Translation can make a huge difference. I’m not an expert on the Divine Comedy, but for example the first translation of The Tale Of Genji (which is advertised as just that, “the first translation”) cuts the entire text down from ~1300 pages to less than 400. That’s not so much a “translation”, that’s a translation of a heavily edited, reduced and recompiled version. But they don’t tell you that - they call it “the first translation”.

Other translations were made in times when massive cultural chauvinism was the norm. My translation of the Meditations by Marcus Aurelius has constant references to god, because the good christian fellow who translated it back in 18something decided that when Aurelius speaks of “the gods”, he means capital g God of course. It’s also full of insanely pompous language that was archaic and weird even back then. This is not uncommon with Victorian Age and earlier translations of classics - they just feel like they need to talk all biblical because the work is old, and “forsooth” and “nay” and “thee and thine” are great old words. Nevermind the fact that Marcus Aurelius wrote perfectly normal contemporary (to him) Latin.

So yeah, different translations of the same work can vary massively. I recommend googling around a bit and seeing if there are one or two consensus translations, and going with those.

Such an amazing book. I’ve only seen bits and pieces of the movie, but I’m glad I read the books before that. The movie seems to cut a lot of material and take a lot of liberties.

I think you’re not supposed to like (much less identify with) Johnny Truant. Or Zampano, or Will Navidson. It’s basically a long exercise in unreliable narrators on multiple levels, and I think it would be fair to call it a bit of a metafictional wankfest (I say this with nothing but love). I don’t think that enjoying the story on its own merits is really the point - what he’s going for is that you enjoy the way the story is being told. If that doesn’t work for you (and for many people it won’t) then the book really has nothing else to offer you, I think.

I loved it, but I’m not sure I’d re-read it. I think the main gimmick wouldn’t be as effective the second time around.

That said, if you really want to challenge your perception of what literature as a medium can be, formally, metafictionally, then yeah, this goes to eleven. Infinite Jest is a walk in the park after this.

And the idiot saga of book bans continues, because some fundamentalist dingbats can’t be arsed to parent their own goddamn children, but instead want the “liberty” to inflict their medieval morals on everybody else.

I think I’m understanding a fair bit of it (certainly not everything!), since I usually read a chapter once, look through the various online resources (Pynchonwiki etc.), then read it again, or reread most of it. So it’s not that I can’t make head or tails of it, it’s just… it’s such a strenuous process. It’s intellectually stimulating for sure, but it’s hard to find what I would consider a typical sense of enjoyment in it. It’s more like slowly grinding away at a difficult and monumental task. But maybe I’ll get to a point where it “grips” me and I’ll start reading it purely for enjoyment.

I love it for its role in Japanese literature overall. No Longer Human is basically the definition of a Watashi Shōsetsu. An entire genre came from this (I mean there were others before, but Dazai really gave it the shape it had forever since). But like other works in that genre, it’s kinda rough reading this knowing it’s basically autobiographical, and one can speculate whether Dazai specifically focuses on all the negative stuff and dark thoughts.

And you can always add context outside of the artwork itself! For example when it comes to problematic ideas or language in classics, I have absolutely nothing against printing every new edition with a foreword that comments on the problematic parts and provides context. So many editions of classics already come with commentary, anyway. Update the commentary. Just please don’t edit the work itself.

I think nobody should edit a book after it’s been published - neither the author nor the publisher or estate - except in a handful of very narrow cases:

1. In textbooks obviously to include new information, new research, update statistics etc. Absolutely doesn’t apply to prose.

2. Misspellings and grammatical errors

3. An extant manuscript or older unpublished version is found that clearly shows that the author (who is dead and can’t speak out on it anymore) intended something to be different, but it was misprinted, the author was browbeaten, talked out of it, censored, etc.

I’m absolutely against “updating” prose. I hate "X as a service"ification of things, I like to own books and movies and music, not have a subscription to them. This is that, but worse. And we all know authors (cough JKR cough) who would update their goddamn books every time they’re waiting on a dentist appointment or sitting in traffic.

I’ve been working on it for more than 6 months. I read one chapter, read it again, then give up on the book for 3 weeks. Then I come back to it and read another chapter. It’s a hell of a difficult read.

