The What Are You Reading thread (now with a simpler name)

[xzar_monty]

On 3/17/2024 at 2:16 AM, Sarex said:

Finished book 2. I read book 1 in Serbian and book 2 in English, so I can't say for sure, but it really does feel like a completely different approach to narrative, at least the first half of the book.

I don't know Serbian so I can't say anything specific, but extremely bad translations do exist, even for famous books. For example, the first Swedish translation of the Lord of the Rings was so poor that the Tolkien estate expressly forbid the same folks from translating The Silmarillion. A translation can be extremely bad (in faithfulness to the original) even if the result reads well as a book, as such.

Edited March 18 by xzar_monty

[Sarex]

5 hours ago, xzar_monty said:

I don't know Serbian so I can't say anything specific, but extremely bad translations do exist, even for famous books. For example, the first Swedish translation of the Lord of the Rings was so poor that the Tolkien estate expressly forbid the same folks from translating The Silmarillion. A translation can be extremely bad (in faithfulness to the original) even if the result reads well as a book, as such.

Could be, it doesn't help that it's the older style of Serbian either, that's why I said it with some reserve. On the other hand the first part of the book was all introspection, until one point where it just went back to normal pacing and book 3 feels much more like book 1 too. Either way I get why I completely spaced out on book 2 in the series.

[xzar_monty]

On 3/18/2024 at 6:26 PM, Sarex said:

Could be, it doesn't help that it's the older style of Serbian either, that's why I said it with some reserve. On the other hand the first part of the book was all introspection, until one point where it just went back to normal pacing and book 3 feels much more like book 1 too. Either way I get why I completely spaced out on book 2 in the series.

By the way, here's a concrete example of what "bad translation" can look like, and one I think just about everyone on the forum can relate to:

In the Lord of the Rings, the river Anduin is also known as "the Great River". Now, in the Spanish translation of the book, "the Great River" is rendered as "el Rio Grande", which is technically correct but actually problematic, in my view, given that there's a river known by the same name flowing between the US and Mexico (even if it's also known as Rio Bravo). I am firmly of the opinion that the Spanish translator probably should have considered another adjective, which the Spanish language has plenty of. Even if you theoretically don't have to consider any facts outside the book proper when doing your translation, there are cases where you should, and I would argue that this is one of them. I mean, reading LotR in Spanish, your mind may well be taken to the wrong thing every time "el Rio Grande" is mentioned.

Edited March 21 by xzar_monty

[Sarex]

Finished Children of Dune. Yeah the tone and pacing is much closer to book 1, compared to book 2. Dune Messiah comes of as an interlude between the two books. Anyways, on to book 4.

Edited March 21 by Sarex

[Malcador]

I am a little ahead of you. GEoD is about as dry as I recall.  Guess the super tiny font isn't helping

 

[Sarex]

27 minutes ago, Malcador said:

I am a little ahead of you. GEoD is about as dry as I recall.  Guess the super tiny font isn't helping

Uh, the tiny fonts are the worst. Basically end up cross eyed after any extended reading. Thank good for ebook readers.

[Malcador]

Yes, I probably should buy them all a second time and give these ****ty paperbacks away or something. 

Also reading Agency still - not sure why I am trying to read two books at the same time - this is just like the Bridge trilogy in that the middle books is kind of meh, at least so far.  Seems a lot of convenient magic stuff to advance things. 

[melkathi]

And then you poor souls will end up reading Chapterhouse.

My condolences in advance.

[majestic]

12 hours ago, Malcador said:

I am a little ahead of you. GEoD is about as dry as I recall.  Guess the super tiny font isn't helping

 

Wrong, Arrakis is not a desert any more by that point!

[Malcador]

3 hours ago, melkathi said:

And then you poor souls will end up reading Chapterhouse.

My condolences in advance.

Best ending to a book ever.

[Sarex]

I have to say, book 4 was a much more engaging read this time around. On to book 5, this is where I stopped the before.

[HoonDing]

"And then you poor souls will end up reading Chapterhouse."

Duncan Idaho moping - continued

[xzar_monty]

A funny (to me) observation: reading Don Quixote today, it's impossible not to notice the parallel between Don Quixote and modern conspiracy theorists. Don Quixote is neither stupid nor uneducated, it's just that he has a huge flaw in his thinking when it comes to the question of chivalry, and no one can help him see the problem, no matter how they try. That's precisely how it is with conspiracy theorists, it's just that the flaw happens to be in different "places" in their mind.

