The FORMER A Language Learner's Forum Book Club

[Querneus]

I'm going to join this month's collective reading. I notice I do have access to the book in the original Chinese, but who am I kidding, I'm not going to read 7 chapters by this Sunday. (The first seven chapters are due on Sunday the 8th, right?) I'll just read it in French. Although it might be fun to try to read a passage or two in Chinese...

[Ani]

I'm going to join this month's collective reading. I notice I do have access to the book in the original Chinese, but who am I kidding, I'm not going to read 7 chapters by this Sunday. (The first seven chapters are due on Sunday the 8th, right?) I'll just read it in French. Although it might be fun to try to read a passage or two in Chinese...

No it's not due!! Don't worry. Just join in. All I was proposing was that we start discussing bit by bit so people who are reading more slowly don't have to avoid the thread until they're finished. Depending on your tolerance for possible spoilers you can jump in whenever.

I am wondering about folks reading in Chinese since the book has been re-ordered. Do we have anyone definitely reading in Chinese? Any thoughts or concerns on the discussion or do we just proceed as planned?

[Querneus]

No it's not due!! Don't worry. Just join in. All I was proposing was that we start discussing bit by bit so people who are reading more slowly don't have to avoid the thread until they're finished. Depending on your tolerance for possible spoilers you can jump in whenever.

Oh I see. I hadn't read all previous posts.

I am wondering about folks reading in Chinese since the book has been re-ordered. Do we have anyone definitely reading in Chinese? Any thoughts or concerns on the discussion or do we just proceed as planned?

Was the English translator quoted in a previous post telling the truth? The book is available to be read for free on a few Chinese websites (quite openly too, I'm not talking about sketchy places with malware ads only a click away), and everywhere I've looked at, the book begins with the Cultural Revolution chapters, which suggests to me that is how it was originally published in Chinese. The Vancouver Public Library has printed copies of the book in Chinese; I should check it out and see.

[Mohave]

There has been discussion of having a monthly book club reading selection. I love the idea of reading books from authors around the world that I might not have otherwise read. I'm reading this month's selection in English mainly due to lack of time to order it from Amazon.fr and an excessive cost for the French version on Amazon.com. I'd like to have time to order the book (possibly from Amazon.fr or Amazon.ca) rather than reading it in English like I am doing this month.

Can we start the selection of the August book? If people want to throw together some suggestions, I'd be glad to pull them together into a poll.

[Ani]

Great idea. Hmmm...

Food for thought..
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of ... anslations

I find that list surprising if it's accurate. How can books like Chasing Vermeer rank among most translated works? I mean my kids love the book but. Really?

My Name is Red
Out Stealing Horses
Bridge on the Drina

Looked interesting.. All are historical novels.

We could go very classic book club and read Norwegian Wood. I'm not a huge Murikami fan but I'd go for it.

We could also do a Jules Verne -- they're all out of copyright so it would save money for some. They're great stories, but we may have the problem that too many of us have read them.

Of course we don't need most languages available, just a good handful so we can all hopefully read in an L2.

[lavengro]

Great idea. Hmmm...

Food for thought..
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of ... anslations

....

I note with some surprise that Eric Carle’s philosophical tome The Very Hungry Caterpillar made the list you have circulated. I am familiar with this work: at its core, and in an insidious manner in an attempt to corrupt young minds, it sets out the sentiment that irresponsible consumerism turns out spiffy in the end. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Very_Hungry_Caterpillar

Perhaps I am still being influenced by my recent reading of the first couple of chapters of Liu Cixin’s The Three Body Problem, and in particular the fervour of the Red Guard, but I am leery of being offside of efforts (to paraphrase one of the young Red Guard members) to overthrow the black banner of capitalism represented by the very hungry caterpillar. Put simply, (minor spoiler alert for Liu's TBP) I don't want to give anyone an excuse to beat me with a belt....

[coldrainwater]

All of the ideas presented so far look interesting to me. As a club, we may find it useful to search the Index Translationum directly via http://www.unesco.org/xtrans/ as part of our decision-making process. Following the biblio-trail, I believe that is where Wikipedia pulled the links referenced by Ani. Thanks to Reineke also for mentioning this source in multiple posts prior. All four of their top 50 lists seem relevant. I am even more interested in digging into the detail behind each book/author, an endeavor which the search tool facilitates.

