Never too Late to Read Classics discussion

What part of Belgium did they come from, Samantha?

Rosemarie wrote: "What part of Belgium did they come from, Samantha?"

As far as I have been able to (I think) accurately trace my father's paternal line back, they came from the area of Belgium known as West Flanders, specifically a city called Torhout. I'd love to visit some day.

Belgium is a nice country, Samantha, with great food and drink!

Georges Simenon is from Belgium too! and of course Hergé!

Impatience of the Heart AKA Beware of Pity

https://archive.org/details/in.ernet....

Also, when you're reading parts 2 and 3 of a trilogy will there be alternate choices of books for those who haven't read part 1?

That sounds very inspiring. touching to have something like that.

I found a paperback version, I will still look for a hardcopy though.

Rosemarie I can host but not Feb/March or Oct/November, Election time.

I will think of another option, Jazzy. Thanks for mentioning it.

Just let me know the book and the month you prefer, Lesle.

Rosemarie
The Leopard maybe June?
August for the other.

That's for Journey by Moonlight?

That works out for me because I am going on a holiday trip in June and have already read The Leopard twice.

I found Villa des Roses in the interlibrary loan system this morning!! I’d be happy to lead the discussion on it in maybe May or September, if the group reads it.

There is a most excellent book I would love to read

The Garden of the Finzi-Continis - Giorgio Bassani

I think we should choose a book from the Great War for November.

something like
All Quiet on the Western Front - Erich Maria Remarque

I read that and it is quite remarkable

Whichever month works better for you, Samantha.

September might be easier, since it’s after the hustle and bustle of summer reading at the library.

Jazzy, those are both great books. I know, since I have read them. Unfortunately, we don't have room on the 2020 list.

However, we can do a Buddy Read any time.

A Buddy Read means that we set up a thread for a specific book and any member who wants to discuss it can post comments there. We have done a number of Buddy Reads in previous years, but this year no one showed much interest.

I can think of a lot more books that I would enjoy reading next year as well, so I know how you feel. Actually, a lot of our members probably feel the same way.

Samantha wrote: "September might be easier, since it’s after the hustle and bustle of summer reading at the library."

Thanks, Samantha.

Jazzy wrote: "There is a most excellent book I would love to read
The Garden of the Finzi-Continis - Giorgio Bassani
I think we should choose a book from the Great War for November. something like All Quiet on the Western Front - Erich Maria Remarque
I read that and it is quite remarkable. .."

This Group read All Quiet on the Western Front in March of 2017. Also, some members read The Garden of the Finzi-Continis during last May's Garden Theme Read.

However, I missed both reads. Both books have excellent reputations and I would like to read them someday. If they aren't Buddy Reads before then, I would second both of them for the 2021 Classic in Translation thread, if it exists then. At that time, it will be 4 years after the All Quiet Group read and the The Garden of the Finzi-Continis never had a separate discussion thread devoted to it.
I'll try to remember this when the moderators are planning at this time next year. I am intending to survive until then, but it will likely be with an increasingly faulty memory.

Brian you must live long and prosper!

Another book I would like to read one day (but do not have a copy of) is Shank's Mare: Japan's Great Comic Novel of Travel & Ribaldry - Jippensha Ikku

So, Brian, perhaps whenever you would like we can read The Garden of the Finzi-Continis as I do have that book.

I haven't had much luck with Buddy Reads or whatever they call them on other sites. You wait for the other person to catch up and they abandon it altogether then when you say how is it going? They've read the bloody book without you ahaha :)

I am really glad to see Pietr the Latvian on the list! I had that on my plan to read in 2020. Also, I'm glad to see Dona Barbara. That's such a good book that I would consider rereading it!

I now own the following in readiness for the remainder of this year's Classics in Translation:

July: The Summer Book by Tove Jansson
August: Journey by Moonlight by Antal Szerb (Hungarian)
September: Villa des Roses by Willem Elsschot (Dutch)
November: Skylark by Dezső Kosztolányi(Hungarian)

All except Szerb's are novella size, between 100 and 200 pages, and even Szerb's is only about 300 pages.
I read June's choice, The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa (Italian) about a year ago. I will probably add in A Hero of Our Time for December

That is great, Brian! I hope I can get library or eversions of those books, so that I can join you and any other members reading them in some of the reads.

Congrats on acquiring all those so far ahead of time, Brian! I intend to read Villa des Roses, but I haven't yet decided if I'll buy it or get it through interlibrary loan. No guarantees on how quickly those ILLs are processing these days.

My one money vice is buying books. I especially like that 3 of the 4 translations i bought are New York Review Book editions which I seem to be buying a lot of this year, including:

3 by Stefan Zweig today's read and 3 by John Williams

Im glad you were able to find the reads Brian.

Mom has what appears to be the same edition of Butcher's Crossing by John Williams. I noticed it yesterday while I was going through the 3rd bookcase making sure everything is logged. I have my Grandmother's bookcase 4' that I have Nature and Gardening in along with Paperbacks that I plan on getting to tonight.

Brian wrote: "My one money vice is buying books. I especially like that 3 of the 4 translations i bought are New York Review Book editions which I seem to be buying a lot of this year, including:

[bookcover:Jou..."

If you check my “books I own” shelf on here, you’ll notice I also spend most extra money on books. Most of them I buy used, though, at used book stores, thrift stores, or library sales. If you have one money vice, I suppose books isn’t a bad one to have.

