Read in February 2012
I tried hard to stick to my personal challenge of reading books in translation for February. And I thought I did pretty well, until I actually look at the numbers. I only finished 9 books in translation out of the 18 in total I read. One book (Banquet Bug) I had mistaken for being a translated work, only to find out later that it was the author’s first work in English (she previously wrote in her native Chinese). Then there was the other issue of heavy heavy books. And I had to take a break and go for some lighter reads by finishing the Lemony Snicket series. The non-fiction books were also those I had started in January.
Excuses excuses, I know. I’m continuing with a few more translated works in March but my plan this month is to read more non-fiction.
Fiction (13)
The Confessions of Noa Weber – Gail Hareven
Brothers – Yu Hua
Out – Natsuo Kirino
To the end of the land – David Grossman
Voice Over – Celine Curiol
Detective Story – Imre Kertész
The Tale of the Unknown Island – Jose Saramago
Banquet Bug – Yan Geling
Tokyo Fiancee – Amelie Nothomb
Slippery Slope – Lemony Snicket
Grim Grotto – Lemony Snicket
The Penultimate Peril – Lemony Snicket
Girls of Riyadh – Rajaa Alsanea
Poetry (2)
Wonders and Surprises – Phyllis McGinley (ed)
A book of luminous things: an international anthology of poetry – Czeslaw Milosz (Ed)
Graphic novel (1)
Daytripper – Fabio Moon and Gabriel Ba
Non-fiction (3)
The Table Comes First: Family, France and the Meaning of Food – Adam Gopnik
Don’t Kill the Birthday Girl: Tales from an Allergic Life- Sandra Beasley
The Essential Feminist Reader – Estelle B. Freedman (Ed)
Total: 19
But nine is nothing to sniff at! That’s more works in translation than a lot of people read in a year. (Probably including me: I’d have to check, but I often think that I read a lot of something and then discover that I did, but it was in 2007, and it only seems like it’s recent, in book-time.)
And, is it just me, or does it seem like the works that do get translated are, more often than not, heavy heavy works? I see there’s only one in my current stacks, though…obviously not a representative sample. Heh.
Perhaps it is because they are translated, that there is to be extra effort taken with these books, that publishers prefer to have these heavy, more ‘serious’ books translated?