April - June nominations

Is anyone reading 2666? I haven't seen any discussion about it. Hmm.

Shall we begin our nominating process for the next two books?

*Nominate up to two books
*Second as many as you want (though more than one second per book is moot)
*Poll for the books will start on March 15th
*Poll for second book on March 25th if necessary, unless there's a clear 2nd place book.

Sound OK?

There are two threads open for 2666.

I'm nominating:
1) La Reine Margot (Queen Margot) by Alexandre Dumas
2) Le Rouge et le Noir (The Red and the Black) by Stendhal

My two nominations:

The Betrothed by Alessandro Manzoni (I Promessi Sposi)

The Manuscript Found in Saragossa by Jan Potocki (Le manuscrit trouvé à Saragosse)

>1 teelgee: Discussion is here, I believe... http://www.librarything.com/topic/84237

Duh. I 'x'ed it out since I wasn't going to participate. Thanks.

I second The Red and the Black

and I'll nominate Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy and The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer

I second The Red and the Black

and I'll nominate Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy and The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer

I second The Red and the Black

and I'll nominate Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy and The Executioner's Song by Norman Mailer

OK OK, but you still only get one vote each! ;o)

I'll nominate:

King Lear by William Shakespeare
and
Buddenbrooks by Thomas Mann

I second both King Lear and Buddenbrooks. I've had both on my someday pile for quite some time.

I nominate Autumn of the Patriach by Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Kokoro by Natsume Soseki

I nominate:
Dina's Book by Herbjorg Wassmo and
Adam Bede by George Eliot.
And I second:
The Betrothed by Alessandro Manzoni and
Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy.
I would love to read more Hardy this year.
belva

I second Dina's Book and Adam Bede

I second Buddenbrooks by Mann and Autumn of the Patriarch by Marquez whom I love

I nominate Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Gaskell, and Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller.
I second Le Rouge et le Noir (The Red and the Black) by Stendhal.

I second Wives and Daughters.

I'm still up for Buddenbrooks! I third Wives and Daughters as well; I love Gaskell.

I nominate:

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert

And nothing else. :)

Happy with all the seconding so far.

I happily second Madame Bovary.

I nominate
Number9Dream
Mrs Dalloway

Second The Manuscript Found In Saragossa.

Nominate On Beauty and One Hundred Years Of Solitude.

I second Mrs. Dalloway.

I'll second One Hundred Years of Solitude

If I'm allowed to second a second time, I could go for Number9Dream. Consider it seconded.

emaestra -- yes, you can second as many as you want and nominate up to two.

I think it's probably too late to add in a new nomination, but I want to put this out there for next round of nominations (getting in early, because I just KNOW I'll forget it in the next few months, stupid memory):

The Tartar Steppe by Dino Buzzati, thanks to Yann Martel for bringing it to my attention: http://www.whatisstephenharperreading.ca/2009/09/28/book-number-65-the-tartar-st...

ETA: BEWARE! There are some spoilers in Yann Martel's summary. Skip the paragraph starting with "And really, it must be read." if you're spoilerphobic.

No not to late, and I'll second it. I am late getting the poll up - think I'll go to bed for awhile and do it in the morning...er, do it later this morning.

You're a star, thanks!

The poll is here

Results are here

Please vote only once, but for as many books as you want.

So, are we reading Wives and Daughters and Buddenbrooks?

Don't call it too soon! I believe the vote goes until the 25th! :)

That's right, voting doesn't end until tomorrow.

Ah-- I thought it ended Monday.

When I follow the link to the poll, it says it's closed.

Oops, it's fixed now. Thanks/sorry.

Poll is officially closed ...and the envelope please....

Wives and Daughters by Elizabeth Glaskell is a clear winner for the first book.

Now for the second book, we have a tie! between Buddenbrooks and Madame Bovary. So there will be a runoff poll up in a few minutes... I'll post a link.

Runoff poll is up, vote by March 30th.

Vote

Results

Yeah for Wives and Daughters! This is a new author for me --looking forward to this read.
I'm amazed that the Hawaii Library System does not own one book of hers. No choice but to buy this one and then donate it to the library when I am done.

I'm crossing my fingers for Buddenbrooks, which has started off with a good lead.

I think Buddenbrooks might be romping it in because it seems to be quite different from Wives and Daughters - whereas obviously the Gaskell and Madame Bovary have main female characters in common.

I'll just nominate Madame Bovary again another time, there's no hurry. :) And in the meantime, I'd better get over my antipathy towards Thomas Mann! Just because I've never gotten past the first page of Death in Venice!

