Catching up on Classics (and lots more!) discussion

Books and Languages Chalenge (2018 - 2019)

The idea is to read one book for every language I understand, and the book has to be written by an author whose native language is that language. The problem is that I understand these languages in different levels and that some books are hard to find.

Albanian - Pse? by Sterjo Spasse ✔ *
Bosnian - Tvrđava by Meša Selimović
Croatian - Kiklop by Ranko Marinković
English (American) - Seed to Harvest by Octavia E. Butler ✔ ****
English (British) - Frankenstein: The 1818 Text by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley ✔ ****
English (other) - Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood ✔ *****
Finnish - Helsinkiin by Juhani Aho -reading
French - L'Étranger by Albert Camus
German - basic, preferably children's book
Italian - Se una notte d'inverno un viaggiatore by Italo Calvino ✔ *****
Montenegrin - something I can buy online
Portuguese - A Fada Oriana by Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen ✔ ****
Serbian - Grobnica za Borisa Davidoviča by Danilo Kiš ✔****
Spanish - Nada by Carmen Laforet -reading


Other challenges:
Books Around the World Challenge - message 12
Birth to Present Challenge - message 13

Wow! I'm impressed! I only speak American English so I won't be any help, but I hope you enjoy your challenge. It looks pretty challenging :)

Terris wrote: "Wow! I'm impressed! I only speak American English so I won't be any help, but I hope you enjoy your challenge. It looks pretty challenging :)"

Thanks! It is a bit challenging, but that's the fun of it. Don't be too impressed. Most of those languages are similar to each other. I added them separately because a challenge with only a couple of books looked too small in comparison to hundreds of books in other people's challenges.

Great challenge,Jehona.
I won't be able to help you with the list either.But would love to follow the challenge.
Happy Reading!

siriusedward wrote: "Great challenge,Jehona.
I won't be able to help you with the list either.But would love to follow the challenge.
Happy Reading!"

Thanks! I'll post updates.

What a great idea for a challenge - and I’m impressed by your multilingual-ness! I agree though, when you can read something in the original language it’s so much better :)

I may be able to help with the Portuguese: from your list of languages it sounds like Portuguese from Portugal may be easier (Brazilian Portuguese, while the same language, can be verrrry different grammatically and vocabulary-wise) Have you ever read Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen’s fairy tales? She’s best known for her poetry, but she wrote a series of children’s stories that are delightful. I think A Fada Oriana and O Cavaleiro da Dinamarca are the best known (aka, now studied in school 😊). If you want, you can also check out my portuguese shelf which has most of what I’ve read in Portuguese (which sadly is not all that much, English tends to be my go-to language!). Just maybe avoid everything from before the 20th century... 😅

PS - I'm planning on reading A Fada Oriana this year for my Women's Century challenge; it's probably a bit silly to buddy read a book so short but we can exchange thoughts in any case! :D

Thank you very much, Francisca!

A Fada Oriana sounds great. Not at all silly to buddy read it. I'm pretty sure it's going to be a bit challenging. Your Portuguese is probably much better than mine. I'm expecting to need a dictionary for a some of the languages in that list. ;)

Hi Jehona,

this is Croatian on line bookstore, but they also sell Bosnian, Serbian and Montenegrian authors. They deliver to all EU countries and shipping cost is 17 Euros for the bills under 70 Euros
https://www.superknjizara.hr/
For suggestion on books and authors tell me what is your command of those languages, since some authors tend to be very intellectual in writing style (Miroslav Krleza for example). Does it need to be classic or some modern living authors can also be considered?

Serbia - anything by Danilo Kiš https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...

Croatia - Ranko Marinković Kiklop
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6...

Bosnia - Meša Selimović Tvrđava
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3...

Zdenka wrote: "Hi Jehona,

this is Croatian on line bookstore, but they also sell Bosnian, Serbian and Montenegrian authors. They deliver to all EU countries and shipping cost is 17 Euros for the bills under 70 ..."

Thanks!

I think it can be either a classic or a modern author.

I think I understand these languages quite well. I'm probably worse than when I was in high school, about 10 years ago, but I should still be able to understand them. I'm probably not at the level of a native language, but that's mostly because I lack exposure and practice.

