Extollager
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Who's translator?
Book Hauls!
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Who's translator?
Translator of the Chekhov Plays is Peter Carson. I do not know him but based on the reviews to date, he appears to have done quite a good job.
Here is a short blurb on the translator and person who provides the introduction.
Peter Carson learnt Russian during his National Service and works in London publishing. Richard Gilman is Professor Emeritus of Playwriting and Dramatic Literature at Yale University's School of Drama. He has been drama critic for Newsweek and is the author of 'Chekhov's Plays' (Yale, 1996) and 'The Making of Modern Drama' (Yale, 2000).
Peter Carson sadly passed away earlier this year. Here is a link to an article on him in case you are interested.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/peter-carson-publisher-and-translator-8483931.html
I have a friend who keeps giving very high recommendations of Unsworth - I keep meaning to read some myself; I'll be interested to see how you like it.Connavar said:
You've read it before? I think this is a terrific book - I read it a couple of years ago and was impressed by how the inter-generational difficulties don't seem to have changed since it was written. Timeless.GOLLUM said:
I have just received in the post 'The Man Who Smiled', and 'Sidetracked', both by Henning Mankell.
No I have not. I thought I may have had a copy of this by Turgenev but it turns out I never did. I look forward to reading it...
Extollager
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Thanks -- yes, that was interesting.
dask
dark and stormy knight
THE HISTORY OF A LITERARY RADICAL & OTHER PAPERS by Randolph Bourne.
Never heard of Bourne before but Van Wyck Brooks apparently thought enough of him that he wrote a twenty page introduction. Even as early as 1919 Brooks had mastered the skill of packing his sentences with more information than you'd think possible and not have them seem cluttered. I noticed this ability earlier in THE WORLD OF WASHINGTON IRVING and it's just as impressive here. THE OXFORD COMPANION TO AMERICAN LITERATURE lists Brooks as editor but no such credit is given anywhere in the book.
Never heard of Bourne before but Van Wyck Brooks apparently thought enough of him that he wrote a twenty page introduction. Even as early as 1919 Brooks had mastered the skill of packing his sentences with more information than you'd think possible and not have them seem cluttered. I noticed this ability earlier in THE WORLD OF WASHINGTON IRVING and it's just as impressive here. THE OXFORD COMPANION TO AMERICAN LITERATURE lists Brooks as editor but no such credit is given anywhere in the book.
dask
dark and stormy knight
Also found THIS SIDE OF PARADISE by F. Scott Fitzgerald at my favorite thrift store last week. This is an attractive mint condition hardback put out by Reader's Digest with the little info pamphlet still tucked inside. Apparently someone's obligabook that's never been read let alone looked at. I personally like these RD editions. I have two others: THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS and THE THREE MUSKETEERS. As may not be common knowledge these are not condensations but editions that contain the complete texts as originally published. Not bad for fifty cents. Seems like good books can still be the best bargain around. The Brooks above was new for around $15 plus $4 shipping. Still a bargain.
Extollager
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I understand that Van Wyck Brooks is excellent!
dask
dark and stormy knight
I sure like him.
Forget to mention I also picked up THE STORY OF SCIENCE IN AMERICA by L. Sprague de Camp and his wife Catherine. Not sure if this is a YA book but it's a nice condition hardback that reads easy, or easily, whatever. Found it on the library freebie shelf. Check it out every Friday.
Forget to mention I also picked up THE STORY OF SCIENCE IN AMERICA by L. Sprague de Camp and his wife Catherine. Not sure if this is a YA book but it's a nice condition hardback that reads easy, or easily, whatever. Found it on the library freebie shelf. Check it out every Friday.
JunkMonkey
Lord High Vizier of Nowt
My latest mini book haul turned to ashes when I got home with it. A couple of 1967 film books from a local charity shop:
From which some arsehole had cut out pictures... Je suis une tad miffed.
From which some arsehole had cut out pictures... Je suis une tad miffed.
Recently picked up...
