kanewai's book shelf (current: italian)

[kanewai]

What struck me about Bradamante was that she was a knight in the army, not a goddess or a princess or a queen. And no one cared. It’d be like if one of the Knights of the Round Table were female, or one of the Fellows of the Ring.

I know there were Greek German and Celtic female warriors in myth and legend. We don’t hear about them so much in the standard American canon. Hence: reading Ariosto was a pleasant revelation

[kanewai]

I've been doing a lot of reading, and no studying. I'm now in the middle of three great books.

français

Finished: Mohamed Mbougar Sarr, La plus secrète mémoire des hommes. 2021. A young African writer goes on a quest to learn about another writer who disappeared from view decades before after a scandal. Five stars. It lives up to all the hype around it.



(there's an icon to turn on the closed captions)

Started: Chateaubriand, Mémoires d'outre-tombe: Anthologie. 1848. Surprisingly enjoyable and easy to read. I was expecting that it would be much more of a challenge. I didn't realize that Chateaubriand was such a bad boy growing up.

italiano

Finished: Italo Calvino, Il visconte dimezzato. 1952. A viscount goes off to war, and is blown in two on the battlefield. Only half of him returns home, and it's the cruel and mean half. The first part of a trilogy set in the middle ages, I nostri antenati. It's not as rich as Calvino's later works, but it's still enjoyable.

Restarted: Boccaccio, Decameron (in italiano moderno). I am now on Day 7, which is all about getting away with having affairs. It's fun stuff.

español

Failed: Paloma Sánchez-Garnica, Últimos días en Berlín. 2021. Once again I was tricked by all the prizes and positive reviews. It's the story of a family that witnesses both the rise of the communists in Russia and the nazis in Germany. The bad guys are really bad. The good guys are really good and innocent. After fifty pages I was already rolling my eyes at the clichés.

Started: Jorge Luis Borges, Artificios. 1944. Borges was hard for me the first time I read him. This time I'm having an easier time of it, and am really enjoying this collection of short stories.

[reineke]

Re: D'Annunzio and his dirty handkerchief. Not a bad poet, required reading in Italian schools. Horribly boring as a novelist. Winner of the "most likely to feed Slavic babies to hungry rottweilers" award.

[kanewai]

some quick updates:

Finished

Jorge Luis Borges. Artificios. I really enjoyed this collection of short stories.

Boccaccio. Decameron (Day 7). Day 7 almost felt subversive - the theme was how clever women kept their lovers without their husbands finding out. I always think I'm going to keep reading and finish the book, but I'm ready for a break. I'll start in on Day 8 in another month or two.

In process

Chateaubriand. Mémoires d'outre-tombe. I was captivated by the first third - we learned about his youth, saw the fall of the Bastille, witnessed the early horrors of the Revolution, spent nights with him among the native Americans on a voyage to Niagara Falls, and witnessed the aftermath of a battle where his side was destroyed. The middle is dragging for me. There are too many names, and I don't have the context to place them - I just know that they are former aristocrats.

Assimil Arabic. I'm still taking this nice and slow, and only finish one or two chapters a week. I remember hating the audio when I first heard it - it's very slow and exaggerated - but this round I appreciate it.

New

Gabriel García Márquez. El amor en los tiempos del cólera. This is humbling - I'm finding Márquez very difficult. The writing is beautiful, but I need to constantly re-read pages, and it feels like there are dozens of new words per page.

Massimo Montanari. Il mito delle origini: Breve storia degli spaghetti al pomodoro. Montanari deconstructs the cultural, social, and political history of spaghetti with tomato sauce. It hits three things I love: history, food, and Italy. This book is a winner for me.

[kanewai]

Some updates:

Chateaubriand. Mémoires d'outre-tombe. After some riveting chapters on Napoleon in Moscow, the Russians in Paris, and then Waterloo, the book has moved on to Chateaubriand's political career during the Bourbon restoration. I'm going to take a pause here - at about the 50% mark - and come back to the memoires later.

Gabriel García Márquez. El amor en los tiempos del cólera. A man falls in love with a thirteen year old girl he sees in a garden, and stalks her for the next fifty years. I can recognize that the writing is beautiful (and difficult), but I did not like this book, and did not get far.

Massimo Montanari. Breve storia degli spaghetti al pomodoro. Finished. It was fascinating to learn how many roots, over thousands of years and dozens of cultures, one simple and iconic dish has. There were so many things that had to change and come together (you couldn’t have spaghetti until the invention of the fork, pasta was usually cooked for two hours in broth and served with butter and mountains of cheese, basil was a medicine not food, etc) - every chapter had something new and interesting.


New

Gaël Faye. Petit pays. 2016. The story of a youth in Burundi who's peaceful life is upturned by the violence of the world.

