May's Manic Meanderings Into Marvellously Mystical Manuscripts

Extollager said:
I've started Dostoevsky's The Adolescent (Pevear-Volokhonsky translation; also known as A Raw Youth). Some critics have a relatively low opinion of it. I figure I'll give it a hundred pages and feel free to bail out at that point if it's not holding my interest.
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I never read this myself. As with other works I've passed a copy of it on the bookshelves here but never been inclined to pick it up. As you say it's regarded as a minor work by Dostoevsky. I doubt I'll ever commit to reading it ..unless you provide an exceptionally glowing review of it...:) I don't think Penguin have even touched this one. Is your copy the Vintage edition?
 
GOLLUM said:
Is your copy [of Dostoevsky's The Adolescent] the Vintage edition?
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Publisher of my copy was Everyman's Library/Knopf, 2003, translators Pevear and Volokhonsky. I think you might be right, and Penguin Classics never picked this one up, although they published some obscurer Dostoevsky titles, e.g. The Village of Stepanchikovo. Perhaps they knew it was in print from a competitor -- I used to have an edition called A Raw Youth -- and not selling like hotcakes there, so they'd let it alone. But P and V have won so much attention that any Dostoevsky title rendered by them is probably going to make money for a publisher.
 
tangaloomababe said:
Lady I haven always wanted to read this book, The Book Thief, but never gotten around to it, not sure that I want to now if it has a sad ending.
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I would still recommend it for you to read. It is a good book, and while it does have a sad ending, there is a ray of sunshine in the rain clouds. :) It just wasn't the ending I was expecting.

I have decided to pick up Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. Time for a fun re-read.
 
Extollager said:
Publisher of my copy was Everyman's Library/Knopf, 2003, translators Pevear and Volokhonsky. I think you might be right, and Penguin Classics never picked this one up, although they published some obscurer Dostoevsky titles, e.g. The Village of Stepanchikovo. Perhaps they knew it was in print from a competitor -- I used to have an edition called A Raw Youth -- and not selling like hotcakes there, so they'd let it alone. But P and V have won so much attention that any Dostoevsky title rendered by them is probably going to make money for a publisher.
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Ah OK. Everyman's Library is generally speaking a very good publisher. I have a fondness for several of their covers actually. Pevear and Volokhonsky as I think I may have mentioned (turns out I did not) under book hauls are the folk responsible for the beautifully crafted (with a price tag to match) Nikolai Leskov collection I now own. Given you were the one who first put me on to Leskov vis a vis The Lady Macbeth of Mitsensk I was a little surprised you hadn't commented on that particular acquisition. It appears to be a superb sampling of Leskov's ouevre. I think I'm in for a treat with this one...:)
 
GOLLUM said:
....Pevear and Volokhonsky as I think I may have mentioned (turns out I did not) under book hauls are the folk responsible for the beautifully crafted (with a price tag to match) Nikolai Leskov collection I now own. Given you were the one who first put me on to Leskov vis a vis The Lady Macbeth of Mitsensk I was a little surprised you hadn't commented on that particular acquisition. It appears to be a superb sampling of Leskov's ouevre. I think I'm in for a treat with this one...:)
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Whoa! I forgot that a P-V edition of Leskov was coming out. I'll likely order that.

Most of my reading of Leskov was back in the '90s, when I "discovered" him.
 
I finished Kristin Britains , Blackviel and enjoyed it.

Going to move on to Sandersons YA , The Rithmatist, and looking forward to it
 
Holy shmoly. Finally finished Erickson's Toll the Hounds. That took a looooong time. While I enjoyed it, it was a slog at times, and considering all the forces converging at good old Darjuhistan I expected much more out of the finale. Also, the funeral procession at the end lacked the emotional punch of say the ending of DH, or building of the barrow at the end of MoI - both of which had me in tears. I'm not sure the metafictional aspects of the book worked too well either. I heard Erikson say in an interview that the whole MBotF story couldn't happen without the conversation between Kruppe and K'rul, but it was unclear what that conversation was. It was eluded to in the prelude and epilogue, and I assume all the Kruppe omniscient sections throughout the book were the conversation taking place, and that this conversation was the one eluded to in the previous book when...someone and someone else...were talking about how K'rul needed to be in conversation with someone in order to keep the warrens flowing with his blood...or something. As you can see by my description that whole bit got away from me, but thankfully it was not essential to enjoying the story. All in all I thought it was a good book, but not close to the best in the series.

