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2019-2020 Reading List
Backreading my DW is like looking into a manic portal of incoherence, goodness. I suppose I rarely show up when life is normal, only when Yuletide is happening or something is on fire. So in an attempt to attempt something less on-fire, my started-but-incomplete reading list that I'm trying to get through before 2020 arrives:
Making Time: Astronomical Time Measurement in Tokugawa Japan - Yulia Frumer
Hugely, hugely interesting; I picked it up two? years ago and somehow just stalled out, so it's at the top of my list to just be polished off. I want to do so much art or graphical representation of the things I learned in this book.
King Leopold's Ghost - Adam Hochschild
tl;dr Leopold was a bad man. This one falls into the category of a sort of rah-rah non-fiction writing style that I dislike, but I am attempting to power through.
Six Memos for The Next Millennium - Italo Calvino, trans. forgot-because-not-on-hand
Can't help but feel this would read better in the original Italian, and if I were a touch more the literary type, but I'm enjoying reading essays again. Sort of remind me of Eco's essays, but not as keenly translated. The translator's notes are in themselves interesting; tldr "this was a group project across a few translation teams, but at the end I just threw the collective work out the window and did it myself for consistency, lol".
The Arthashastra - Kautilya, trans. L.N. Rangarajan
Talk about interesting but awful translation, omg. This one. This one! I feel like I'm reading at once this awesome manual on statecraft, and then on the other hand an insane copy-pasta-rearrange-a by the translator. I have to read the foot- and endnotes, of which there are many, just to get ahead of why things seem to suddenly stop making argumentative sense. EDITIORIALISING OF ORIGINAL TEXTS IS NOT FUN.
A Memory Called Empire - Arkady Martine
Picked it up because I knew it would be big for Yuletide; enjoying it so far. About 40% through, probably will finish before assignments are due.
I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings - Maya Angelou
Catching up on all the things I'm dreadfully uneducated in. I've been pecking at this for a few years (!) now, but have to do it in small pieces because it's good but hurts so badly.
The Iliad - Homer, trans. Caroline Alexander
Been very excited about the new female translators, but then ten pages in and I sort of drift away...
---
Written out like this, there isn't much! I just finished Exhalation: Stories - Ted Chiang and Calvino's Invisible Cities, which have been on my to-read list for a long time. I have a copy of Li He on my shelf from a year or two ago, but I don't think one ever "finishes" poetry collections, right? Right? I should persevere!
Non-fiction...y
Making Time: Astronomical Time Measurement in Tokugawa Japan - Yulia Frumer
Hugely, hugely interesting; I picked it up two? years ago and somehow just stalled out, so it's at the top of my list to just be polished off. I want to do so much art or graphical representation of the things I learned in this book.
King Leopold's Ghost - Adam Hochschild
tl;dr Leopold was a bad man. This one falls into the category of a sort of rah-rah non-fiction writing style that I dislike, but I am attempting to power through.
Six Memos for The Next Millennium - Italo Calvino, trans. forgot-because-not-on-hand
Can't help but feel this would read better in the original Italian, and if I were a touch more the literary type, but I'm enjoying reading essays again. Sort of remind me of Eco's essays, but not as keenly translated. The translator's notes are in themselves interesting; tldr "this was a group project across a few translation teams, but at the end I just threw the collective work out the window and did it myself for consistency, lol".
The Arthashastra - Kautilya, trans. L.N. Rangarajan
Talk about interesting but awful translation, omg. This one. This one! I feel like I'm reading at once this awesome manual on statecraft, and then on the other hand an insane copy-pasta-rearrange-a by the translator. I have to read the foot- and endnotes, of which there are many, just to get ahead of why things seem to suddenly stop making argumentative sense. EDITIORIALISING OF ORIGINAL TEXTS IS NOT FUN.
Fiction...y
A Memory Called Empire - Arkady Martine
Picked it up because I knew it would be big for Yuletide; enjoying it so far. About 40% through, probably will finish before assignments are due.
I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings - Maya Angelou
Catching up on all the things I'm dreadfully uneducated in. I've been pecking at this for a few years (!) now, but have to do it in small pieces because it's good but hurts so badly.
The Iliad - Homer, trans. Caroline Alexander
Been very excited about the new female translators, but then ten pages in and I sort of drift away...
---
Written out like this, there isn't much! I just finished Exhalation: Stories - Ted Chiang and Calvino's Invisible Cities, which have been on my to-read list for a long time. I have a copy of Li He on my shelf from a year or two ago, but I don't think one ever "finishes" poetry collections, right? Right? I should persevere!