Arturo Pérez-Reverte. El italiano. 2021. In WWII the Italians used human torpedoes to attack Allied ships in Gibraltar. In the first chapter, a Spanish woman rescues an Italian sailor who has washed ashore. In the second chapter we meet her again, years later, running a bookstore in Venice, and there is a picture of the two of them framed on the wall. I think this book is off to a good start.

Below: a siluro a lenta corsa, or "maiale" - a miniature submarine holding a torpedo.

Sanbartolomeo.jpg

photo credit: Di Ronnin45 - Opera propria, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.p ... d=28444394

[DaveAgain]

Arturo Pérez-Reverte. El italiano. 2021. In WWII the Italians used human torpedoes to attack Allied ships in Gibraltar. In the first chapter, a Spanish woman rescues an Italian sailor who has washed ashore. In the second chapter we meet her again, years later, running a bookstore in Venice, and there is a picture of the two of them framed on the wall. I think this book is off to a good start.

There's a film set around this called The Silent Enemy.

[kanewai]

I just noticed that, when you search for your own books, the search_id is "ego search." I don't know if that's a standard term, or a funny little joke the coders for this forum slipped in.

Last year I promised myself that I would focus on French first, and Arabic when I had time. I'm travelling to Morocco and Paris in May (inshallah) and I know that I will use French each day, and probably won't use my limited Arabic much. And yet I did the opposite, and studied Arabic each night with Assimil, and opened my French course book when I had time.

A couple weeks ago I finally corrected myself, and started working more with CLE Grammaire first, and Assimil Arabic after. It's already paying off; CLE is really a well-structured course.

French books

I wrapped up Mémoires d'outre-tombe by Chatueaubriand and Petits pays by Gaël Faye, and left quick reviews at A French Book Reading Resource.

I have a couple novels in my queue, and I'm not sure which one I'll pick up yet.

Ágota Kristóf, La preuve
Patrick Modiano, Un cirque passe
Didier Van Cauwelaert, Un aller simple
Stendhal, Le rouge et le noir
Michel Houllebecq, Anéantir
Madame de La Fayette, La Princesse de Clèves
Jean-Claude Izzo, Solea

Spanish

Arturo Pérez-Reverte. El italiano. I'm really enjoying this historical romance / adventure story about Italian divers in WWII. Finally ... It's been awhile since I've really enjoyed a Spanish novel. I was starting to lose hope.

italiano.jpg

There's a film set around this called The Silent Enemy.

Part of the novel is set in the present day, and there are some references to the movie. The Italians and Spanish, at least in the novel, definitely do not like it!

Italian

Paulo Cognetti. Le otto montagne. I read that Cognetti was "the next Elena Ferrante," and that was enough for me to buy this novel on a whim. I haven't started yet. From the blurb:

Pietro è un ragazzino di città, solitario e un po' scontroso. La madre lavora in un consultorio di periferia, e farsi carico degli altri è il suo talento. Il padre è un chimico, un uomo ombroso e affascinante, che torna a casa ogni sera dal lavoro carico di rabbia. I genitori di Pietro sono uniti da una passione comune, fondativa: in montagna si sono conosciuti, innamorati, si sono addirittura sposati ai piedi delle Tre Cime di Lavaredo. La montagna li ha uniti da sempre, anche nella tragedia, e l'orizzonte lineare di Milano li riempie ora di rimpianto e nostalgia.

montagne.jpg

English

Olga Tokarczuk, The Books of Jacob. This was just translated from Polish into English. Tokarczuk is a Nobel Prize winner, and I'm excited to being able to read her work. It's a massive 990 pages in hard cover, so this might take awhile. From the blurb:

In the mid-eighteenth century, as new ideas—and a new unrest—begin to sweep the Continent, a young Jew of mysterious origins arrives in a village in Poland. Before long, he has changed not only his name but his persona; visited by what seem to be ecstatic experiences, Jacob Frank casts a charismatic spell that attracts an increasingly fervent following. In the decade to come, Frank will traverse the Hapsburg and Ottoman empires with throngs of disciples in his thrall as he reinvents himself again and again, converts to Islam and then Catholicism, is pilloried as a heretic and revered as the Messiah, and wreaks havoc on the conventional order, Jewish and Christian alike, with scandalous rumors of his sect’s secret rituals and the spread of his increasingly iconoclastic beliefs. The story of Frank—a real historical figure around whom mystery and controversy swirl to this day—is the perfect canvas for the genius and unparalleled reach of Olga Tokarczuk. Narrated through the perspectives of his contemporaries—those who revere him, those who revile him, the friend who betrays him, the lone woman who sees him for what he is—The Books of Jacob captures a world on the cusp of precipitous change, searching for certainty and longing for transcendence.

jacob.jpg

[kanewai]

Some updates

It has been an insane couple months at work; I'm surprised I have any updates at all.

