What are you reading?

@magerette: I know poems by T. Hardy (some of them I have tried to translate to czech some years ago - question is whether it was good...), but I've read none of his novels. It was quite disaster when he lost his wife. His later works are jotted by his sad fate. But when he was eighty years old or so he wrote this beautiful poem:

Song to Aurore

We’ll not begin again to love,
It only leads to pain;
The fire we now are master of
Has seared us not in vain.
Any new step of yours I'm fain
To hear of from afar,
And even in such may find a gain
While lodged not where you are.

No: that must not be done anew
Which has been done before;
I scarce could bear to seek, or view,
Or clasp you any more!
Life is a labour, death is sore,
And lonely living wrings;
But go your courses, sweet Aurore,
Kisses are caresome things!

It's one of the most sorrowful poems I've ever read.
 
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I fell asleep trying to read War and Peace many years ago!!

Yeah, it is a bit wordy (and preachy) in places, but I sorta liked it anyway. More than Anna Karenina in any case... Russians say that foreigners prefer Dostoevsky while Russians prefer Tolstoy. I know that's true for me.

Mikhail Bulgakov's "Master and Margarita" has to be among my three favorite books, though. IMO he beats the pants off all of the other great Russian novelists.
 
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Russians say that foreigners prefer Dostoevsky while Russians prefer Tolstoy. I know that's true for me.
I wonder if there is something in the "translatability" of the text? Because I know it is true for me as well.
 
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Everything Tolstoy wrote is pure gold, not only the great novels but his shorter works also are not to be missed: The Death of Ivan Ilyich and Master and Man come especially recommended.

I'm reading Sapkowski's The Last Wish.
 
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wow, i had no idea that there where other sherlock holmes books, apart from doyle's... can anyone tell me more about that? presicely, what should i read, and in what order. i've really liked doyle's holmes, and i also love the setting :)

btw, i'm currently reading terry pratchet's discworld books... erik is one of the funniest books i've ever read :)
 
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I wonder if there is something in the "translatability" of the text? Because I know it is true for me as well.

No, I don't think so. I've read some Dostoevsky short stories and some Tolstoy short stories in the original, and I still prefer Dostoevsky. I think it's more the world-view and thematics. Bluntly put, Tolstoy writes about Russia first, the universal human condition second, while Dostoevsky writes about the universal human condition first, and Russia second.

Pushkin, OTOH, does not translate well. Chekhov is another tough one -- his writing is so full of puns and other language games that you need to be an extremely creative translator to get much of it across.
 
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Just finished stephen king: the song of susannah..Its the sixth book of Dark Tower series. I belive everyone knows this, but no harm explaining. After the wizzard and glass, the whole series has just gone downhill. Wolves of the calla was decent, but song of susannah was only boring and tedious. I felt like King didn't anymore know how to fill the book's pages, so he just wrote something and hoped the reader wouldn't notice the hoax. Too much mia-susannah inner debates which rarely served any meaning for example. Hopefully the last book is as good as the first four.

Now reading Frank herbert - the dune

I don't know why i haven't read this wonderfull book before. Either its always been missing from a local library or i have forgotten it when visiting there.
 
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Chekhov is another tough one -- his writing is so full of puns and other language games that you need to be an extremely creative translator to get much of it across.
Then he must be amazing in the original ... because I like his stuff in English.
 
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wow, i had no idea that there where other sherlock holmes books, apart from doyle's... can anyone tell me more about that? presicely, what should i read, and in what order. i've really liked doyle's holmes, and i also love the setting :)....

There is a ton of Holme's material not written by Doyle, but it tends to very uneven, everything from very amateurish to quite well done.
The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmesedited by Richard Lancelyn Green, is a nice collection that gives a feel for the Holmesian pastiche.
The only body of work that really excells to me though, is Laurie King's excellent series beginning with The Beekeeper's Apprentice.She posits a marriage between Holmes and an American/Jewish Talmudic scholar that works surprisingly well. My favorite in the series is O Jerusalem, where she and Holmes undertake an undercover assignment in the Mid East for Mycroft. Though these books are told very much from Mary Russell's perspective, they have more of the feel of Holmes as a real entity than many that just use the name and conventions.

