Laurie R. King Virtual Book Club discussion

Summer is quickly approaching and I've been seeing a million articles and posts about summer reading lists. So what's on yours this year? Old favorites? Or something new you've been looking forward to?

Erin wrote: "Summer is quickly approaching and I've been seeing a million articles and posts about summer reading lists. So what's on yours this year? Old favorites? Or something new you've been looking forward..."

I wouldn't even know where to start, as I usually have about 100 books backed up in the queue! I guess the immediate next thing up is Victoria Thompson's "Murder in Morningside Heights," and I'm really looking forward to the new Louise Penny in August.

I'm going to see a performance of Merchant of Venice IN VENICE this summer, so I'm going to re-read the play, and if I have time, Howard Jacobson's Shylock is My Name. This is, of course, aside from the myriad books that keep creeping onto my TBR list.

I'm usually a romance girl, so I'll be reading those after I catch up with Mary Russell!

... And I'm jealous of your Venice vacation.

Lenore wrote: "I'm going to see a performance of Merchant of Venice IN VENICE this summer, so I'm going to re-read the play."

I love reading books set in the place I'm gearing up to visit. Last year I read Hemmingway's A Moveable Feast while I was in Paris :-D

For this year, I'm looking for books set in New Orleans (for Bouchercon) and Bangkok (a friend found a crazy deal, so we're going in November!), but I haven't settled on anything yet. Goodreads has a cool new metadata feature for book settings, but it hasn't been widely filled in by the collective librarians yet.

Erin wrote: "I love reading books set in the place I'm gearing up to visit....For this year, I'm looking for books set in New Orleans (for Bouchercon) and Bangkok...."

I take an annual trip with four girlfriends, and we always try to read a book or two set in our destination or by a local author. It definitely adds something to the trip.

For Bangkok, you might try John Burdett's Bangkok 8. I thought it was a good read, but the side of Bangkok that it shows you will not be something you would otherwise encounter as a tourist who is not there for the sex trade.

I just posted on my blog what my summer reading list consists of for new books coming out this summer. However, my lists are always changing, and I have much Bouchercon reading to do, too. Like you, Merrily, I usually have about 100 books in the queue. I should probably shut myself in someplace for three months and just read, someplace like the beach. Hahaha!

Here's a link to my book blog post on new publications for this summer that I hope to get to. http://www.readingroom-readmore.com/

Well, summer is officially over, but I can't find a place to put this comment (Chit-Chat is closed), so I'm putting it here:

I've just begun listening to Elena Ferrante's My Brilliant Friend, which was widely recommended (although I'm not yet sure why), which is -- obviously -- translated from Italian. The translation makes several English grammar errors (e.g., "me" instead of "I"), which at first annoyed me. And then I began to wonder: As Ferrante indicates that a lot of the conversations are in dialect instead of formal Italian, are these intentional errors -- which exist in reminiscence as well as in conversation -- intended to demonstrate colloquial speech? Because all of the errors are indeed colloquial usage.

Somewhere on this list -- but I can't find it -- I think we discussed the perils of translation, and the old saw that "traduire, c'est trahir" (to translate is to betray). I'm wondering how a reader/listener is to know whether such "errors" are intentional.

Feel free to add new threads (or re-start old ones) as you wish, Lenore! I've been trying to keep the threads clean, so things that are older (ie haven't been posted to in 6+ months) have been archived.

I would think that it's all down to context, for your translation question. But that's a hard one. I would think, though, that a good translation would convert the colloquialisms to something that still fits the grammar?

Erin wrote: "Feel free to add new threads (or re-start old ones) as you wish, Lenore! ..."

How does one do that?