The Informers - Jean Gabriel Vasquez *Vasquez is a more recent but nevertheless very exciting voice in Columbian fiction. Vargas Llosa has suggested he be placed near the front of the new vanguard of the Latin American Canon and certainly fans of Garcia Marquez whose influence (as with all Latin American writers) is clear, seem to like him. The Informers has been a solidly received work and the first of Vasquez's that was published into English. Apparently his most recent novel The Sounds of Things Falling Apart is meant to be even better, a real tour de force, so if I like this novel enough I'm definitely going to source that as well. Blurb: When Gabriel Santoro publishes his first book, A Life in Exile,it never occurs to him that his father, a distinguished professor of rhetoric, will write a devastating review in a leading newspaper. The subject seems inoffensive enough: the life of a German Jewish woman (a close family friend) who arrived in Colombia shortly before the Second World War. So why does his father attack him so viciously? Do the pages of his book unwittingly hide some dangerous secret? As Gabriel sets out to discover what lies behind his father's anger, he finds himself undertaking an examination of the duplicity, guilt and obsession at the heart of Colombian society in World War II, when the introduction of blacklists of German immigrants corrupted and destroyed many lives. Half a century later, in a gripping narrative that unpacks like a set of Russian dolls, one treacherous act perpetrated in those dark days returns with a vengeance, leading the reader towards a literal, moral and metaphorical cliff edge. With a tightly honed plot, deftly crafted situations, and a cast of complex and varied characters, The Informers is a fascinating novel of callous betrayal, complicit secrecy and the long quest for redemption in a secular, cynical world. It heralds the arrival of a major literary talent.
Word Without Borders *These are the kinds of anthologies I like best. The ones that introduce to us new voices from around the world. The book's concept is to have leading writers from across the globe introduce a story from an author they admire who in many cases has never before been translated into English. Whilst I recognised the names of a few of these authors, the majority of names I was not familiar with. Blurb: Featuring the work of more than 28 writers from upwards of 20 countries, Words Without Borders: The World through the Eyes of Writers transports us to the frontiers of the new literature for the twenty-first century. In these pages, some of the most accomplished writers in world literature–among them Edwidge Danticat, Ha Jin, Cynthia Ozick, Javier Marias, and Nobel laureates Wole Soyinka, Günter Grass, Czeslaw Milosz, Wislawa Szymborska, and Naguib Mahfouz–have stepped forward to introduce us to dazzling literary talents virtually unknown to readers of English. Most of their work–short stories, poems, essays, and excerpts from novels–appears here in English for the first time. The Chilean writer Ariel Dorfman introduces us to a story of extraordinary poise and spiritual intelligence by the Argentinian writer Juan Forn. The Romanian writer Norman Manea shares with us the sexy, sinister, and thrillingly avant garde fiction of his homeland’s leading female novelist. The Indian writer Amit Chaudhuri spotlights the Bengali writer Parashuram, whose hilarious comedy of manners imagines what might have happened if Britain had been colonized by Bengal. And Roberto Calasso writes admiringly of his fellow Italian Giorgio Manganelli, whose piece celebrates the Indian city of Madurai. Every piece here–be it from the Americas, Africa, Europe, the Middle East, South Asia, East Asia, Southeast Asia, or the Caribbean–is a discovery, a colorful thread in a global weave of literary exchange.
And last but not least....
Orlando Furioso - Ludovico Ariosto *The classic 16th Century Italian prose poem described as a "witty parody of the chivalric legends of Charlemagne and the Saracen invasion of France" whose influence continues to this day. This is an unabridged version courtesy of Oxford World Classics. Blurb: 'I sing of knights and ladies, of love and arms, of courtly chivalry, of courageous deeds.' So begins Ariosto's Orlando Furioso (1532), the culmination of the chivalric legends of Charlemagne and the Saracen invasion of France. It is a brilliantly witty parody of the medieval romances, and a fitting monument to the court society of the Italian Renaissance which gave them birth. In a kaleidoscope of scenes and emotions, three principal stories are developed: the love of Orlando for Angelica; the war between the Franks and the Saracens; and the love of Ruggiero, a Saracen, for Bradamant, a Christian. Enlivening and unifying the whole work is the vital personality of the author, endlessly teasing his readers and dropping casual asides about his contemporaries. Though highly serious in purpose and sophisticated in design, Orlando Furioso displays to the full Ariostro's remarkable sense of the absurd. This unabridged prose translation faithfully captures the narrative entire and renders meaning in its lightest shadings.
The Informers - Jean Gabriel Vasquez *Vasquez is a more recent but nevertheless very exciting voice in Columbian fiction. Vargas Llosa has suggested he be placed near the front of the new vanguard of the Latin American Canon and certainly fans of Garcia Marquez whose influence (as with all Latin American writers) is clear, seem to like him. The Informers has been a solidly received work and the first of Vasquez's that was published into English. Apparently his most recent novel The Sounds of Things Falling Apart is meant to be even better, a real tour de force, so if I like this novel enough I'm definitely going to source that as well. Blurb: When Gabriel Santoro publishes his first book, A Life in Exile,it never occurs to him that his father, a distinguished professor of rhetoric, will write a devastating review in a leading newspaper. The subject seems inoffensive enough: the life of a German Jewish woman (a close family friend) who arrived in Colombia shortly before the Second World War. So why does his father attack him so viciously? Do the pages of his book unwittingly hide some dangerous secret? As Gabriel sets out to discover what lies behind his father's anger, he finds himself undertaking an examination of the duplicity, guilt and obsession at the heart of Colombian society in World War II, when the introduction of blacklists of German immigrants corrupted and destroyed many lives. Half a century later, in a gripping narrative that unpacks like a set of Russian dolls, one treacherous act perpetrated in those dark days returns with a vengeance, leading the reader towards a literal, moral and metaphorical cliff edge. With a tightly honed plot, deftly crafted situations, and a cast of complex and varied characters, The Informers is a fascinating novel of callous betrayal, complicit secrecy and the long quest for redemption in a secular, cynical world. It heralds the arrival of a major literary talent.