[Gorth]

40 minutes ago, xzar_monty said:

A funny (to me) observation: reading Don Quixote today, it's impossible not to notice the parallel between Don Quixote and modern conspiracy theorists. Don Quixote is neither stupid nor uneducated, it's just that he has a huge flaw in his thinking when it comes to the question of chivalry, and no one can help him see the problem, no matter how they try. That's precisely how it is with conspiracy theorists, it's just that the flaw happens to be in different "places" in their mind.

It didn’t stop the former Australian prime minister from fighting tooth and nail against windmills

 

(for the glory of the coal, gas and oil industry)

[xzar_monty]

34 minutes ago, Gorth said:

It didn’t stop the former Australian prime minister from fighting tooth and nail against windmills

How wonderful that someone really did it! I mean, wonderful in the context of famous metaphors becoming a kind of reality, not in the context of energy politics.

[Malcador]

On 3/26/2024 at 1:10 PM, Sarex said:

I have to say, book 4 was a much more engaging read this time around. On to book 5, this is where I stopped the before.

Lagging behind you, finished GEoD today.  Was more enjoyable now than in back the 90s when I read it first, but still don't fully get the novel.  Nayla having some weird sexual experience watching Idaho climb was pretty funny.

[HoonDing]

Sheeana was the only good character in the latter books

[Sarex]

23 minutes ago, Malcador said:

Was more enjoyable now than in back the 90s when I read it first, but still don't fully get the novel.

I think I missed most of the messiah connection in Leto II and his underlying suffering and sadness throughout the book in my previous readthrough. The ending hit very differently this time around.

35 minutes ago, Malcador said:

Nayla having some weird sexual experience watching Idaho climb was pretty funny.

Yeah, I would add Duncan's outrage to homosexuality to that. That was such an odd scene in the book that kind of felt out of place to me. It had zero build up to it and zero consequences. I guess I could see it as just another indicator to him feeling out of place with the times, but no... At least with Nyala orgasm, you could connect it to the cult and dogma of the Fish Speakers, but even then that scene felt a little bit like out of nowhere.

43 minutes ago, Malcador said:

Lagging behind you, finished GEoD today.

I'm on chapter 2 of book 4. Didn't have much time to read and the book is slow going, but I'm determined this time around to give it more of an effort, at least half the book.

[Malcador]

1 hour ago, Sarex said:

Yeah, I would add Duncan's outrage to homosexuality to that. That was such an odd scene in the book that kind of felt out of place to me. It had zero build up to it and zero consequences. I guess I could see it as just another indicator to him feeling out of place with the times, but no... At least with Nyala orgasm, you could connect it to the cult and dogma of the Fish Speakers, but even then that scene felt a little bit like out of nowhere.

Yep, bit of a forced segue to what was already covered in earlier lectures, and you'd think Duncan would have already seen that a couple of times already with the alliusions to the Fish Speakers being horny buggers.  I guess Herbert really wanted me to get the point, heh.

Started Heretics, good thing he let us know Lucilla has a good rack.  

 

[HoonDing]

Halfway through second book of "Land fit for heroes".

Way more entertaining than the grimdark stuff from Abercrombie and Lawrence.

[Sarex]

Finished book 5. I think I may have skipped this book by accident previously, I guess I will find out with book 6. Either way a great read, even though it had a slow start.

[Sarex]

Finished book 6. This one was a bit of a slog. They tried to do a similar narrative to God Emperor, but the issue was that none of the characters where that interesting. What it does do well is set up any future plot.

[Adeptus7]

Just finished "Plague of Swords", 4th tome of the "Traitor Son" series by Miles Cameron.

[xzar_monty]

On 4/6/2024 at 11:35 AM, Sarex said:

Finished book 6. This one was a bit of a slog. They tried to do a similar narrative to God Emperor, but the issue was that none of the characters where that interesting. What it does do well is set up any future plot.

Would you say that book 6 is, in general, at the same level with book 1? If not, would you say that there's a specific spot where the quality starts to get worse? I'm curious about this because it seems to me that very few books that eventually turn into series can maintain their quality. For the record, I have only read book 1 and liked it, but not enough to continue with book 2.

[Sarex]

1 hour ago, xzar_monty said:

Would you say that book 6 is, in general, at the same level with book 1? If not, would you say that there's a specific spot where the quality starts to get worse? I'm curious about this because it seems to me that very few books that eventually turn into series can maintain their quality. For the record, I have only read book 1 and liked it, but not enough to continue with book 2.

I mean book 3 is just as good if not better. Book 6 tried to do a similar narrative to book 4, but as I said it did have a character to carry it. If I had to order them it would probably go something like 1 and 3 > 4 > 5 > 6 and 2.