Kiklop looks interesting, but they don't seem to have it at that online bookstore. I'll look around. Thanks!

This list can be inspiring:

https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/1...

Zdenka wrote: "This list can be inspiring:

https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/1..."

Thanks!

Books Around the World Challenge (2019 - )

The idea here is to read books from different places, different cultures, especially the ones I haven't explored so far. I've chosen only 3 per continent in hopes that I'll finish them during this year.

Africa
Woman at Point Zero (1975) by Nawal El-Saadawi (Egypt) ✔ *****
Things Fall Apart (1958) by Chinua Achebe (Nigeria)
A Grain of Wheat (1967) by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o (Kenya)
America North
House Made of Dawn (1968) by N. Scott Momaday (Kiowa)
Half-Breed (1973) by Maria Campbell (Métis)
Lakota Woman (1990) by Mary Crow Dog (Sicangu Oyate)
America South
Conversation in the Cathedral (1969) by Mario Vargas Llosa (Peru)
Kiss of the Spider Woman (1976) by Manuel Puig (Argentina)
The House of the Spirits (1982) by Isabel Allende (Chile)
Asia
Snow Country (1947) by Yasunari Kawabata (Japan)
The God of Small Things (1997) by Arundhati Roy (India)
My Name Is Red (1998) by Orhan Pamuk (Turkey)
Europe
Hunger (1890) by Knut Hamsun (Norway)
Under the North Star (1963) by Väinö Linna (Finland)
The Passport (1986) by Herta Müller (Romania)
Oceania
The Thorn Birds (1977) by Colleen McCullough (Australia)
The Bone People (1984) by Keri Hulme (New Zealand)
The Whale Rider (1987) by Witi Ihimaera (New Zealand) ✔ ****
Bonus - Antarctica
The Worst Journey in the World (1922) by Apsley Cherry-Garrard
At the Mountains of Madness (1936) by H.P. Lovecraft

Birth to Present Challenge (2019 - )

One book for every year of my life.

1990 - Immortality - Milan Kundera
1991 - The Famished Road - Ben Okri
1992 - Smilla's Sense of Snow - Peter Høeg
1993 - The Robber Bride - Margaret Atwood ✔*****
1994 - Of Love and Other Demons - Gabriel García Márquez ✔****
1995 - Blindness - José Saramago
1996 - Infinite Jest - David Foster Wallace
1997 - Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster - Svetlana Alexievich
1998 - The Antelope Wife - Louise Erdrich
1999 - The Ground Beneath Her Feet - Salman Rushdie
2000 - Baudolino - Umberto Eco
2001 - Yjet nuk vishen kështu (Stars don't dress up like that) - Elvira Dones
2002 - Kafka on the Shore - Haruki Murakami
2003 - Purple Hibiscus - Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
2004 - Suite Française - Irène Némirovsky
2005 - The Book Thief - Markus Zusak
2006 - The Coming - Andrej Nikolaidis
2007 - A Thousand Splendid Suns - Khaled Hosseini
2008 - Të jetosh në ishull (Living on an island) - Ben Blushi
2009 - The Help - Kathryn Stockett
2010 - Room - Emma Donoghue
2011 - The Tiger's Wife - Téa Obreht
2012 - The Snow Child - Eowyn Ivey
2013 - Kukullat nuk kanë atdhe (Puppets have no fatherland) - Flutura Acka
2014 - Kintu - Jennifer Nansubuga Makumbi
2015 - Girl at War - Sara Nović
2016 - Homegoing - Yaa Gyasi
2017 - Little Fires Everywhere - Celeste Ng
2018 - Circe - Madeline Miller ✔*****
2019 - The Priory of the Orange Tree - Samantha Shannon ✔ *****
2020 -

I enjoyed reading through your book choices. Your multi-language list looks very challenging to me. I found a couple of titles I had not heard of to add to my want-to-read list. The Snow Country in particular sounds very good. Thank you.

Thank you for liking my lists! I haven't really done my work on my multi-language list. It looks bigger than it is (some of those languages are pretty much the same) and I seem to read much slower in other languages than in English (even in my mother tongue), probably because I don't use them so often. The other choices were made browsing Goodreads lists and reading descriptions and reviews. In theory, I should enjoy reading most of them.