This week's Booking Through Thursday is:
May and June … graduation season.
If you were to give a book as a graduation present to some eager
person ready to launch themselves into the world … what would it be?
I know the most sensible answer would be 'some kind of inspirational self-help guide on how to achieve your dreams', but I think what I'd actually want to give someone would be Victor Hugo's The Count of Monte Cristo.
Not only is it a coming-of-age story, where the protagonist develops from a naive young man to a worldly, experienced millionaire, but it's absolutely full of adventures, subterfuge and colourful characters. Well worth reading as a novel, as well as thematically appropriate for someone stepping out into the real world for the first time.
Although hopefully very few of the things that happen in The Count of Monte Cristo will happen to this year's young graduates. Hopefully.
Showing posts with label Victor Hugo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Victor Hugo. Show all posts
Thursday, 4 June 2015
Thursday, 9 October 2014
Obscure genres
This week's Booking Through Thursday is:
What’s your favorite genre that other people might not read? I mean, mysteries, romances, real-crime … these are all fairly widespread categories. But real readers don’t usually limit themselves to just the “big” genres … so what’s your favorite little-known type of book? Books on dogs? Knitting books? Stories about the space race? Mathematical theory?
I don't want to sound like a fancy pretentious person, but I think I'd have to say nineteenth-century French literature. And I mean in French.
That's not because I'm particularly good at French, in fact it's the opposite - I learned French in college, and I want to keep it up and improve it, but I don't actually know any French people, and don't want to feel like it's hard work. So, I decided to do things I enjoy, but sometimes in French, which results in classic literature and detective TV shows.
When I haven't read one in a while, I do find myself relying on Google Translate in every other sentence, to begin with, but then there's that wonderful feeling when, about halfway through, you've got so used to it you've forgotten you're reading a different language. It does give me some bizarre vocabulary - I started out gently with a Harry Potter translation, and ended up knowing far too many words for things like 'pumpkin', 'flying broomstick', and 'giant spider' (although what with that spider-plague, who knows if that last one might come in handy?)
I'd really like to get round to reading Victor Hugo in the original French, as I really enjoyed Les Miserables and The Hunchback of Notre-Dame in English, but I have yet to find them over here, plus the sheer length of them makes it rather a daunting prospect. Most recently I read Stendhal's Le Rouge et Le Noir, which interested me because I'd heard it subverted narrative convention, most notably in that the 'hero' is a conniving, selfish maniplator who never really gets his 'rightful' comeuppance. Still to read on my shelves I've got Les Fleurs du Mal and Mauprat, and I'm particularly looking forward to the poetry as I do find that poetry in particular loses much of its beauty in translation.
What about you? What's your niche interest?
What’s your favorite genre that other people might not read? I mean, mysteries, romances, real-crime … these are all fairly widespread categories. But real readers don’t usually limit themselves to just the “big” genres … so what’s your favorite little-known type of book? Books on dogs? Knitting books? Stories about the space race? Mathematical theory?
I don't want to sound like a fancy pretentious person, but I think I'd have to say nineteenth-century French literature. And I mean in French.
That's not because I'm particularly good at French, in fact it's the opposite - I learned French in college, and I want to keep it up and improve it, but I don't actually know any French people, and don't want to feel like it's hard work. So, I decided to do things I enjoy, but sometimes in French, which results in classic literature and detective TV shows.
When I haven't read one in a while, I do find myself relying on Google Translate in every other sentence, to begin with, but then there's that wonderful feeling when, about halfway through, you've got so used to it you've forgotten you're reading a different language. It does give me some bizarre vocabulary - I started out gently with a Harry Potter translation, and ended up knowing far too many words for things like 'pumpkin', 'flying broomstick', and 'giant spider' (although what with that spider-plague, who knows if that last one might come in handy?)
I'd really like to get round to reading Victor Hugo in the original French, as I really enjoyed Les Miserables and The Hunchback of Notre-Dame in English, but I have yet to find them over here, plus the sheer length of them makes it rather a daunting prospect. Most recently I read Stendhal's Le Rouge et Le Noir, which interested me because I'd heard it subverted narrative convention, most notably in that the 'hero' is a conniving, selfish maniplator who never really gets his 'rightful' comeuppance. Still to read on my shelves I've got Les Fleurs du Mal and Mauprat, and I'm particularly looking forward to the poetry as I do find that poetry in particular loses much of its beauty in translation.
What about you? What's your niche interest?
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