Category: books

I read a lot, yet I still buy books faster than I read them. There always have been and always will be books in my life.

Journey to the West by Wu Cheng’en, translation by WJF Jenner

After spending over 2,000 pages with a trickster god, I find myself wondering what the appeal of the trickster god is. I don’t think I like tricksters.

Clever underdogs, yes. Arrogant tricksters? Not so much.

This post talks about my impressions after reading a complete translation (and a modern retelling) of the classic Chinese story of the Monkey King and his companions.

Visit We Love Translations: World Literature in English for a complete list of translations:

» What’s the best translation of Journey to the West?

Continue reading Journey to the West by Wu Cheng’en, translation by WJF Jenner

The Brain Makers by HP Newquist

I work for a science journal on the campus of Zhejiang Lab, a research institute dedicated to developing a variety of kinds of “intelligent computing” (artificial intelligence). I have a bachelor’s in computer science, but I have little knowledge of the development of artificial intelligence (something something… subsumption architecture… Eliza…). This book promised to remedy that.

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When and Why I Read The Brain Makers: The History of Artificial Intelligence

The author posted a link to the Kindle book (which was free) on Facebook in the AI group.

Genre: history of science
Date started / date finished: 31-May-23 to 28-Jul-23
Length: 696 pages
ISBN: B08MT5S8LP
Originally published in: 2020
Amazon link: The Brain Makers: The History of Artificial Intelligence

Books I read in 2022

For “best book of 2022”, I choose Uncle Tungsten by Oliver Sacks.

(It’s actually the end of 2024 now, so I don’t remember all 45 of the books I read in 2022 well enough to do a fair comparison. I’m choosing this one by Sacks because it’s always a pleasure to read his stuff, and I hadn’t read this one before.)

Other books I really enjoyed in 2022, according to the annotations in my log, include all six of Jane Austen’s novels, Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton, the entire Dragonwatch series by Brandon Mull, and Never Split the Difference by Chriss Voss with Tahl Raz.

See below for a complete list, book cover thumbnails, and thoughts on the quantity, format, and content of the books I read in 2024.

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Sisyphe Books

There are English quotes and signs throughout this shop in a mall in Hangzhou, but I’m not sure I saw any books in English. I saw bilingual editions of the Harry Potter books, and LOTS of recognizable books translated from English and other European languages. I enjoyed looking around and soaking up the quiet atmosphere of words in ink on paper.

So many books!

西西弗书店 (Xīxī fú shūdiàn)
Founded in 1993, this chain of over 360 shops in 80 cities across China is named after Sisyphus in the Greek myth. The website explains:

What Sisyphus is engaged in is a continuous movement, without purpose, without success or failure, good or evil. This action seems to be ineffective, but it contains awesome power. In the sense of stoicism, and with a touch of sacrifice, we hope to be the Sisyphus of the book and culture industry.

I suppose that’s inspiring. Selling physical books in physical shops in the 21st century does seem like a thankless task, though Barnes & Noble seems to have come back from the brink.

What’s the best translation of Demons (aka Devils aka The Possessed)?

There are five in-print translations of Demons, seven in total.

  1. 1914 – Constance Garnett (various publishers)
  2. 1953 – David Magarshack (Penguin)
  3. 1962 – Andrew R. MacAndrew (Signet)
  4. 1992 – Michael R. Katz (Oxford)
  5. 1994 – Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (Everyman’s Library, Vintage)
  6. 2008 – Robert A. Maguire (Penguin)
  7. 2017 – Roger Cockrell (Alma)

It took a while to figure out how many there were because they’re not all called Demons. Why not?

Continue reading What’s the best translation of Demons (aka Devils aka The Possessed)?

What’s the best translation of The Nine Cloud Dream?

I’ve now read this book three times. I’ve read the 2019 Fenkl translation twice and the 1922 Gale translation once. I haven’t read the out-of-print 1974 Rutt translation. The Fenkl translation is more faithful to the original text, but the Gale translation is okay. For more information on all three translations, visit We Love Translations: World Literature in English:

» What’s the best translation of The Nine Cloud Dream?

See below for a list of characters in The Nine Cloud Dream.