Word Without Borders *These are the kinds of anthologies I like best. The ones that introduce to us new voices from around the world. The book's concept is to have leading writers from across the globe introduce a story from an author they admire who in many cases has never before been translated into English. Whilst I recognised the names of a few of these authors, the majority of names I was not familiar with. Blurb: Featuring the work of more than 28 writers from upwards of 20 countries, Words Without Borders: The World through the Eyes of Writers transports us to the frontiers of the new literature for the twenty-first century. In these pages, some of the most accomplished writers in world literature–among them Edwidge Danticat, Ha Jin, Cynthia Ozick, Javier Marias, and Nobel laureates Wole Soyinka, Günter Grass, Czeslaw Milosz, Wislawa Szymborska, and Naguib Mahfouz–have stepped forward to introduce us to dazzling literary talents virtually unknown to readers of English. Most of their work–short stories, poems, essays, and excerpts from novels–appears here in English for the first time. The Chilean writer Ariel Dorfman introduces us to a story of extraordinary poise and spiritual intelligence by the Argentinian writer Juan Forn. The Romanian writer Norman Manea shares with us the sexy, sinister, and thrillingly avant garde fiction of his homeland’s leading female novelist. The Indian writer Amit Chaudhuri spotlights the Bengali writer Parashuram, whose hilarious comedy of manners imagines what might have happened if Britain had been colonized by Bengal. And Roberto Calasso writes admiringly of his fellow Italian Giorgio Manganelli, whose piece celebrates the Indian city of Madurai. Every piece here–be it from the Americas, Africa, Europe, the Middle East, South Asia, East Asia, Southeast Asia, or the Caribbean–is a discovery, a colorful thread in a global weave of literary exchange.
And last but not least....
Orlando Furioso - Ludovico Ariosto *The classic 16th Century Italian prose poem described as a "witty parody of the chivalric legends of Charlemagne and the Saracen invasion of France" whose influence continues to this day. This is an unabridged version courtesy of Oxford World Classics. Blurb: 'I sing of knights and ladies, of love and arms, of courtly chivalry, of courageous deeds.' So begins Ariosto's Orlando Furioso (1532), the culmination of the chivalric legends of Charlemagne and the Saracen invasion of France. It is a brilliantly witty parody of the medieval romances, and a fitting monument to the court society of the Italian Renaissance which gave them birth. In a kaleidoscope of scenes and emotions, three principal stories are developed: the love of Orlando for Angelica; the war between the Franks and the Saracens; and the love of Ruggiero, a Saracen, for Bradamant, a Christian. Enlivening and unifying the whole work is the vital personality of the author, endlessly teasing his readers and dropping casual asides about his contemporaries. Though highly serious in purpose and sophisticated in design, Orlando Furioso displays to the full Ariostro's remarkable sense of the absurd. This unabridged prose translation faithfully captures the narrative entire and renders meaning in its lightest shadings.
Extollager
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Tell me when you are going to read that Orlando Furioso and I might join you. I have the same books (that's Barbara Reynolds, right? or a new one?). It's one of those deep backlog things!
Got a nice haul of books in the mail today myself -- a copy of Graham Hough's Preface to The Faerie Queene to give away, and for self Gavin Young's In Search of Conrad (Joseph Conrad locales in Asia), Lenard's The Valley of the Latin Bear, and Eric Newby's Something Wholesale. I think these will get read soon and not drift into a backlog zone somewhere.
Got a nice haul of books in the mail today myself -- a copy of Graham Hough's Preface to The Faerie Queene to give away, and for self Gavin Young's In Search of Conrad (Joseph Conrad locales in Asia), Lenard's The Valley of the Latin Bear, and Eric Newby's Something Wholesale. I think these will get read soon and not drift into a backlog zone somewhere.
Nope it's a newer translation, translator is Guido Waldman. It is an unabridged single volume version containing all 46 Cantos.
