The FORMER A Language Learner's Forum Book Club

[brilliantyears]

I'll probably be joining the monthly book club reads Not this one though, I already read the trilogy it's great, so enjoy it everyone!

[zatris]

I'm in, though to be honest I tried to read the book earlier this year and didn't like it that much. The ideas are really great, but the style was, for me, very awkward, a little amateurish even. I read it in English; it may be fault of the translation.

That said, I still like the concept of the story and, despite having given up the book, want to know where it goes, so this is a good opportunity to read it till the end. I don't know yet if I'm going to go back to the beginning or join the club when you get to the point where I dropped it, but anyway I'm in. Reading in English, as I said.

Edit: I dropped the book by chapter 26. It's too close to the end to go back to the beginning, so I'm probably going to join only the overall discussion at the end.

[kanewai]

I'm in for Spanish!



How do you guys normally do this ... does someone set a reading schedule / discussion schedule, or is it all just at our own pace?

[Ani]

I'm in I'm going to read it in French.

Can I propose we read at our own pace, but open discussion of one quarter of the book per week so we don't totally wash out anybody who was hoping to read without spoilers? So if this book is planned for July, we begin discussing the first quarter on July 8, and full story discussion is allowed after July 29. Does that seem reasonable?

[Mohave]

I'm in! So for this month's selection, I may need to read it in English. The Amazon.com translation in French is nearly $46 with shipping. Amazon.fr is not much better, nor would it arrive in time for a July start.

[IronMike]

Can I propose we read at our own pace, but open discussion of one quarter of the book per week so we don't totally wash out anybody who was hoping to read without spoilers? So if this book is planned for July, we begin discussing the first quarter on July 8, and full story discussion is allowed after July 29. Does that seem reasonable?

So Ani, are you saying we can start discussing just the first quarter of the book on 8 July but nothing more till 29 July when we can discuss the entire book? Or are you saying, we can discuss half the book on 15 July, 3/4 of the book on 22 July?

I'll be reading in English. There's a Russian trans, but Russian is dead to me now, and there's not an Esperanto or Middle Egyptian translation available yet. /haha/

[Ani]

So Ani, are you saying we can start discussing just the first quarter of the book on 8 July but nothing more till 29 July when we can discuss the entire book? Or are you saying, we can discuss half the book on 15 July, 3/4 of the book on 22 July?

Yeah sorry I was lazy and made it unclear. I was thinking basically each Sunday we add a quarter so on the 15th we discuss anything up to the halfway point, the 22nd would be anything up to 3/4 and the ending is fair discussion after the 29th. If anyone has a paper copy already in hand maybe they can turn those %s into closest chapter #s.

[kanewai]

Three Bodies, first look (spoiler free)

I'm glad I got the hard copy! It takes me longer to read than on a kindle, with it's pop up dictionary. However, I'm not super familiar with Chinese names, and it's been useful to be able to flip back a few pages to remind myself who's who. That's harder to do on a kindle.

I'm curious to hear what order the book follows in other languages. The English translator gave an interview in Wired that had this interesting bit:

Were there any big changes you made to the translation of The Three-Body Problem?
The first book, as originally published in Chinese, actually comes in a different order. It starts out with the police and army officers asking Professor Wang to join them at the Battle Command Center. All the Cultural Revolution episodes happen as flashbacks. That gave the original Three-Body Problem a very Japanese thriller/detective story kind of feel. But Liu Cixin had always intended for the story to actually start with the Cultural Revolution chapters. He had switched the order only because of concern about whether or not that content would be sensitive. We decided to restore the chapter order, and I like the new structure a lot more. The Cultural Revolution parts are no longer just kind of throwaway flashback exclamations. They are actually the foundation of the story.

The Spanish version appears to follow this revised order too - it opens with the Cultural Revolution.

I also found it interesting that the Spanish translator is almost invisible. I had to search to find his name; it's in small print on the inside title page. The American translator, meanwhile, is in big letters on the front cover.

[lavengro]

So Ani, are you saying we can start discussing just the first quarter of the book on 8 July but nothing more till 29 July when we can discuss the entire book? Or are you saying, we can discuss half the book on 15 July, 3/4 of the book on 22 July?

Yeah sorry I was lazy and made it unclear. I was thinking basically each Sunday we add a quarter so on the 15th we discuss anything up to the halfway point, the 22nd would be anything up to 3/4 and the ending is fair discussion after the 29th. If anyone has a paper copy already in hand maybe they can turn those %s into closest chapter #s.

Just got my copy today! If we are proceeding in the manner you have suggested, which makes sense to me, and assuming that we are all working from a version that is structured similarly to the English and Spanish translations (which apparently are differently structured from the original published version - per kanewai's post), then there are 36 chapters of varying length, spread across (in the English language version) 390 pages. I would suggest the following chapter breakdown over four weeks, just based on a rough page count:

The first Sunday: Chapters 1 through 7
Le deuxième dimanche: Chapters 8 through 15
La terza dominica: Chapters 16 through 25
El quarto domingo: Chapters 26 through 36

Of course, we should proceed in my view on the basis that if a chapter break (either above suggested breaks or other) means a wicked good car chase scenario has to be broken up, then we should plough through until resolution.

[coldrainwater]

I like it so far and have stopped after reading after the first seven chapters per lavengro's page estimate. This might be more fun than launching rooftop water balloons at the biology building back in undergraduate, testing, all the while, projectile motion per assignment. I like that the book club choice pulls me out of my normal routine and into a different genre. I will probably stick with Spanish for this month's selection, but it would definitely be fun to read some chapters multilingually, taking note of the differences. Would be a first time for that sort of thing in my case.