World Book Day 2020

Are you ready for World Book Day? It will be upon us this Thursday, 23 April 2020. This special day was officially proclaimed in 1995 by UNESCO, The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, and is celebrated by over 100 countries on that day.

According to the UNESCO web page, the full name is World Book and Copyright Day, and many festivities are planned all around the world. In addition, a World Book Capital is named each year, and that city promotes literacy throughout the year until April 23rd of the next year. Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, is the World Book Capital for 2020.

23 April is a symbolic date for world literature. It is on this date in 1616 that Cervantes, Shakespeare and Inca Garcilaso de la Vega all died. It is also the date of birth or death of other prominent authors, such as Maurice Druon, Halldór K. Laxness, Vladimir Nabokov, Josep Pla and Manuel Mejía Vallejo.
- UN web page

I'm all for promoting books, reading, and literacy; they have always been a big part of my life. What makes me especially happy is that Amazon.com is celebrating by offering 9 Kindle books for free! And remember that free Kindle reader apps are available for most devices!

The categories of the nine free ebooks are: Contemporary Fiction, Thriller, True Crime, Chinese Literature, Romantic Comedy, Biographical Fiction, Historical Fiction, Children's Book, and Memoir. The books have all been translated into English, and come from a wide variety of languages. In addition many are by authors who are prize winners or best sellers in their native countries. Such a good chance to peek into another culture.

But hurry, these books are only free until 11:59 PM [Pacific Daylight Time] on Friday night. The time remaining is shown at the top of the download page, so check it in your local time zone. Here's the page on Amazon.com to get your free ebooks:

 https://www.amazon.com/article/read-the-world-2020

FURTHER READING

* UN: World Book and Copyright Day 23 April
https://www.un.org/en/observances/book-and-copyright-day

* UNESCO: World Book Day
https://en.unesco.org/commemorations/worldbookday

* World Book Day - a British site for their day, 7 March 2019
https://www.worldbookday.com/

World Book Day 2019

Are you ready for World Book Day? It will be upon us this Tuesday, 23 April 2019. This special day was officially proclaimed in 1995 by UNESCO, The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, and is celebrated by over 100 countries on that day. Except that the UK celebrates it on the first Thursday in March, apparently to avoid conflicts with Easter and school holidays.

According to the UNESCO web page, the full name is World Book and Copyright Day, and many festivities are planned all around the world. In addition, a World Book Capital is named each year, and that city promotes literacy throughout the year until April 23rd of the next year. Sharjah, a United Arab Emirates city on the Arabian Gulf, is the World Book Capital for 2019.

 23 April is a symbolic date for world literature. It is on this date in 1616 that Cervantes, Shakespeare and Inca Garcilaso de la Vega all died. It is also the date of birth or death of other prominent authors, such as Maurice Druon, Halldór K. Laxness, Vladimir Nabokov, Josep Pla and Manuel Mejía Vallejo.
    - UN web page

I'm all for promoting books, reading, and literacy; they have always been a big part of my life. What makes me especially happy is that Amazon.com is celebrating by offering 9 Kindle books for free! The 6 novels, 1 biography, and 1 true crime book have all been translated into English, and come from a wide variety of languages. In addition the books are by authors who are prize winners or best sellers in their native countries. Such a good chance to peek into another culture. I am looking forward to reading most of these books, and applying them to the Reading All Around the World Challenge!

But hurry, these books are only free until 11:59 PM [Pacific Daylight Time] on Wednesday night. The time remaining is shown at the top of the download page, so check it in your local time zone. Here's the page on Amazon.com to get your free ebooks:

https://www.amazon.com/article/read-the-world

Further Reading

* UN: World Book and Copyright Day 23 April
http://www.un.org/en/events/bookday/

* UNESCO: World Book Day
https://en.unesco.org/commemorations/worldbookday

* World Book Day - a British site for their day, 7 March 2019
https://www.worldbookday.com/

The Stolen Bicycle

The Stolen Bicycle
Wu Ming-Yi
The Text Publishing Company, 2017 translation by Darryl Sterk
Mandarin Chinese original published 2015
376 pages


I'm afraid this is going to be a bit of an HIBK review - Had I But Known that the plot was so heavy with Taiwanese World War II history, I probably wouldn't have read it. I liked the beginning but about half way through I got bored and restless. As someone who feels compelled to complete every book once started, I soldiered on (pun intended) and finished it.

The publisher's summary:

A writer embarks on an epic quest in search of his missing father’s stolen bicycle and soon finds himself caught up in the strangely intertwined stories of Lin Wang, the oldest elephant who ever lived, the soldiers who fought in the jungles of South-East Asia during the Second World War and the secret worlds of the butterfly handicraft makers and antique bicycle fanatics of Taiwan.