After a long fantasy slog I'm jumping into a quick military SF with my first Jack Campbell Lost Fleet book. Started Dauntless last night. Not very impressive so far. It's fairly clumsily written, and the first twenty pages are heaping spoonful after heaping spoonful of infodump stew. I'm always down for some space navy combat though, and it's short. Should bang it out pretty quickly.
 
Fried Egg said:
I put it in a google translator and it come up with: "Thanks very much, Bruce." :)
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Its actually Thank you very much Bourroughs :)

There was a dubble arabic R after the Bu and then US ending of his name. Foreign names are just spelled as they sound in Arabic. Bourroughs sounds like Bruce in arabic and is spelled like that but with two R. Sorry for the arabic lesson heh.

Just thanking the great adventure writer for taking me along for a wonderful adventure journey with John Carter so i can rest mentally and recharge to learning, text analysing the high language of modern,classic Arabic. Arabic reading,studies has murdered my book reading almost.
 
Grunkins said:
After a long fantasy slog I'm jumping into a quick military SF with my first Jack Campbell Lost Fleet book. Started Dauntless last night. Not very impressive so far. It's fairly clumsily written, and the first twenty pages are heaping spoonful after heaping spoonful of infodump stew. I'm always down for some space navy combat though, and it's short. Should bang it out pretty quickly.
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Alright, it's a bad book. I'm putting this one down. Too much to read, too little time. When I get home tonight I'll have to peruse my TBR stacks to find something redeeming.
 
Picked up Deus Irae by PKD and Zelazny, a stellar collaboration, but five pages in and I feel like I'm just reading another kooky post nuclear apocalyptic spiel like Dr Bloodmoney. I am sure it is going to settle into an amazing Dick narrative with Zelazny psychedelia, but when? Am I being impatient?
 
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Extollager said:
Whoa! I forgot that a P-V edition of Leskov was coming out. I'll likely order that.

Most of my reading of Leskov was back in the '90s, when I "discovered" him.
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You better get hopping then...:) It is quite expensive, not much change out of $50 Australian..but then it should be noted we tend to be one of the highest priced book markets in the world...in fact we are generally amongst the highest cost of living cities (Sydney and Melbourne) in the world, which kind of sucks in its own way...:(

@Conn: Glad we got that Arabic text sorted out..it was driving me crazy...:confused:
 
Haha sorry about that arabic text, i just thought it would be fun if people wondered who i wrote about :)

Im reading so much arabic lit these days that english language books feel strange to read.
 
GOLLUM said:
[The new Pevear-Volokhonskly collection of Leskov stories] is quite expensive....
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It would be particularly expensive for me in that I have so much of it already in other translations:

Cathedral Folk (tr. Isabel Hapgood; a Hyperion reprint of Leskov's best-known novel -- this was the company that reprinted a bunch of early sf books around 1980, by the way)

On the Edge of the World (tr. Michael Prokurat; about an Orthodox bishop's missionary journey in eastern Siberia; published by the St. Vladimir's Seminary Press)

Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk (Penguin Classic; stories, tr. David McDuff)

Satirical Stories (tr. Wm. Edgerton; Pegasus is publisher)

The Enchanted Wanderer (Farrar Straus Giroux, stories tr. by David Magarshack)

I would have to compare the contents of the three story collections here with those of the P-V book.
 
Now about 200 pages (20%) into John Cowper Powys's A Glastonbury Romance, and after a bit of a struggle getting into it, I think it's even better than Wolf Solent. Partly this is because Powys uses more than one viewpoint character; indeed he flings himself between them with wild abandon, which suits his style. The characters are superbly drawn, colourful but real, and the whole thing is glorious, mad, deeply felt, and somehow manages to be sprawling and tightly knit at the same time. What especially interests me is that in places the fantastical imagery, applied to real-world people and places, is so rich that it out-fantasies much fantasy fiction. It almost makes fantasy fiction redundant.

I can't think of anyone (that I've read) writing these days with such a rich, omniscient-narrative voice. I know the mode is out of fashion at the moment, which I'm starting to think is a real shame.
 
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