And I'd better catch up on some of the older reads as well...

Well, I bought a copy of Wives and Daughters from amazon last night and it should arrive early next week. For those interested, there is a $5.99 bargain price mass market paperback, you just have to click around to find it. I am excited to read this as I looked at the few pages amazon had on-line and it starts well and Gaskell can really write.

wookiebender - I'm with you on the Thomas Mann in terms of antipathy, so glad I'm not the only one as it makes me feel less of a philistine.

40 & 41--If anything can get you over antipathy towards Mann, Buddenbrooks should do it. It's a lovely family saga--nothing at all like Death in Venice. I do hope you'll give it a try.

42 - Ok, I am willing to give it a try, but like 40, I had a bad experience with Death in Venice as a teenager. I got it at the library when I was 12 or 13, attrracted because it seemed to have a young person in it and I did force my way through most of it, though I do admit to skimming and not understanding any of the subtext and undertones.

As I grew up in the 70s and 80s, people weren't in quite such a twist about age-appropriate material and the rule in my family was that if a book was genuinely too old for me, I wouldn't understand it and would bog down in it and if I did understand it - well, it was too late anyway. This rule should have functioned as intended with the Mann, but somebody mocked me for reading it, so I was determined to finish. I have never even tried The Magic Mountain.

However, I love family sagas both old and new, so maybe Buddenbrooks is the Mann for me. ;-)

That's how I raised my now 21 year old son. He was exposed to everything as a matter of course. We hid nothing from him. We believed and still believe that if it was over his head or beyond his maturity it would be meaningless to him. If he did catch on to it then he would find it on his own, elsewhere. We bought him a subscription to Playboy when he was about fifteen. Now he is a remarkably sexually well-adjusted young man. He's not completely out of the woods yet, in terms of maturity, but he is less neurotic than many others his age.

#44 - I agree and this is how I have done it as well. I don't get this complete over-protection of children; life is hard, even when it is easy and kids need to have some clue about that all along rather than having it sprung on them all at once at some mythical age when they are "ready". And just who is ready for some of the truths about the world at any age? But the neurotic policing of reading and viewing material so popular today with an eye toward sex bad, violence a ok has always seemed odd to me. Especially as we both found out, kids will do their own policing quite well. Too hard and too mature is boring and will be put down or turned off.

But the neurotic policing of reading and viewing material so popular today with an eye toward sex bad, violence a ok has always seemed odd to me

Amen.

When considering both books and movies for my children I don't start by detracting points for violence/sex/etc. I add points for having "value" meaning it is literary, explores something I deem important, requires critical thinking, etc. If the points are "positive" then I deem it approved. If they encounter something too mature they may just skip over and it goes un-understood. If it bothers them they can choose to not read/watch. No sense trying to keep the world a secret.

Just a note, some classics like Madame Bovary are free on kindle.. if you have one, its a great way to get the book for this!

And Project Gutenberg has squillions of free ebooks in various formats. http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page

Have never read Thomas Mann but have always planned on it someday. Looks like the day may have come!~! Yea!~!

And Buddenbrooks is the clear winner, in a landslide!

So Wives and Daughters followed by Buddenbrooks for the second quarter of 2010. Read on!

I'm not going to read Wives and Daughters, but fortunately
I'll start reading Buddenbrooks medium May.

Who'll be reading Buddenbrooks, and when will you start on it?

Nice to see you again, kik! I'm not sure yet about Buddenbrooks. Depends on my other required reading for May/June.

Yay! I finally get to read Buddenbrooks!!!! I've had it for many years, but it didn't seem like something I'd like to read alone. Already started Wives and Daughters....good times!

I'll probably start Buddenbrooks in Late April. I've never read Mann and am looking forward to it.

I will be reading both of them beginning with Wives and Daughters and most likely upon finishing that one I will begin Buddenbrooks. However the good Lord only knows when that will be as at the moment I have 10 books going and am mainly concentrating right now on The Three Musketeers, but I read at least 100 pages of something else every day.
Happy reading all,
belva

My copy of Wives and Daughters has 60 chapters; what do you say we make 3 threads with 20 chapters each? Plus an intro/bio thread and general thread? Any other ideas?

My copy of Wives and Daughters arrived today - and just in time it seems. I will start and I am going to try the Buddenbrooks as well. Does anybody know what the best translation for Buddenbrooks is? A good translation often makes all of the difference. Thanks and looking forward to discussing the Elizabeth Gaskell.