Award-winning novelist Wu Ming-Yi is also an artist, designer, photographer, literary professor, butterfly scholar, environmental activist, traveller and blogger, and is widely considered the leading writer of his generation in his native Taiwan.

All the professional reviews I read praised it highly. It was longlisted for the 2018 Man Booker International Prize and won many prizes and honors in the author's native Taiwan. I somehow always feel that I should enjoy prize-winning novels, but I know that is an unrealistic expectation. Novels are many and divers, as are the tastes of the readers.

What I enjoyed was the information about the butterfly art, the elephants, and some of the bicycle details. In a history lesson, I learned that China gave up Taiwan to the Japanese after losing the First Sino-Japanese War in 1895. Japan ruled the island until 1945 and the end of WWII.

What I did not enjoy was all the detail about the fighting in the jungles on the mainland and the excessive Taiwanese bicycle lore. There are lots of characters as the story wanders back and forth in time and space, which I found a bit confusing. This is another book that needs a character chart and/or a set of family trees to keep it all straight. I think it is especially difficult when the names are not familiar ones from your own culture, but that could be just me.

The writing, or I should say the translation was easy to read, but I had two issues with it. First, it's a sloppy translation. I found numerous places where a word was left out that needed to be there, often part of a verb, sometimes just a random word. There are also instances of non-native sounding English. The translator is a native English speaker who has lived in Taiwan for a long time, and maybe that was the problem. However some editor or proofreader at the Australian publisher should have flagged the missing words and the odd syntax before publication. I also thought there were too many side stories which could have been shortened or eliminated altogether without harming the central story. Besides adding to the confusion, they made the book longer than it needed to be.

In the end, it's only so-so in my opinion. I just checked at Goodreads and found others had similar feelings about this book, but then again many loved it and praised its lyrical quality. I guess you will have to read it yourself for a definitive answer!

World Book Day 2018

Are you ready for World Book Day? Hmmm, I never heard of it before either, but it will be upon us this Monday, 23 April 2018. I'm all for promoting books, reading, and literacy; they have always been a big part of my life. What makes me especially happy is that Amazon.com is celebrating by offering 9 Kindle books for free! The 8 novels and 1 memoir have all been translated into English, and come from a wide variety of languages. Making this more tantalizing for me is that the books are by authors who are prize winners or best sellers in their native countries. Such a good chance to peek into another culture.

But hurry, these books are only free until 11:59 PM on Tuesday night. The time left is shown at the top of the download page, so check it in your local time zone. Here's the page on Amazon.com to get your free ebooks:

https://www.amazon.com/article/read-the-world

This special day was officially proclaimed in 1995 by UNESCO, The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, and is celebrated by over 100 countries. Except that the UK celebrates it on the first Thursday in March, apparently to avoid conflicts with Easter and school holidays.

According to the UNESCO web page, the full name is World Book and Copyright Day, and many festivities are planned all around the world. In addition, a World Book Capital is named each year, and that city promotes literacy throughout the year until April 23rd of the next year. Athens is the World Book Capital for 2018.

23 April is a symbolic date for world literature. It is on this date in 1616 that Cervantes, Shakespeare and Inca Garcilaso de la Vega all died. It is also the date of birth or death of other prominent authors, such as Maurice Druon, Halldór K. Laxness, Vladimir Nabokov, Josep Pla and Manuel Mejía Vallejo.
- UN web page

 I am looking forward to reading most of these books, and applying them to the Reading All Around the World Challenge!

Further Reading

* UN: World Book and Copyright Day 23 April
http://www.un.org/en/events/bookday/

* UNESCO: World Book Day
https://en.unesco.org/commemorations/worldbookday

* In Celebration of World Book Day, AmazonCrossing Aims to Connect One Million Readers with Kindle Books in Translation
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/celebration-world-book-day-amazoncrossing-130000539.html

* World Book Day - a British site for their day, 7 March 2018
https://www.worldbookday.com/

* Read the World: Celebrate World Book Day with AmazonCrossing
https://www.amazon.com/article/read-the-world

Reading All Around the World Challenge

One more book challenge has called my name, and I think I can fit it in, as it's another long-term one: Reading All Around the World. This is hosted by Jean of Howling Frog Books and Esther of Chapter Adventures. The goal is to read one book, fiction or nonfiction, from each of 50+ countries, in whatever time frame you choose. Very loose rules! I'm aiming for 100 books in 5 years, but because it can be hard to find good translated books from so many places, I am listing all 197 countries listed on the challenge page. As I find interesting titles, I'll add or subtract from this list. My reviews will be linked here, as well.