Extollager
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My translation of the Orlando Furioso is two thick Penguin Classic paperbacks --
Here's a Dore illustration, I believe from the Furioso:
Here's a Dore illustration, I believe from the Furioso:
Extollager
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This book, Modernity Britain (for 1957-59), by David Kynaston, just came in the mail. There'll be a second "Modernity Britain" volume -- when, I don't know.
I'm reading the previous book in the series, Family Britain 1951-1957, right now. The one I'm reading deals with the period in which Tolkien's Lord of the Rings came out (Fellowship and Towers under Churchill, Return under Eden). The new book will cover the years right up to Tolkien's retirement. A great deal of classic sf came out in the 1950s, as I don't need to tell most Chronsfolk; take a look at this discussion:
http://www.sffchronicles.co.uk/forum/535117-whats-your-golden-age.html
... a thread worth reviving by people who haven't chimed in yet.
The mail also brought a copy of The Joy of the Court, a retelling by Constance Hieatt from the Middle Ages, with Pauline Baynes illustrations.
This art is pretty much in the style of her work for Tolkien's Smith of Wootton Major.
I'm reading the previous book in the series, Family Britain 1951-1957, right now. The one I'm reading deals with the period in which Tolkien's Lord of the Rings came out (Fellowship and Towers under Churchill, Return under Eden). The new book will cover the years right up to Tolkien's retirement. A great deal of classic sf came out in the 1950s, as I don't need to tell most Chronsfolk; take a look at this discussion:
http://www.sffchronicles.co.uk/forum/535117-whats-your-golden-age.html
... a thread worth reviving by people who haven't chimed in yet.
The mail also brought a copy of The Joy of the Court, a retelling by Constance Hieatt from the Middle Ages, with Pauline Baynes illustrations.
This art is pretty much in the style of her work for Tolkien's Smith of Wootton Major.
Extollager
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Those are fine examples of Pauline Baynes's art, Hitmouse. To take the LOTR wraparound -- she suggests something about LOTR that I don't find in other artists, the way that world itself draws in you the reader. Many Tolkien illustrators render detailed landscapes that seem to have been cribbed from issues of the National Geographic or the like; their work is both meticulous and dull.
Baynes's art is distinctive, but it is not all the same, as a comparison of her drawings for Farmer Giles of Ham show when set next to the Narnian illustrations she made just a few years later (but I love both).* I have seen some late work of hers that disappointed me, such as some of her designs for the Bilbo's Last Song book; particularly unfortunate is a rendering of Elrond with blue eye shadow. But her work was among the first (outside comics!) that fascinated me. I wish I knew when I acquired the publisher's publicity bookmark for Grant Uden's Dictionary of Chivalry illustrated by Baynes. It is one of the first things I ever kept because it was beautiful. I think it was a giveaway at the middle school library that I attended in the late 1960s.
*Side-by-side with the Giles art set, say, her pictures of the old house the children explore in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, or the passages at the beginning of The Magician's Nephew. Tolkien had severe things to say about illustrations in books of fairy-stories, but obviously he found Baynes's work more than acceptable -- cf. The Adventures of Tom Bombadil or the more stylized pictures for Smith of Wootton Major.
Here's the front part of the jacket for the Uden book:
Here's a curious thing, her design for the poster of "Bilbo's Last Song," done years before the book that I've criticized above.
Baynes's art is distinctive, but it is not all the same, as a comparison of her drawings for Farmer Giles of Ham show when set next to the Narnian illustrations she made just a few years later (but I love both).* I have seen some late work of hers that disappointed me, such as some of her designs for the Bilbo's Last Song book; particularly unfortunate is a rendering of Elrond with blue eye shadow. But her work was among the first (outside comics!) that fascinated me. I wish I knew when I acquired the publisher's publicity bookmark for Grant Uden's Dictionary of Chivalry illustrated by Baynes. It is one of the first things I ever kept because it was beautiful. I think it was a giveaway at the middle school library that I attended in the late 1960s.
*Side-by-side with the Giles art set, say, her pictures of the old house the children explore in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, or the passages at the beginning of The Magician's Nephew. Tolkien had severe things to say about illustrations in books of fairy-stories, but obviously he found Baynes's work more than acceptable -- cf. The Adventures of Tom Bombadil or the more stylized pictures for Smith of Wootton Major.
Here's the front part of the jacket for the Uden book:
Here's a curious thing, her design for the poster of "Bilbo's Last Song," done years before the book that I've criticized above.
Extollager
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Here's the "Bilbo's Last Song" poster with the words:
The poem was first issued as a poster with, it seems to me I have read, an orangeish sunset photo, but I haven't found an image of that to share.
The poem was first issued as a poster with, it seems to me I have read, an orangeish sunset photo, but I haven't found an image of that to share.
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