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HTLAL Book Club 2015 | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Multilingual Lounge |  | |
| Expugnator Hexaglot Senior Member Brazil Joined 5165 days ago 3335 posts - 4349 votes  Speaks: Portuguese*, Norwegian, French, English, Italian, Papiamento Studies: Mandarin, Georgian, Russian | Message 41 of 69 18 December 2014 at 8:24pm | IP Logged | |||||
Comprends-moi bien, eyðimörk, je ne nie pas le rôle de l'histoire pour la compréhension du monde, mais ce que j'avais en tête était plutôt la description de la vie quotidienne en soi, ce que les gens font tous les jours: les trajets au boulot, les sujets des conversations courtes et longues, l'utilisation des gadgets, des média, l'impact des actualités dans la vie courante et le vocabulaire et le contexte nécessaires pour agir comme un citoyen contemporain dans ces pays. C'est pour ça que je préfère les romans les plus récents. Je ne cesse jamais de chercher de nouvelles informations sur la culture et l'histoire des pays dont j'étudie les langues, mais je fais ça avec des ouevres non-fiction, et mes besoins les plus urgents gravitent autour de la vie dans la fin du XXème et le début du XXIème siècle. Don't get me wrong, eyðimörk, I can't deny the role History plays in understanding the world, but what I had in mind was rather a description of daily life in itself, what people do everyday: commutes to work, topics for short and long conversations, using gadgets, the media, the impact of the news in the contemporary life and the necessary vocabulary and context for acting like a contemporary citizin in those countries. That's why I prefer more recent novels. I never stop loking for new information on the culture and the history of the countries I'm studying languages from, but I do this with non-fictional works, and my most urgent demands have to do with daily life in the end of the XX and the beginning of the XXI centuries.
Didn't I mention them? I thought I did, sorry! From my list there is Michel Houellebecq, Frédéric Beigbeder, Gauthier Huguenin, Jean Echenoz, Marie Darrieussecq (a little disgusting). Modiano is more like about the war and post-war, but the way he describes the environments and the way the actions take place also help me imagine the scenario and the daily life. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| eyðimörk Triglot Senior Member France goo.gl/aT4FY7 Joined 4098 days ago 490 posts - 1158 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French Studies: Breton, Italian | Message 42 of 69 19 December 2014 at 1:02pm | IP Logged | |||||
Well, you certainly won't find information on modern commutes in a work that deals with the 1950s, but I'm not really talking about "understanding the world" so much as "not being completely lost in modern events or dinner conversations with your next-door neighbour". Someone will talk about Christmas lights and someone (not someone with a higher education either) will throw in a political slogan from the 1970s about petrol which will make everyone but you laugh. Paris politicians will be called the Jacobin Club in passing. A dubbed American teen drama will reference the Fronde in an episode title. People still talk about collabos and Pétainists. In Brittany, people wear red knitted hats while protesting in a reference to a 1675 revolt. And it goes on into infinity. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| geoffw Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4687 days ago 1134 posts - 1865 votes Speaks: English*, German, Yiddish Studies: Modern Hebrew, French, Dutch, Italian, Russian | Message 43 of 69 19 December 2014 at 2:37pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I imagine it may be different in France in important ways, but this doesn't sound too different from some of what I
see in American society. We are especially fond of our Revolutionary and Civil War era history (and folk history/mythology), and our understanding of that history informs daily life for many. In recent years we've had people protesting with tea bags attached to their hats in reference to the Boston Tea Party in 1771. When a particularly uneven sports contest takes place involving a Boston team, it may be referred to as a Boston Massacre (1770). The political slogan "No Taxation Without Representation" from the 1750s/60s remains a well-known flashpoint that even appears on standard-issue license plates in Washington D.C. Within the last decade I heard from a northern woman that when she was visiting Georgia in the South, that upon discovering that she was a northerner, the woman was immediately asked by a local, in a hostile tone, "so what do you think about what Sherman did?" referring to General Sherman's infamous "March to the Sea" in 1864 as if it had happened earlier that week. And so on. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| patrickwilken Senior Member Germany radiant-flux.net Joined 4532 days ago 1546 posts - 3200 votes Studies: German | Message 44 of 69 19 December 2014 at 2:58pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Getting back to the topic of German scifi: I was just at my local library in Berlin, which is pretty big.