My List:

Books I have finished are listed and as I review them, they will have links. Proposed titles or authors are enclosed in [].

Afghanistan    [The Bookseller of Kabul,  Åsne Seierstad]
Albania
Algeria
Andorra
Angola    [A General Theory of Oblivion, Jose Eduardo Agualusa]
Antigua and Barbuda
Argentina    [Kiss of the Spiderwoman, Manuel Puig]
Armenia
Australia    [The Ladies of Missalonghi, Colleen McCullough]
Austria  [A Whole Life, Robert Seethaler]
Azerbaijan
Bahamas
Bahrain
Bangladesh
Barbados
Belarus
Belgium    [War & Turpentine, Stefan Hertmans]
Belize
Benin
Bhutan
Bolivia    [Our Dead World, Liliana Colanzi]
Bosnia and Herzegovina
Botswana
Brazil    [The Hour of the Star, Clarice Lispector, trans. by Ben Moser]  [Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon, Jorge Amado]
Brunei
Bulgaria    [The Physics of Sorrow, Georgi Gospodinov,]
Burkina Faso
Burundi
Cabo Verde
Cambodia
Cameroon    [It shall be of Jasper and Coral ; and, Love-Across-A-Hundred-Lives: Two Novels, Werewere Liking]
Canada - The Long Way Home, Louise Penny
Central African Republic (CAR)
Chad
Chile
China    [Notes of a Crocodile, Qiu Miaojin, translated by Bonnie Huie]
Colombia    [Gabriel García Márquez]
Comoros
Democratic Republic of the Congo
Republic of the Congo        [Blue White Red, Alain Mabanckou] [Black Moses, Alain Mabanckou]
Costa Rica
Cote d'Ivoire
Croatia    [The Museum of Unconditional Surrender, Dubravka Ugresic]
Cuba
Cyprus
Czech Republic - Too Loud a Solitude, Bohumil Hrabal
Denmark    [The Keeper of Lost Causes, Jussi Adler-Olsen]
Djibouti
Dominica
Dominican Republic
Ecuador
Egypt    [The Queue, Basma Abdel Aziz] [An Oriental Dance, Khalid Al-Bari]
El Salvador
Equatorial Guinea
Eritrea
Estonia
Ethiopia
Faroe Islands     [Windswept Dawn, William Heinesen; trans. by W. Glyn Jones]
Fiji
Finland
France    [The Kites, Romain Gary]
Gabon
Gambia
Georgia
Germany - Mr. Summer's Story, Patrick Süskind
Ghana
Greece
Grenada
Guatemala
Guinea
Guinea-Bissau
Guyana
Haiti
Honduras
Hungary    [The Last Wolf & Herman, László Krasznahorkai]
Iceland    [Tómas Jónsson, Bestseller, Guðbergur Bergsson; trans. by Lytton Smith]
India
Indonesia
Iran        [The Blind Owl, Sadegh Hedayat, trans. by Naveed Noori]
Iraq
Ireland
Israel    [All the Rivers, Dorit Rabinyan]
Italy      [Baudolino, Umberto Eco]  [Ties, Domenico Starnone]
Jamaica
Japan    [Tale of Genji, Ladi Murasaki]  [Memoirs of a Polar Bear, Yoko Tawada]
Jordan
Kazakhstan
Kenya
Kiribati
Kosovo
Kuwait
Kyrgyzstan
Laos
Latvia
Lebanon
Lesotho
Liberia
Libya
Liechtenstein
Lithuania
Luxembourg
Macedonia        [A Spare Life, Lidija Dimkovska]
Madagascar
Malawi
Malaysia
Maldives
Mali
Malta
Marshall Islands
Mauritania
Mauritius
Mexico    [Carlos Fuentes]
Micronesia
Moldova
Monaco
Mongolia
Montenegro
Morocco    [A Life Full of Holes, Driss ben Hamed Charhadi, recorded and translated by Paul Bowles]
Mozambique
Myanmar (Burma)
Namibia
Nauru
Nepal
Netherlands
New Zealand
Nicaragua
Niger
Nigeria
North Korea
Norway  -  Kristin Lavransdatter, Sigrid Undset
Oman
Pakistan
Palau
Palestine
Panama
Papua New Guinea
Paraguay
Peru    [Conversation in the Cathedral, Mario Vargas Llosa]
Philippines
Poland    [Stone Upon Stone, Wieslaw Mysliwski] [Enemies, A Love Story Isaac Bashevis Singer] [Flights, Olga Tokarczuk, trans. by Jennifer Croft]
Portugal  [The Cave, José Saramago]
Qatar
Romania     [The Life and Opinions of Zacharias Lichter, Matei Calinescu]
Russia    [Novels, Tales, Journeys,  Alexander Pushkin, trans. by Pevear & Volokonsky]
Rwanda
Saint Kitts and Nevis
Saint Lucia
Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
Samoa
San Marino
Sao Tome and Principe
Saudi Arabia
Senegal    [Doomi Golo, Boubacar Boris Diop]
Serbia
Seychelles
Sierra Leone
Singapore
Slovakia
Slovenia
Solomon Islands
Somalia
South Africa
South Korea    [Please Look after Mom, Kyung-sook Shin]
South Sudan
Spain -  Celestina, Fernando de Rojas
Sri Lanka
Sudan    [Hunter of the Chrysalises, Amir Tag Elsir] [French Perfume, Amir Tag Elsir]
Suriname
Swaziland
Sweden - My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry, Fredrik Backman
Switzerland     [To the Back of Beyond, Peter Stamm]
Syria
Taiwan
Tajikistan
Tanzania
Thailand
Timor-Leste
Togo
Tonga
Trinidad and Tobago
Tunisia
Turkey    [The Museum of Innocence, Orhan Pamuk]  [Snow, Orhan Pamuk]
Turkmenistan
Tuvalu
Uganda
Ukraine
United Arab Emirates (UAE)
United Kingdom - The Grave's a Fine and Private Place, Alan Bradley
United States of America - Stone Quarry, S. J. Rozan
Uruguay
Uzbekistan
Vanuatu
Vatican City
Venezuela
Vietnam
Yemen
Zambia
Zimbabwe - Adore: a Novella, Doris Lessing


