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.

What’s the best translation of In Search of Lost Time (Remembrance of Things Past)?

You might think there are only two translations to choose from. Well. That’s what *I* thought.

But after many, many hours of collecting and organizing information on Marcel Proust’s masterwork, I can tell you, the situation is much more complicated…

Head over to the first of my Lost Time pages on We Love Translations to learn how many versions of the Scott Moncrieff translation the Anglophone world has produced (and is still producing!), plus details (on the second page) about the Penguin Prendergast project and the rather nebulous new Nelson and Watt project.

Intimidated by the scope and scale of the complete Search? If you want, you can read just a fraction of it. Visit my Swann’s Way page on We Love Translations for information on just Volume 1, and on the novella Swann in Love (which is contained within Volume 1).

If you want a quick-and-dirty recommendation, why not read the new, complete, modern, multi-translator Penguin version? Or at least the first volume of it? Lydia Davis translated Penguin’s Swann’s Way. She has a lot of interesting things to say about her process, and others (mostly) say positive things about the result.

Buy the Davis translation of Swann’s Way on Amazon

For more on Davis’s translation, keep reading.

Continue reading What’s the best translation of In Search of Lost Time (Remembrance of Things Past)?

Shopping for Books in Albania

Wherever I go, I look at the books. Doesn’t matter if I can read them, although books in English have spread across the globe just like English itself has. I’m always interested to see what books look like, whether they are originals in the local language, world classics translated into the local language, or books in English imported from overseas.

See below for photos of two very different types of book shopping experience.

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Books I read in 2023

The best book I read in 2023 was Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein. I liked it because it offers a lot of insight into politics, religion, culture, and human psychology.

The runner up was The Crowd, by Gustave Le Bon, which I liked for the same reason!

I only read 27 books in 2023, approximately one every two weeks. For comparison, I read 45 books in 2022, and I think that was the lowest total since I started keeping track in 1999. The truth is, I moved to China in December 2022 and started a new job at the beginning of 2023, so all my routines got turned upside down. Also, I was pretty slow getting through the four-volume Journey to the West, which was not to my taste.

Of the books I read this year, 10 were ebooks that I read on my phone or kindle, and 17 were printed books.

Of the 10 ebooks, 2 were free public domain ebooks, 1 was free on Amazon because the author decided to give it away, and 7 were purchased.

Of the 17 printed books, 2 were bought by my office, 12 were books I already owned, 2 were bought new, and 1 was bought used.

See below for notes on the content of this year’s books.

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Syntax of Scientific English by Lee Kok Cheong

I hereby declare: It is not necessary for me to finish reading every book I start.

In other words, next time a book bores me as much as this one did, I am going to stop reading it.

I admire what the author set out to do: analyze English-language textbooks to help university teachers guide non-native speakers of English in understanding science.

But this book-length research paper is basically just a bunch of lists. It’s about as dry a piece of writing as one could imagine. In fact, I never imagined it would be this dry, or I wouldn’t have bought the book in the first place.

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When and Why I Read Syntax of Scientific English

I bought this at the National University of Singapore "EResource Discovery Day" book sale. It was published by Singapore University Press. The topic is interesting and relevant to my work, but I'm not sure the analysis will be.

Genre: Linguistics/English
Date started / date finished: 02-Aug-23 to 27-Aug-23
Length: 290 pages
ISBN: na
Originally published in: 1978

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.

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