@Artran--a sad and lovely poem. Hardy's novels are even more sorrowful, and some might even say depressing. I read them during a very unhappy time in my own life, though, and they were one of the major supports that helped me through. After reading Jude the Obscure, it's very hard to feel sorry for yourself! :)
 
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wow, i had no idea that there where other sherlock holmes books, apart from doyle's... can anyone tell me more about that? presicely, what should i read, and in what order. i've really liked doyle's holmes, and i also love the setting :)

btw, i'm currently reading terry pratchet's discworld books... erik is one of the funniest books i've ever read :)

I only know the original Doyle books, but there are several of them, I also liked his short stories *very* much ! :)


Discworld readiiing order guides :
http://www.lspace.org/books/reading-order-guides/index.html
I think it would be a good idea to check this out.

www.lspace.org (with "lspace" standing for "Librarian Space") is in general a good choice for learning about the Discworld !
 
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Just finished stephen king: the song of susannah..Its the sixth book of Dark Tower series. I belive everyone knows this, but no harm explaining. After the wizzard and glass, the whole series has just gone downhill. Wolves of the calla was decent, but song of susannah was only boring and tedious. I felt like King didn't anymore know how to fill the book's pages, so he just wrote something and hoped the reader wouldn't notice the hoax. Too much mia-susannah inner debates which rarely served any meaning for example. Hopefully the last book is as good as the first four.

This is very bad news for me, Dez. I just finished the second one and I'm already really tired of Susannah. My husband is reading the last one, which is huge(~850 pages) and he says it's better, but he's a pretty uncritical guy where Stephen King is concerned.

Now reading Frank herbert - the dune

I don't know why i haven't read this wonderfull book before. Either its always been missing from a local library or i have forgotten it when visiting there.

Great book. Someday I need to read some of the many sequels but I've always been afraid they wouldn't measure up.
 
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They don't!! The Dune series goes downhill RAPIDLY!!
 
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"God Emperor of Dune" will be my guide book on how to run things once I'm elected Ruler of the World. :whip:

Right now I'm chewing my way through Picknett & Prince's "The Templar Revelation" about how sex supposedly played a far more important role in secret societies in Europe throughout the centuries than the Church would have liked. And when I'm saying chewing I really mean chewing since I only have time to read when I'm in my bed at night these days and nothing induces sleep faster than 4-5 references to source material on every page :bored:
 
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I'm with Corwin about the Dune series. I unfortunately read them all because I kept hoping that the series would pick up again. It didn't imho. I had more fun with the prequels (by Brian Herbert) although they are not the pick of the litter also. The Amber series kept more quality but that also tapered off a bit.
 
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Finished the Trudi Canavan book, flew thru "Ghoul" by Brian Keene (gave me what I was looking for, but, meh), and started the final installment of the Dreamers series from David Eddings. So far, the series has been a major disappointment to me. Since Eddings is probably my favorite author, my expectations are quite high, but this series so far has been terribly anti-climactic and rather non-heroic. I could forgive that if the characters were really good, but there's too many for Eddings to really develop any of them. Maybe the conclusion will exceed the previous three volumes.
 
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I once read the original "Dune" book, but never liked it. Interesting in its ideas, but far too dark for my taste, and weird.

I had the feeling as if this book had no soul.
 
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@Alrik. Well, Herbert was accused of creating a fascist undercurrent in his work. I don't know if I agree with that, I for sure didn't pick that up when I first read it. But it could be that the soullessness (is that a word?) stems from that.
 
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"The politically incorect guide to the constitution" by Gutzman, it's time for a serious four-letter word -- the #&%@ FACT
 
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