Finished

Italian - Paulo Cognetti. Le otto montagne. 2016. A bittersweet story that tracks the friendship of two men, their complicated relationship to their fathers, and their mutual love of the mountains of northern Italy. In some ways this is like a male-counterpart to Elena Ferrante's novels, though Cognetti's and Ferrante's styles are different. Recommended.

Spanish - Arturo Pérez-Reverte. El italiano. 2021. Part adventure, part romance, set in Gibraltar in WWII and Venice during the present day. I've had mixed experiences with Pérez-Reverte; this one I really enjoyed. Recommended.

Currently reading

French - Tahar Ben Jelloun. Partir. 2006. This novel follows the experiences of young Moroccans in Tangier who dream of escape to Spain. The central character is Azel, who is mostly straight but becomes the lover of Miguel, a rich art dealer from Barcelona, in order to emigrate.

French, audio - Marguerite Yourcenar. Mémoires d'Hadrien. Narrated by Stéphane Varupenne. I read this about ten years ago, and loved it. I was worried that it would be hard to follow in audiobook format, but it's been a pleasure. I listen to each chapter two or more times, and discover more details with each repeat. The audiobook is only nine hours in total, so I don't mind stretching it out.

English - Olga Tokarczuk. The Books of Jacob. 2014. (translated from Polish). This novel recreates in detail a lost world centered on the 18th century Jewish trade routes that ran between the Ottoman Empire, the Hapsburg Empire, and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The center character is based upon a real life "messiah" who taught that liberation and salvation depended on overthrowing the Law of Moses, and violating the Talmud at every turn. It's fascinating and brilliant.

Studies

French - I'm working through a page of Grammaire progressive du français each night, and taking the time out to write out each exercise. This is exactly what I need right now.

Arabic - I'm working through Assimil off and on. I have a trip to Morocco coming up in May, and it would be nice to have some MSA under my belt ... even though I know the Moroccan darija dialect is vastly different than MSA. I haven't found a good, basic darija phrasebook that includes audio, which is a surprise.

[DaveAgain]

English - Olga Tokarczuk. The Books of Jacob. 2014. (translated from Polish). This novel recreates in detail a lost world centered on the 18th century Jewish trade routes that ran between the Ottoman Empire, the Hapsburg Empire, and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The center character is based upon a real life "messiah" who taught that liberation and salvation depended on overthrowing the Law of Moses, and violating the Talmud at every turn. It's fascinating and brilliant.

Kampa Verlag, Ms Tokarczuk's German language publisher, has a 12 minute English language video interview with her on their website that you might like.

[kanewai]

Seven weeks until I fly to Rabat; I'm switching over to virtual French immersion until then.

French

Tahar Ben Jelloun. Partir. 2006. Started strong, but half way through the novel the characters started having rapid personality shifts from chapter to chapter. I'll probably skim through just to see how it ends.

Amin Maalouf. Léon l'Africain. 1986. A fictionalized account of a real person, who was born in al-Andalus, lived in Fes after the Reconquista, and then journeyed through the known world. I've just started, and Granada is about to be conquered. This is my third book by Amin Maalouf, and he's becoming one of my favorite modern authors.

Michel Abitbol. Histoire du Maroc. 2009. One of the few history books I've found that presents an unbiased history - it's not overly romanticized, and doesn't have an overt Western bias. I'm surprised how few there are. Every chapter has something interesting and new. The drawback is that Abitbol names every person and their brother, so it's hard to keep track of who is who or with which faction. For each chapter I need to read a quick summary on wikipedia of the era, and then I can follow along and enjoy all the details in the book.

audio - Mohamed Mbougar Sarr. La plus secrète mémoire des hommes. 2021. Narrated by Olivier Dote-Doevi. I read this last year, and the writing is wonderful. I'm enjoying the audio just as much as I did the written book.

English

Olga Tokarczuk. The Books of Jacob. 2014. (translated from Polish). I've stalled half-way through. There are dozens and dozens of characters, and they keep changing their names, and there is no index. I can't keep track of who is who. I want to like it more than I do. Each individual chapter is fine, but I am utterly lost beyond that.

Gavin Maxwell. Lords of the Atlas. 1966. I was looking for an English-language history of Morocco, and this one was often recommended. It's cringe worthy, like a relic from the age of colonialism - there are ridiculous statements like "Morocco hasn't changed for a thousand years," a preoccupation with how much "negro blood" each person has, and a focus on the most sadistic acts of the sultans, though the author does note that some of them are intelligent ... for a Moor of their time. Ugh. Horrible horrible horrible.

Fatima Mernissi. Dreams of Trespass. 1994. It's the memoirs of a woman who grew up in a harem in Fes, and went on to become a feminist leader in Morocco. This is another book I wanted to like more than I did.

I've actually had trouble finding novels I want to read by Moroccan authors. The most widely cited ones all deal with poverty, violence, despair, drugs, and prostitution. That's fine - but one book like that is enough for me. I don't need a dozen.