Samantha wrote: "I also spend most extra money on books. Most of them I buy used, though, at used book stores, thrift stores, or library sales...."

For a long time, I too bought mainly used. I visited used bookstores, throughout Illinois and in travels, at least once or twice a month. However, health and mobility concerns the past several years have caused me to turn to ordering new online as I have difficulty doing the amount of standing needed in used bookstore browsing. The online used books are too pricey. Also, I might as well buy new and give some proceeds to the author if buying used omits the pleasure of browsing in a used bookstore. I still occasionally visit used bookstores but I really miss the more frequently browsing.

I recently received 4 books for the Classics in Translation discussions:
3 are New York Review of Books titles: Tristana, Skylark, The Summer Book.
The other took ages to get here: Villa des Roses, published by Granta.

I hadn't thought of reading Tristana because I had never heard of the author or book. Now I see that Benito Pérez Galdós is probably the major 19th Century Spanish author, and is called the Spanish Dickens, Tolstoy, Balzac/Zola so I may read it.
I did wonder about the choice of Tristana, since it was only the 6th most popular novel on Goodreads. However, the NYRB did choose it as its first Galdos to publish. As perhaps his most famous novel, Fortunata and Jacinta is about 1000 pages, the more novella size Tristana looks even better. And there's a movie version with Catherine Deneuve to watch afterwards.

Since NYRB published Tristana, I thought it must be good.

So if a book is written in English but we read it in say, Dutch, then that would be a classic in translation too, right? :)

But we wouldn't be reading a book originally written in English under this heading. 😉

Rosemarie wrote: "But we wouldn't be reading a book originally written in English under this heading. 😉"

Sure we would - a lot of people don't know more than one language, but I wonder why the heading wasn't World Literature, since this is a world wide site and English is not the first language of many members. Perhaps it's an American term.

Kathy wrote: "Since NYRB published Tristana, I thought it must be good."

And even if it isn't, it will look good displayed next to Skylark & The Summer Book

By the way, how many languages do you speak, Rosemarie?

Is that the cover of your Summer Book, Brian? Mine looks like this -

I speak three languages fluently, German, English French, but I can read in four more-Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Dutch.

I was a language teacher so I taught myself the new languages. Italian was fairly easy to learn because I studied Latin for four years in high school.

Jazzy wrote: "Is that the cover of your Summer Book, Brian? Mine looks like this "

Your edition is by Sort of Books and is the most popular edition on Goodreads with 11,438 ratings averaging a 4.10 rating.
My edition is the NYRB edition, the second most popular edition with 1,748 ratings, averaging a 4.13 rating.
Obviously my edition is the better edition since 4.13 is higher than 4.10.
:)

HA! I must disagree, I think the picture on mine is lovelier and more summery ;)

Do you also have A Winter Book?

Rosemarie wrote: "I speak three languages fluently, German, English French, but I can read in four more-Italian, Spanish, Portuguese and Dutch.

I was a language teacher so I taught myself the new languages. Italian..."

I can read in a few languages but slowly. I took 4 years of Spanish in school and used to speak and understand it rather brokenly. I studied many languages on my own and was quite pleased I could do something as simple as order a hot chocolate in French and then later 3 coca colas in Dutch when I went to Belgium. :)

Michel Thomas is great.

I'm very impressed you can do so well. I would love to live somewhere they don't speak English so much as I was doing well in Belgium, then had to return to England in 4 days.

I was very pleased with myself when I exchanged currency in Puno, Peru, all in Spanish. And the bank I used was actually a Canadian bank-Scotiabank. (Which was run like a Canadian bank, so I knew where to line up)

Jazzy wrote: "HA! I must disagree, I think the picture on mine is lovelier and more summery ;)
Do you also have A Winter Book?"

No, The Summer Book will be my first by Johansson. If I had planned on reading the Winter Book too, as there is no NYRB edition of it, I might have bought the Sort of Books edition of the Summer Book to have this matching set:

Well you still can! They do look lovely together.

Sculptor's Daughter: A Childhood Memoir is sweet too, I like the stories of her father's beloved pet monkey, and see in young Tove a hint of Little My.

I've read her other books for adults as well, and must say I enjoyed them all.

How could one not like a story about a beloved pet monkey???

Oh yes, Bernard. Monkeys make every story better!

Jazzy wrote: "Well you still can! They do look lovely together...."

Yeah, but I do like the NYRB editions. However, I might re-buy as you suggest as I have done it before. Just last week, I bought the Penguin edition of Stella Larsen's Quicksand even though I already had a different edition, just so it could match my Penguin edition of Passing:
I had: and now also have &

Sorry for the detour from the thread subject. I do like book covers.

Oh no! ;D I have two different publishers for my Jansson winter and summer books


I like the NYRB editions also. Here are my copies of translated books:


I also have and might buy and like Brian did.

Kathy wrote: "Oh no! ;D I have two different publishers for my Jansson winter and summer books
"

Tsk, tsk. You probably also wear stripes and plaids together. But then, that is more of a modern fashion sense, so just consider it as you having more of a "modern" way of book collecting - being a trendsetter among the cheeseheads.

Brian write: Tsk, tsk. You probably also wear stripes and plaids together. But then, that is more of a modern fashion sense, so just consider it as you having more of a "modern" way of book collecting - being a trendsetter among the cheeseheads.

Oh, yes - trendsetting among the cheeseheads... definitely. Until I was in this group, I paid no attention to a book's publisher. I also paid no attention to the fact that the translator might make a difference in my reading experience.