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Welcome / Member Introductions
message 2901:
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Leslie
(new)
Mar 26, 2016 09:51AM
Hi Lucy! Sounds like we have a lot in common in our bookish tastes. Welcome and please join in any of the discussions!
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Hi, I'm Emma and I'm from Venezuela. I enjoy reading a lot and my bookshelf is quite eclectic. I tend to gravitate towards books that explore the idea of identity as a social construct, although I'll admit having a soft spot for chick-lit and YA. I'm so happy to join you and meet new people.
Welcome Emma! Eclectic is good as far as I am concerned ;)
Mod
Thank you, Leslie and LauraT; I'm really happy to join you here!
Feel as though i should reintroduce myself. Not been on here for quite a while. I'mGemma. A book lover with no time to read! I now have a 3 year old and a 1 year old! Just Reading the first book I have read in about 8 months :( I got it out from the library around a month ago and have had to renew it! I'm on page 57!! Hope everyone is well :)
Gemma wrote: "Feel as though i should reintroduce myself. Not been on here for quite a while. I'mGemma. A book lover with no time to read! I now have a 3 year old and a 1 year old! Just Reading the first book I..."
Hello, Gemma! It's so nice to see that you have finally found some free time for reading; I hope you enjoy it! What are you reading right now?
Karin wrote: "Hi Luci and Emma! Welcome!"Hi, Karin, and thank you!
Gemma wrote: "Feel as though i should reintroduce myself. Not been on here for quite a while. I'mGemma. A book lover with no time to read! I now have a 3 year old and a 1 year old! Just Reading the first book I have read in about 8 months :( I got it out from the library around a month ago and have had to renew it! I'm on page 57!!"
Lol! - Sometimes I feel the same way. My wife and I have a 4-year-old and a 1-year-old. Finding time to do anything can be difficult. I like movies in addition to books. Last Christmas I received five DVDs, so far I've watched one. :)~
Gemma wrote: "Feel as though i should reintroduce myself. Not been on here for quite a while. I'mGemma. A book lover with no time to read! I now have a 3 year old and a 1 year old! Just Reading the first book I..."
Gemma-at your stage in life, it is hard to read much beyond reading to your own kids! I didn't get to read much when my kids were those ages, either (I ended up having 3).
Hey there, Gemma, it's good to see you back. I imagine you have your hands full with the littlies. Hi to all the other newbies. Hope you enjoy our group.
Gemma wrote: "Feel as though i should reintroduce myself. Not been on here for quite a while. I'mGemma. A book lover with no time to read! I now have a 3 year old and a 1 year old! Just Reading the first book I..."
Hi there Gemma! Glad to see you back even if it is just for a brief visit... I can't believe that it is already three years since your first child arrived :-)
Hello again Gemma. :)I giggling away to myself at your first book choice :D :D :D x
Mod
How I remember that period of my life when you didn't have time even to go to the toilet, let got reading!
But trust me; it passes so quickly!!!
Warn welcomes to all our new members. I really hope you enjoy our group and look forward to your posts!
Welcome back to Gemma! It's so lovely to see you back here again and I hope you can find a bit of time to join us posting.
Welcome back to Gemma! It's so lovely to see you back here again and I hope you can find a bit of time to join us posting.
Thank you for the warm welcome :) I really am going to make an effort to make time to read. We're in the process of moving house at the moment too so that's just another thing to add to the chaos lol!!
Hi everyone! My name is Natalie and I am from South Carolina, USA. And I love reading! (duh) I mostly read Young Adult, Romance, Paranormal, Fiction, Fantasy, and Dystopia. My goal is to read 100 books this year. I have been trying to do this for the past 3 years, but I always get distracted! But I am the farthest I have ever been. Yay! I am always excited to meet new people. :)
Hi Natalie and welcome to the group
Karin wrote: "Gemma wrote: "Feel as though i should reintroduce myself. Not been on here for quite a while. I'mGemma. A book lover with no time to read! I now have a 3 year old and a 1 year old! Just Reading th..."
I agree with Karin. For me, I'm such a 'get lost in the book' reader, I simply couldn't. The laundry would not be done, the kids would be hungry and even forgotten to be picked up...lol
Welcome, Natalie! I've only been here a couple of months, but have found this to be a friendly group.
Hi all! My name is Jen and I live in Colorado. I love reading books from all genres because I think there is something to learn, enjoy, and experience from all kinds of books. I'm excited to be here to get new reading ideas and hear...I mean read what you have to say. Thank you so much for starting this group!
Mod
Welcome Jen! I like to read many different sorts of books as well. Hope you enjoy the group!
Jennifer wrote: "Hi all! My name is Jen and I live in Colorado. I love reading books from all genres because I think there is something to learn, enjoy, and experience from all kinds of books. I'm excited to be her..."Hello, Jennifer, and welcome! Everybody is really friendly here, as you will notice very soon. I'm sure you'll find loads of people to talk about your favourite books and discover some new ones, too.
Mod
Thank you all for the warm welcome!!
Hello everyone!I am Anna from Moscow. I practise my english by reading books and chatting:) You are welcome!
