Over the weekend I read another of the books which my sister had bought me for Christmas: ‘Sanisbar, oder der letzte Grund’ by Alfred Andersch. I was initially a little sceptical about the novel as I had never heard of the author before and the cover looked somewhat uninspiring, but by the time I had read the opening chapters I was completely hooked and couldn’t bear the thought of coming away to London for a fortnight without first getting to the end of it.

Published in the late 1950s, the book tells the story of a random group of people who all find themselves in the small German harbour town of Rerik in Autumn 1937. They each come from quite different walks of life, but are brought together by the one thing they have in common: a desire to leave Nazi Germany. From Rerik it is theoretically possible to escape to Scandanavia by boat, and thus the action focusses around one character, the unimaginative fisherman, Knudsen. Knudsen, who owns a boat, is the only member of the cast with the ability to attempt such an escape, but paradoxically the only person who has a good reason to stay where he is. His mentally disturbed wife would certainly be taken away to a concentration camp if he were to leave her unattended for too long. (more…)

On Sunday my family and I had been planning to visit a local National Trust property to look at snowdrops. Unfortunately, the presence of real and actual snow meant it was too dangerous for us to drive all the way to Shropshire on country roads, and so we all stayed at home instead. Feeling at a bit of a loose end, I decided to start one of the books which my sister had bought for me for my birthday: ‘Unvollendete Geschichte’, by Volker Braun.

I chose this one, being honest, because it was the shortest. It’s a long time since I last read something in German – probably at least six months – and I feel like I’m getting a bit rusty. Plus I actually enjoyed the relative novelty of reading in English with my Akunin book (as opposed to months of stuggling through ‘La Lada Tambureto’ in Esperanto), so I felt a bit luke-warm about more foreign language reading. Happily, once I got into it however, German came flooding back to me and I started to enjoy it (more…)

Every Christmas for the past few years, I have been fortunate enough to receive a novel by the Russian author Boris Akunin as a present from my parents. If you have never heard of him, Boris Akunin is the pseudonym of a gentleman whose real name I should not like to hazard a guess at spelling, but who nevertheless writes detective stories so excellent that they have not only been an enormous hit in the Russian-speaking world, but have also been translated into a whole host of other languages, including English. From rather obscure beginnings, Akunin’s popularity now seems to have blossomed in the UK, and you should be able to find an entire row of his novels in any decent branch of Waterstones (more…)

Yesterday was a highly momentous day in my existence. After in excess of no fewer than five months of trying and failing, I have *finally* got to the end of that monster of all books, The Tin Drum by Günter Grass. Or more precisely, I have just got to the end of the Esperanto translation, ‘La lada tambureto’, which I bought in Szombathely this summer. If I think back over my reading career to date, I am struggling to think of another book which I have disliked so intensely. I have read books which are boring, yes, but I haven’t found them to be simultaneously offensive. I have read books which are certainly offensive, but haven’t found them simultaneously boring. I have read books which revolved around some pretty unlikeable characters, but by and large even if a book essentially tells the story of a villain, the villain has some sort of redeeming feature, something which makes you think that after all he must be human and that perhaps he wouldn’t have gone down such a negative route in life if his mother hadn’t died when he was four, or some such. The main character in the Tin Drum is called Oscar, and I don’t believe he has any redeeming qualities at all. I actually only read to the end because I was hoping he might die a slow and painful death. He didn’t (more…)

Yesterday was a rather lovely day. Babel unexpectedly turned out not to have a shift at work, so came to collect me for lunch. We bravely headed into Birmingham city centre, which was a million times quieter than last time we visited it during the run up to Christmas, and we spent a pleasant hour or so looking around bookshops. My mother had given us some vouchers, and so we made a valiant effort to eat at Pizza Express, but both the outlet in the Bull Ring and the one in Brindley Place had queues pretty much coming out the door, and so we elected to have lunch at our old favourite Walkabout instead. We were very grown up actually, and shared a bottle of wine with lasagne

In walking to Brindley Place, it had caught my attention that the Odeon was showing the film ‘The Reader’. I desperately wanted to see the film, but the timetable at the Odeon was rubbish so I googled it and found that the cinema at the far end of Broad Street had a showing at 5.25. Babel agreed to come along with me and watch, and we just had time to stroll back towards the shops and grab a coffee before the film started. (more…)

Nun estas la semajnfino kaj mi havas pli da libertempo. Miaj kontoj pli-malpli bilancas, kaj mi povas ripozi. Hieraŭ mi pasigis trankvilan tagon. Mi ankoraŭ legas tiun strangan libron, “La Lada Tambureto”, sed nuntempe nenio terura okazas. Fakte mi iomete fieras, ĉar mi ĵus atingis la finon de la unua parto kaj komencis la duan. La finajn paĝojn de tiu parto mi ne bone komprenis, ĉar ili enhavis multajn vortojn kiujn mi ne konis en Esperanto. Migdaloj, ekzemple, kiu ŝajne estas Mandeln, kaj rafanetoj, kiuj estas Radieschen. Mi scias tion nur, ĉar mia fratino helpeme trovis sian germanan version de la libro kaj kune ni legis la problemigajn paĝojn samtempe. La germanan mi feliĉe komprenis pli bone; estis multe da germanlingva vortludo en tiu ĉapitro kiu ne bone tradukiĝis en Esperanton. (more…)

Kutime mi tre ofte blogas pri la libroj, kiujn mi legas. Dum longa tempo mi ŝajne ne faris tion. Kial? Certe ne, ĉar ne plu plaĉas al mi legi. Kiam mi estis ĉe la IJK, mi kaptis la okazon aĉeti Esperantlingvan tradukon de la fama germana libro, “La lada tambureto” de Guenter Grass. Mi volas legi tiun libron jam de tri jaroj, sed germanan version mi ne posedis, kaj mi kutime klopodas eviti anglajn tradukojn de germanaj libroj – ĝenas min, kiam la tradukistoj uzas usonajn vortojn anstataŭ britajn. Do, kiam mi ekvidis la Esperantan tradukon mi tuj volis ĝin aĉeti kaj ege ekscitiĝis pri la legado. (more…)

I got this over at Damon’s blog.

The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they’ve printed.

1. Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2. Italicize those you intend to read.
3. Underline the books you love.
4. Strike out the books you have no intention of ever reading, or were forced to read at school and hated.
5. Reprint this list in your own blog so we can try and track down these people who’ve only read 6 and force books upon them. (more…)

Having greatly enjoyed Kate Morton’s debut novel, ‘The House at Riverton’, earlier in the year, I was greatly excited a few months back when Babel very kindly bought me a copy of her second; ‘The Forgotten Garden’. It being quite a large book, I didn’t get around to starting it for some weeks, but when I was packing to go to Szombathely it struck me that it would be an ideal book to bring. No one wants to read something too heavy when they are on holiday, and whilst the size of the paperback meant it was actually quite heavy for packing, nevertheless I knew the content would be pretty light. The upside of the size meant I thought it would probably last me all week, although I did take the precaution of packing a few other books in case it turned out to be horrendously bad (more…)

I’ve just been watching ‘The Painted Veil’, a 2006 film adaptation of the novel by W. Somerset Maugham. I confess to never having read the book, or indeed anything at all by W. Somerset Maugham, but it was one of my father’s birthday presents and we were humouring him by sitting and watching it with him It was actually very good, although not, I think, a film to go to bed on, because it was rather depressing and disturbing. (more…)