I have Wives and Daughters on my tbr. Yea! Still looking for a copy of Buddenbrooks.
--BJ

My copy of Wives and Daughters should arrive in about two days. Breaking it up into three threads sound good to me -- Teelgee

I am half way through Moll Flanders by DeFoe (highly recommend) and I should finish by Monday. Soooo, starting Wives and Daughters beginning of next week.

I'll check on the translations of Buddenbrooks - if it wasn't 600 page I would try to read it in German, but this would take me too long.

#58 Anastasia169

About Buddenbrooks English Translations:

"Buddenbrooks" was the first product of the 30-year collaboration between Thomas Mann and the American translator Helen T. Lowe-Porter (1876-1963), through whose renditions most of his works became known to the English-reading public. Although its competence was acknowledged, it is not the strongest example of her craft. As she pointed out in her "Translator's Note," Lowe-Porter had special difficulties with the dialects, to which the novel owes much of its humor and the sharpness of its characterizations. "This difficulty is insuperable," she concluded. "Dialect cannot be transferred." Accordingly, she leveled Mann's colorful variety of speech into a uniformly even style, in certain cases simply omitting passages. As a result, much of the novel's humor was lost.

These inadequacies alone would probably justify a new translation. John E. Woods, whose intrepidity in the face of linguistic difficulties is attested by his prize-winning renditions of such writers as Arno Schmidt ("Evening Edged in Gold") and Patrick Suskind ("Perfume"), is not dismayed by Mann's play with dialects. He has restored passages omitted by Lowe-Porter and found ingenious renderings for tricky puns: for example, a Latin teacher's rule of thumb for rules of gender: "What's good for the goose is good for the gender." He has also retrieved occasional passages that Lowe-Porter omitted for reasons of delicacy: some lines on flatulence, for instance, that aptly characterize Tony Buddenbrook's boorish son-in-law.

Elsewhere Mr. Woods's vocabulary is closer to the earthiness of Mann's language, as when Hanno Buddenbrook, after gorging himself on Christmas sweets, states that he's about to "throw up" -- which Lowe-Porter ambiguously renders as, "I think I'll just have to give it all up." Mr. Woods not only remains closer in vocabulary to Mann; he renders Mann's style more faithfully than his predecessor, who did not hesitate to recast and shorten Mann's sentences.

It is a truism that every generation needs its own translations. Lowe-Porter provided a valuable service by making Mann's novel initially accessible to the English and American publics. In Mr. Woods's sparkling new translation, the reader approaching "Buddenbrooks" in English now encounters a work that is closer in style, vocabulary, idiom and tone to the original and can thus appreciate more fully the monumental achievement of the artist as a young Mann.

Source: New York Times, Book section, April 18, 1993

***Look for the John E. Woods English translation***

I have to check my book to see which translation it is. It's kind of old, I think.

My library doesn't have Buddenbrooks so I would need to buy a copy..... it had better be good ;D

artist as a young Mann

*groan*

My library has a copy of Buddenbrooks (I have to request it from the stack), but since it's in the stack it would have to be an old copy, I think. Will have to investigate further, because I really want the Woods translation now...

I'm sure Mum'll have a copy of Wives and Daughters, so that's easily sourced.

I do have a few other books to get through at the moment, so won't be participating early in any discussion!

I read Wives and Daughters last year so won't be joining you all for this time. But I'll see if I can source Buddenbrooks so that I can participate on that one.

Well, I bought a copy of Buddenbrooks today - the Woods translation. I am trusting all of you that it is good. :) Actually, I peeked into it a bit and was attracted so perhaps this is the time and the place that my Mann trauma will be healed. Giggle.

Will get down to business and start Wives and Duaghters without delay.

#52--I ordered a copy of Buddenbrooks from half.com and will start reading it in mid May. I am currently readingOne Hundred Years of Solitude and Mrs. Dalloway and Iwould like to finish these up before I start a new one. As you might recognize, I pretty much stick with books from the 1001 list which Buddnenbrooks is on.

I'm finishing up Cannery Row and will then start Buddenbrooks-- probably this week sometime.

I will start Buddenbrooks in about a week.
My Norwegian edition has got eleven parts.
Should we create some new threads for the reading of the novel?

I think 4 threads will do.

Other suggestions?

Hi folks, can anybody recommend a good translation? Thanks

Buddenbrooks translation:
I don't know the scholarly opinions on translation, but I'm reading the Vintage Books 1984 edition translated by H. T. Lowe-Porter. I find it natural and accessible to read.

Check out message #61 for English translations

Aha, i've ordered the book and should be able to start it in about a week or so.