I’ve given the character names as spelled by Fenkl and Gale and also the English meanings as given by Fenkl and Gale. Fenkl uses Chinese-style names using archaic-feel Wade-Giles romanization and Gale uses Korean-style names mixed with English names. I’m pretty sure Fenkl is using the same names that Rutt used.

(Scholars have determined that the original was written in classical Chinese, not Korean Hangul, but I think Gale was using a Hangul source text.)

Beware spoilers! Knowing who the characters are is a bit like knowing the plot.

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What’s the best translation of The Master and Margarita?

These are the English translations of Mikhail Bulgakov’s novel The Master and Margarita:

  1. 1967 – Mirra Ginsburg
  2. 1967 – Michael Glenny
  3. 1993 – Diana Burgin and Katherine Tiernan O’Connor
  4. 1997 – Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky
  5. 2006 – Michael Karpelson (out of print)
  6. 2008 – Hugh Aplin

It’s a short list compared to, like Don Quixote, which has like 20. I thought, aha, there are only six this time, so the research on this one should go pretty fast.

Well, yes; but actually, no.

I got tangled up in two related questions about the origins of the book:

  • Was Bulgakov’s draft of The Master and Margarita complete?
  • Are all the English translations of The Master and Margarita complete?

I didn’t want to stuff what turned out to be ~1500 words into the beginning of my post at We Love Translations. That post is about choosing which English translation to read.

» What’s the best translation of The Master and Margarita?

THIS post is about the answers to those two preliminary questions.

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What’s the best translation of The Hunchback of Notre-Dame?

You’ve seen the Disney movie. Maybe you’ve read the novel. But do you recognize the name Frederic Shoberl? Probably not.

He’s the guy who chose the title we now use to refer to Victor Hugo’s novel, which was originally titled Notre-Dame de Paris. Shoberl wasn’t the first translator (the first was the politically motivated William Hazlitt), but his version gets the credit for hitting the bestseller list in England in the 1830s. (Hazlitt’s title was: Notre-Dame: A Tale of the Ancien Regime. Yawn.)

More about the publication history of The Hunchback of Notre-Dame below.

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Miscellaneous editions of Crime and Punishment

On We Love Translations, I’ve posted to help people answer the question “What’s the best translation of Crime and Punishment?”

But when I was learning about the 14 different translations, I also encountered some interesting adaptations.

There’s a version of Crime and Punishment written for English language learners, some online study guides, a children’s book, some out-of-print comics, a graphic novel, and even a manga version. See below for details.

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What’s the best translation of The Idiot?

There are three public-domain translations, two out-of-print translations, and six modern translations available.

  1. 1887 – Fredrick Whishaw
  2. 1913 – Constance Garnett
  3. 1915 – Eva Martin
  4. 1955 – David Magarshack
  5. 1965 – John W. Strahan
  6. 1980 – Henry Carlisle and Olga Andreyeva Carlisle (Signet)
  7. 1992 – Alan Myers (Oxford)
  8. 2002 – Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky (Vintage/Everyman)
  9. 2003 – Constance Garnett revised by Anna Brailovsky (Modern Library)
  10. 2004 – David McDuff (Penguin)
  11. 2010 – Ignat Avsey (Alma)

Since I’ve now investigated five different Russian Classics in total, the translators’ names are somewhat familiar…

  • Garnett and Pevear and Volokhonsky translated all four of the others (War and Peace, Anna Karenina, Crime and Punishment, Brothers Karamazov).
  • Magarshack did Anna Karenina, Crime and Punishment, and Brothers Karamazov, but not War and Peace.
  • McDuff did Crime and Punishment and Brothers Karamazov.
  • Avsey did Brothers Karamazov.
  • Whishaw did Crime and Punishment.

Garnett’s translations, in their time, were groundbreaking; though some say they’re out of date, updated versions exist alongside the originals. Meanwhile, Pevear and Volokhonsky have taken the world by storm, leaving other recent translations standing in their shadow. Which one is really “best” depends on what you’re looking for, though.

For cover images, sample extracts for comparison, ISBNs, pagecounts, and links to relevant articles, visit We Love Translations: World Literature in English.

What’s the best translation of The Idiot?