Mod
Your country is great for the literature it produced! So many masterpieces! What is your favourite author?
I love Tolstoj even if some years ago I doscovered Oblomov by Ivan Goncharov and found it incredible.
Our seasonal author for winter was Fëdor Dostoevskij, pity you missed it!
LauraT wrote: "Welcome Anna!!! I think you're the first Russian of the group! Am I wrong?Your country is great for the literature it produced! So many masterpieces! What is your favourite author?
I love Tolstoj ..."
It's so nice to hear that you know russian classics. I think I read all of them but my admire to Esenin. His poety is great and very and very close to me. I'm sure you like his poems.
But as for prose I can suggest you War and Peace if you are ready. it is a work of genius
Welcome Anna, coincidently I feel like I am currently in the midst of Russia, at least in a literary sense. I am reading Demons by by Dostoyevsky and a book of non-fiction which is currently talking about the time in Russia around 1991 when the Iron Curtain fell. So welcome :)
Jenny wrote: "Welcome Anna, coincidently I feel like I am currently in the midst of Russia, at least in a literary sense. I am reading Demons by by Dostoyevsky and a book of non-fiction which is curr..."Good choice! Dostoevsky is hard for me to read because of the tragical moments. I read Crime and Punishment
Anna wrote: "Hello everyone!I am Anna from Moscow. I practise my english by reading books and chatting:) You are welcome!"
Welcome! I'm wondering if you can answer a question for me. My Russian speaking grandmother, who died in 1983, used to say that Russian novels were only good in Russian. Do you agree? If not, are there some better translations you know of? I realize you may not have ever read them in English.
She wasn't Russian, but was born in the Russian speaking part of the Ukraine; Russian was her second language after German, but she was fluent as she went to school in Russian, etc.
Karin wrote: "Anna wrote: "Hello everyone!I am Anna from Moscow. I practise my english by reading books and chatting:) You are welcome!"
Welcome! I'm wondering if you can answer a question for me. My Russian s..."
Karin, I agree with your grandmother. To my mind the problem is not probably in the quality of translation but in the uniqueness of the language. I mean that russian is very elegant and poetic language. Some phrases are translated but the feelings are not, especially poety.
Anna wrote: "Karin, I agree with your grandmother. To my mind the problem is not probably in the quality of translation but in the uniqueness of the language. I mean that russian is very elegant and poetic language. Some phrases are translated but the feelings are not, especially poety. ."
Thank you! I have always believed my grandmother, but I needed validation from someone who is Russian. There are nuances in every language that are very difficult to translate, particularly among languages as different as Russian and English. But I have had a number of English speakers think otherwise.
Karin wrote: "Anna wrote: "Karin, I agree with your grandmother. To my mind the problem is not probably in the quality of translation but in the uniqueness of the language. I mean that russian is very elegant an..."It's so cool that you are interested in russian literature. Good luck with classic.
Mod
Think only of translating Shakespeare, where also letters and souns could change the meaning of a sentence. In Italian we say "Traduttore=traditore" (translator=traitor), and it is absolutely true.
Still, still
I know that it'd be definitly better to read Dostoevsky, Tolstoj, Dickens and everybody else in the language they wrote; but being this impossible - you can know three, four, five foreign languages well enough to appreciate literature in them, no more - I think that to loose Crime and Punishment because I can't speak Russian it would be ... a "worse" crime and punshment to me!
You see what I mean?
I agree with you, Laura. Think of,all the Greek plays we would miss since very few of us know Ancient Greek which, I understand, is even farther removed from contemporary Greek than "Beowulf" is from contemporary English.
Yes, I agree. Every language is unique! And after translating we lose it's magnetism, especially classic literature witn ancient dialect
Lowering the tone, I have a few French translations of PG Wodehouse novels, just to brush up on my French, and try as the translators do, it's just impossible to convey the tone, the idioms and the exquisite language of Jeeves, Wooster and others. Even so, Wodehouse has been quite popular in France.
Anna wrote: "Hello everyone!I am Anna from Moscow. I practise my english by reading books and chatting:) You are welcome!"
Welcome Anna! Another Russian literature fan here.
LauraT wrote: "It is a perennial discussion that of translating books. I, doing this as a job - I'm a translator, even if I don't translate fiction, but mainly web pages - I can easily say that ALL literature is ..."I agree, so of course I still read translations and sometimes they are still great books, even if not quite the same.
John wrote: "Lowering the tone, I have a few French translations of PG Wodehouse novels, just to brush up on my French, and try as the translators do, it's just impossible to convey the tone, the idioms and the..."Yes, I would think that the farce of so much of Wodehouse would work well in French even if the translations don't have all of the same nuances.
Welcome Anna! You have started off on the right foot by sparking an interesting bookish discussion :)John wrote: "Lowering the tone, I have a few French translations of PG Wodehouse novels, just to brush up on my French, and try as the translators do, it's just impossible to convey the tone, the idioms and the..."
lol! I tried to 'brush up' my French years ago in a similar manner -- I read "The Hobbit" in French. That book is long since lost but I still remember being tickled by the translation of Bag End as Bag Cul-de-sac!
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