which is quite good as well, although I read it in English. :)
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Re: Rdearman 2016-21 [Presto e bene non marciano insieme]

Postby rdearman » Sun Jul 11, 2021 11:50 am

Just reading my new book, and Jerome gave me a laughing out loud moment. A character is looking for his wife. Someone has asked a man to tell them what she is wearing.

Je ne crois pas qu'il existe un homme sur terre capable de décrire une toilette dix minutes après avoir quitté la femme qui la porte.
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Re: Rdearman 2016-21 [Presto e bene non marciano insieme]

Postby MorkTheFiddle » Sun Jul 11, 2021 4:59 pm

rdearman wrote:
MorkTheFiddle wrote:Your pile of books to read may end up being my pile of books to read. I just ordered the Kindle Trois hommes en Allemagne! Which was rated the highest possible with 5 stars. Albeit only two raters. ;)

If you like that one, you might like "Three Men in a Boat: To Say Nothing of the Dog.", which is quite good as well, although I read it in English. :)
Thanks. The title alone is good for a laugh.
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Re: Rdearman 2016-21 [Presto e bene non marciano insieme]

Postby rdearman » Sun Jul 11, 2021 6:52 pm

I haven't mentioned other language learning in a while, so I thought I should log what is happening with Italian and Mandarin instead of just talking about French reading. Korean seems to have fallen to the wayside.

Italian
But anyway, with Italian, I continue to have language exchanges. I speak to four people in Italian each week, doing a conversation exchange. I was getting a little bored talking about families and pandemics all the time, so I convinced all of them to switch over to doing picture descriptions. This basically where you pick a photo and the other person has to describe it in the TL language. So I pick something, and they have to describe it in English. Then they pick something and I have to describe it in Italian. This works well because it is forcing me to use words I wouldn't normally use in a conversation. I am very hard on them, and they are hard with me. The first time they let me get away with easy stuff, but they soon learned I wasn't going to let them off easy. What do I mean?

For example, this photo:


I'm not going to let you get away with "It is two cats in a living room." I'm going to start drilling you with questions. :twisted:

  • What is the thing the cat is standing on?
  • What is the floor made out of?
  • What is the pattern called the floor boards are laid out in?
  • What colour is the ceiling?
  • What do they call the thing the TV is sitting on?
  • What do they call the thing the plants are in? The ones hanging from the ceiling?
This is actually an easy photo, I normally try to find ones which are much "busier" than this. But because I'm so strict with them, they are with me. So I learn lots of words, or am reminded of lots of words.

Mandarin
For Mandarin, I cannot do this myself, but I do the photo thing for my partner. At the moment I've created some islands that I am memorising in Mandarin, and every week I perform them for her. We keep adding some more, or variations of the sentences. For example.
我叫瑞克,但是我的中文名字叫龙辰。(My name is Rick, but my Chinese name is Long Chen)
我住在英格兰。 (I live in England)
我出生在美国。(I was born in the USA) this one for example has a couple of variations. Such as: 我是美国人。但是我住在英格兰。(I am American, but I live in England)
So at the moment I have about 10 sentences and I say them all, get corrections on pronunciation, then try to mix them up into different sentences and see if they are legit, and if not maybe add a new sentence.

I do this during the exchange, but offline I've downloaded a free grammar book, and I'm slowly making my way through a grammar wiki. https://resources.allsetlearning.com/chinese/grammar/ I spend about 30 minutes each day going back over the sentences using WorkAudioBook to try and get the pronunciation spot on. During the language exchanges my partner lets me turn on the recording in Skype, and then she says all the new sentences, and later I drag them out with Audacity, split the sentence into individual mp3's and load them on my phone. I also create an .m3u file so that I can play them all like an album, one after another.

This might seem like a huge step backward, and it is. But because I slacked off for a long time, I have forgotten a ton of what I used to know. I can slack off in French or Italian for months, and it isn't really a problem, because I pick it up straight away. But because I didn't get to a high enough level in Mandarin, it all just slipped away quietly while I wasn't looking.

Because the French reading is a huge time sink, I will have to just keep working on little bits and pieces in Mandarin.

Korean
I haven't really done much with this, other than keep watching dramas with the wife and listening to the occasional "Korean with David" podcast.
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Re: Rdearman 2016-21 [Presto e bene non marciano insieme]

Postby smallwhite » Sun Jul 11, 2021 7:21 pm

> What do they call the thing the TV is sitting on?

I know all the words and this word if it was above a fireplace, but that’s not a fireplace in the pic. And you can’t just let an expensive TV sit on such a narrow piece of thing, especially when you have a cat. So I really wonder what that thing can be but Decoration?!

Edit: Oh, I think I know now. It’s not furniture, is it? Ok got it.
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Re: Rdearman 2016-21 [Presto e bene non marciano insieme]

Postby DaveAgain » Sun Jul 11, 2021 8:58 pm

smallwhite wrote:> What do they call the thing the TV is sitting on?

I know all the words and this word if it was above a fireplace, but that’s not a fireplace in the pic. And you can’t just let an expensive TV sit on such a narrow piece of thing, especially when you have a cat. So I really wonder what that thing can be but Decoration?!

Edit: Oh, I think I know now. It’s not furniture, is it? Ok got it.
That's a tricky one. You used to buy little tables with shelves (for the video/DVD player) that were sometimes called 'media centers'. But that was for smaller TVs. Here you've got an enormous TV, standing on what might be a low cupboard? In front of a partition wall? Kitchen counter? We need more photos and an interior designer! :-)
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