[lavengro]

I've finished the first seven chapters, English translation. Interesting so far. The ending of Chapter 7 suggests to me a possible path for the rest of the novel but fingers crossed I am wrong (I always am, when I try to predicate where a story may be going - for example, with murder mysteries, I generally guess that all the suspects are guilty as co-conspirators and that is, with one glaring exception, never a smart or even sane prediction).

I noticed that there is sample of the Italian text available on amazon.it – https://www.amazon.it/problema-dei-tre-corpi-ebook/dp/B0775TB2XC/ref=dp_kinw_strp_2 - including “Personaggi” (List of Characters), Chapters 1 and 2 and much of Chapter 3. Poked around at it a bit just for passages I liked from the English version. Having grown up as a child in Winnipeg, Canada, a place forsaken by the gods expect for the gods of bitter winter cold, I greatly empathized with the following passage:

Attraverso gli abiti bagnati, il freddo della Mongolia interna afferrò Ye come il pugno di un gigante. Sentiva il suono dei suoi stessi denti che battevano, ma alla fine persino quel rumore scomparve. Il gelo le penetrò nelle ossa e il mondo davanti ai suoi occhi venne offuscato da una coltre biancastra e lattiginosa. Si sentiva come se l’intero universo fosse un enorme blocco di ghiaccio, e lei l’unica scintilla di vita al suo interno. Lei, una ragazza che stava per morire assiderata, non aveva nemmeno qualche fiammifero, soltanto illusioni…

["Through her wet clothes, the chill of the Inner Mongolian winter seized Ye like a giant’s fist. She heard her teeth chatter, but eventually even that sound disappeared. The coldness penetrated into her bones, and the world in her eyes turned milky white. She felt like the entire universe was a huge block of ice, and she was the only spark of life within it. She was the little girl about to freeze to death, and she didn’t even have a handful of matches, only illusions…."]

Conversely, having spent time in Toronto, Canada in the summer, I feel I can credibly understand what it must have been like under the process of “dehydrating” in the Three Body game.

[kanewai]

I'm enjoying this book so far. The opening chapters with the Cultural Revolution were great. There's so much of 20th Century history that reads like fiction anyways - it's hard to imagine that these things really happened, and that they involved millions of people.

I haven't read any spoilers, so I have absolutely no idea where the novel is going. We have hints of a common enemy, and of an on-going battle that civilians know nothing about ... but that's it.

I'm impressed with the Spanish translation. It flows really well. There were a few times where I thought: I wonder how they'll translate that into Chinese? And then remember that I have that backwards, and wonder how the original was written. I wish I had the book on me right now so we could compare passages.

********************

Moving forward, I agree that it would be nice to have a couple weeks notice ahead of each month's choice. But it also seems so soon - it will be a challenge just to finish this book in one month. For myself, I'd definitely be open to more sci-fi and fantasy, because it's a nice break from some of the heavier reading I do. The genre also feels more international to me than other genres that are more country- or language-specific.

I went through my reading list and found a few that might interest the group. I focused on the shorter novels - there's no Victor Hugo! Some are from my wish list, some I've already read:

Isabel Allende, La ciudad de las bestias. A young adult novel. Recommended in another thread.
Marguerite Duras, Un barrage contre le pacifique. Semi-autobiographical story of Duras's youth in colonial Indochina. Highly recommended by some French friends.
Elene Ferrante, L'amica geniale. First part of a quartet of novels centered around two friends from Napoli. It's really good, and has gotten a lot of international attention. I wouldn't re-read it, but I'd follow along with the conversations.
Primo Levi, Se questo è un uomo. Levi's account of his time in Auschwitz. An amazing book that everyone should read; there is nothing like it that I've even seen. I'd read it again.

[zatris]

I like kanewai's suggestions a lot. I'd like to make a few.

Would anyone be up for some Simenon? It coud be a Maigret mystery, or one of his romans durs, like La neige était sale, Le Cercle des Mahé or Les Fiançailles de M. Hire, or any other.

John Williams (not the composer) might be a good choice as well. His work was sort of rediscovered recently, after NYRB Classics put his novels back on print. I'd be up for any of them.