There were 200-300 shelves of contemporary fiction, 96 shelves of crime novels, 13 shelves of fantasy books, and 3 shelves of scifi - most, if not all, of whose authors were translated. :( Edited by patrickwilken on 19 December 2014 at 2:59pm 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Bao Diglot Senior Member Germany tinyurl.com/pe4kqe5 Joined 5765 days ago 2256 posts - 4046 votes Speaks: German*, English Studies: French, Spanish, Japanese, Mandarin | Message 45 of 69 19 December 2014 at 3:44pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Most are. It's cheaper and less risky to buy the rights to publish a book that has been successful in another country, and only pay a translator, than to support the writing of a book and publish it for the first time.
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_von_Science-Fiction-Autor en I don't recognize most of the names, but I do remember reading something by Myra Çakan and liking it. Downtown Blues, I think. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| kanewai Triglot Senior Member United States justpaste.it/kanewai Joined 4888 days ago 1386 posts - 3054 votes Speaks: English*, French, Marshallese Studies: Italian, Spanish | Message 46 of 69 19 December 2014 at 9:18pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I looked over my reading list from my past two years, and realized that I've only read
two contemporary novels (La vie mode d'emploi, by Georges Perec, and a Fred Vargas mystery). I've read other modern authors, but their books always seem to be set in the past. Though L'Écume des Jours comes close; even though it was published in 1947 it still feels modern, and I get the impression it's still read a lot in France. I've read a lot about the controversies surrounding Michel Houellebecq; maybe it's time I actually read one of his books. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| eyðimörk Triglot Senior Member France goo.gl/aT4FY7 Joined 4098 days ago 490 posts - 1158 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French Studies: Breton, Italian | Message 47 of 69 05 January 2015 at 7:02pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Hello, Book Club! Happy New Year! What are you reading?
Just before the New Year, I finished Leonie Swann's Qui a tué Glenn ?. You might have heard of it. It was a best-seller in its original German (Glennkill: Ein Schafskrimi) and has also been translated into English (Three Bags Full).  If you're sensing a sheep-ish theme, you are correct! George Glenn, owner of the strangest herd of sheep in the small Irish town of Glennkill, has been found dead in his field with a spade stuck in his entrails. George might not have been the best shepherd in Ireland, but he was their shepherd, so the sheep decide to solve his murder. As expected, sheep are not natural detectives. They do however have a humorous perspective on all things human, and a very special kind of logic. Is it the best thing you'll read all year? Probably not. But it's light, sometimes quite funny, and a nice palate cleanser between more difficult reads. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6581 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 48 of 69 19 January 2015 at 10:33am | IP Logged | |||||
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Portuguese
I just finished reading "Dom Casmurro" by Machado de Assis, from 1899. Apparently some people consider it the best novel in all of South American literary history. I don't know about that, but it was pretty good! I kind of recommend reading about it first, which will spoil the ending. I did that halfway through, and it made the book much more interesting to read. For the first half, I was wondering "What's the point of this book?", but after reading about the ending, I could see that the author was building up to it, and it made all the little details of the story that much more interesting. If you don't do this, you might almost have to read it twice. It's sort of like a mystery novel where you never find out who the killer is, so you will have to make up the answer yourself, going by the clues in the book. It's all very skillfully done and I can't make up my mind myself. Language-wise, it wasn't as difficult as I had feared. It certainly helped to have a pop-up dictionary, but towards the end I didn't use it that much. The language is simple and unadorned, very matter-of-fact. The author even discusses his own use of language sometimes, which is amusing. Stuff like "Of course, that's not literally true, but one must allow oneself some poetical exagerrations sometimes, especially when writing about something like this". All in all a very good book, which I heartily recommend. 3 persons have voted this message useful |
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