Disgrace is excellent!

At the top of my wishlist right now are Trespasses by Louise Kennedy, The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion, Less Than Zero by Bret Easton Ellis and Frantumaglia by Elena Ferrante.

I’m pretty proud of reading “An Introduction to Buddhism” by Peter Harvey this summer. It’s only 550 pages, but it’s a lot to absorb. I’ve been reading religious texts recently (just for general knowledge, no religious motivation) - I started with the Tao Te Ching and the Quran - and when I got to the Lotus Sutra, I realized I understood absolutely none of it, so I got the Harvey book first. I did read the Lotus Sutra afterwards, and could finally make some sense of it. But yeah, the Harvey one was a high intensity read. Lots of note-taking, lots of flipping back and reviewing and memorizing and contextualizing.

The Judge is one of my favorite villains of all time… if you can even call him a villain? I’m honestly not sure. He’s certainly brutal, inhuman, arguably even evil, but he feels more like a force of nature than a person motivated by human motives and interests.

“Whatever in creation exists without my knowledge exists without my consent”. My god what a line.

I’m doing the goodreads challenge for the first time this year, and I’ve been ahead of schedule the entire time so no issues about that. But I have thought about doing a more interesting reading challenge next year. I want to try to read books from as many different countries as possible, not just US and Europe again and again, and maybe from all decades from 1800 to now or something like that, plus ideally like at least 40% female authors… something of that kind. Also more nonfiction, more poetry, more plays, not just regular prose fiction all the time. I haven’t quite worked out the details, but I think reading varied literature is a more interesting goal than just reading a lot of books cover to cover.

On goodreads, the average number of books pledged for this year’s reading challenge is 43.

There are people who overshoot their target, and there are people who fall short, but since the reading challenge is an “aspiration”, a goal, a challenge to yourself, I think it’s fair to assume that most people aim at a number that is pretty high for them. So the average participant in the reading challenge reads less than 43 books.

Now take into account that goodreads is a community of dedicated readers. So the average for a goodreads user is naturally significantly higher than just for the average person. And even on goodreads, only people who want to read more participate in reading challenges. My guess would be that the average participant in the reading challenge reads maybe 30 to 35 books per year, and that’s on the high end for a goodreads user. Now factor in the millions of people who don’t read at all. There’s plenty of people who just don’t read. So yeah, there’s no way the average is 50 books. I think even 15 is too high. If 30-35 is already high outlier range, I think the national average is probably in the single digits.

Does it necessarily have to be fantasy? Because I think the Neapolitan Novels by Elena Ferrante are pretty epic. It’s the lives of two women from the first days of elementary school until their 70s or so, with a million subplots and storylines and twists and turns (and my god is it marvelously written), but it’s just 4 books of like 350 pages each.

I only do this when authors write in dialect / accent, to sound the words out to myself. Like just recently I read Marabou Stork Nightmares, and when I come across a line like (graphic example) >!“you keep yir fuckin hoor ay a daughter away fi ma fuckin laddies or ah’ll git ma fuckin shotgun n fuckin well blaw yis aw away”!<, I have to read it out loud to work out the cadence and rhythm and stuff, to make it sound right in my head. Although I imagine if a Scottish person heard me, they’d be absolutely mortified.

The Neapolitan Novels by Elena Ferrante. I could not put them down. I urgently had to study for exams, but all the time I was studying, my head would drift back to the books, and everytime I’d take a 20 minute reading break it would turn into 3 hours.

I read about 1-3 hours per day. I think the average is closer to the lower end, maybe 75 to 90 minutes. On weekends it can be 2 hours and more. Not really a certain time, but usually sometime in the afternoon - I normally read to take a break from studying, and I study most of the afternoon. I have an “office” / computer room where I study, so for reading I go to the living room to get into a different headspace. Sometimes I also read in the evening / before bed, and that’ll drive the numbers up a bit. 2-3 times a week, most commonly on the weekends, I’ll go to a cafe or the library to read, and just read for 2 hours or more in one go.

Lucky for me there seems to be a German translation. This sounds really good.