They're tight miniskirts and this is bothering me more tbh. He does go into details for a lot of things (like the coffee cup in Raziel's example), but not all of them add that much to the scene setting and are more distracting. Stupid skirts, distracting everyone again.The Daddy wrote:The writer is fond of miniskirts.
You made it worse! I'm not sure why you'd want to translate someone's writing style out of their prose and replace it with another.Raiziel wrote:I wonder how much creative wiggle room a translator has when working on fiction? I have no idea how the process works. If they can't zhuzh up the prose, then surely they can reorder it somewhat so that it doesn't sound quite so clunky in English. I jotted down a random paragraph from Coffee last night which goes like this: The talking never ends. Fumiko was itching to go. "Too many rules..." she muttered as she gripped the coffee cup before her. The vessel was quite unremarkable: just a coffee cup which had not had coffee poured into it. But she thought it felt noticeably cooler than the usual porcelain. Now let me take a quick stab at that: "Too many rules," Fumiko grumbled impatiently, and clasped her hands around the coffee cup. It was quite unremarkable. Just an empty white cup, though she noticed the porcelain felt unnaturally cool against the tips of her fingers. Am I taking too many liberties there? It's surely less clunky than the original, right? I don't know. The whole thing reads very strangely, and there are other issues too, but I'll share those next month. I managed fifty pages, and I'm afraid that's all I can really stomach. It turns out you can return Kindle books within the first seven days, so I've taken advantage of that this morning.
Me too. It's got a nice rhythm to it.Nina wrote:And I actually liked this line "just a coffee cup which had not had coffee poured into it"
Raiziel wrote:I think Muzzy might be anticipating that I didn't like The Narrow Road to the Deep North. Well I've got news for you, buster: you'd be right! But also wrong. I really liked a particular part of The Narrow Road; the part that was the most focused, the most traumatising. So the middle third of the book, which takes place in Burma, feels like the vertical slice of a better book we never get to read. If the narrative had perhaps been a more traditional reflection on the horrors the POWs suffered in the jungle it would have been a more engaging piece. But instead that really juicy filling is topped and bottomed by some thick, anaemic, doughy bread.
So it's the story of a life instead, then. One scarred by regret. But oh wait, it's also the story of some other lives too. I mean the whole thing around that excellent jungle part felt so baggy and unfocused. For my tastes Flanagan casts his net too widely, and a lot of the things he drags up just aren't all that interesting or engaging. His love affair with Amy is too fleeting for me to care about once the story has moved on, and I'm also less inclined to care because Dorrigo isn't much of a sympathetic character. In fact I think Darky Gardiner was the only character I found myself caring about throughout the entire story.
Flanagan wields his words well, and I found myself effectively transported to that jungle hell for the book's second act, so I can't help but wonder what could have been if he'd focused in on that. But then what to I know. It won the Man Booker Prize after all.
Stopharage wrote:Next month’s book choice is down to £1.99 today only on Kindle.
[url] https://www.amazon.co.uk/Humankind-Hopeful-History-Rutger-Bregman-ebook/dp/B082SXZFC9/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?dchild=1&pf_rd_i=5400977031&pf_rd_m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&pf_rd_p=7fd5af5d-187b-4287-89b2-b9d5e96ebf9b&pf_rd_r=RZCGN73YF15S7AFHND2Z&pf_rd_s=mobile-hybrid-3&pf_rd_t=1201&qid=1598333720&s=digital-text&sr=1-1[/url]
Me too. Absolutely useless.mistercrayon wrote:Goddamn still a few days to finish. I’m a terrible reader.
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