Let the adventure begin!

Speed Review: Mr. Summer's Story

Mr. Summer's Story
Patrick Süskind
Knopf, 1993 translation by John E. Woods
German original "Die Geschichte von Herrn Sommer", 1991
116 pages

[Note to self: writing this review will NOT take longer than reading this short novella, 2 hours.]

I came upon "Mr. Summer's Story" in a roundabout way: in 2014 someone posted its entire 335-word opening sentence in a comment to a blog post, which I happened upon last week. That sentence piqued my interest and I ordered the book from my library.

This slim story - tale, allegory, fable - is a reminiscence told by a man about some incidents that happened to him when he was a little boy in a tiny rural village. He talks about his life at home, at school, and at the mean piano teacher's house, as well as his adventures with bikes and trees.

In the village lives a strange local man known only as Mr. Summer, who wanders the village and the countryside all day everyday, in weather good or bad. No one knows why, nor cares to find out. Several times over the years, the little boy briefly crosses paths with Mr. Summer. At the end, Mr. Summer disappears from the village. And that's basically the whole story. But as in all good tales, there are clues to partially piece together Mr. Summer's story, and the reasons that the narrator remembers him all these years later.

Patrick Süskind has penned a very charming tale, accompanied by pretty watercolor illustrations from Jean-Jaques Sempé, in a small gift-book format. In addition to the wonderful opening sentence, the book is nicely written, with good touches of small boy logic. And it leaves one with things to ponder, all of which I appreciated on yet another cold, wet, grey, pseudo-spring day.

Back to the Classics 2018: A classic with a single-word title

Celestina
Fernando de Rojas
Penguin, 2009, translation by Peter Bush
Spanish original "Tragicomedia de Calisto y Melibea", 1499
219 pages

"Celestina", also known as the "Tragicomedy of Calisto and Melibea" or "The Spanish Bawd", is quite a book. Still in print after 519 years, it trails a small army of students, critics, and professors of Spanish literature in its wake, producing piles of scholarly articles and books! This translation by Peter Bush is in easily-read modern English.

  

An engaging tale of lust and love, the story is funny, bawdy, and crude. Calisto is a wealthy young man who falls violently in love with a chaste maiden, Melibea, after meeting her once. The plot is about his attempts to woo her using the local bawd (madam, pimp, procuress) and possible witch, Celestina. Calisto's servants are always mocking him behind his back, when they aren't with some of Celestina's girls. Most of the characters are rogues and scoundrels, yet they keep invoking God's name and praying. Basically the book is a parody of the Courtly Love found in the popular romances of the day, but with a tragic ending instead of the typical weddings of the romances.

I read this book more for its historical importance than for the quality of story itself. I'm taking an online course about "Don Quixote" by Miguel Cervantes, written one hundred years after "Celestina". In the course readings and lectures, "Celestina" has been mentioned frequently. Plus many lists of "100 best novels" include it, so I thought I should check it out.

 Tragicomedia de Calisto y Melibea, Valencia, 1514

Its unique, wholly original feature is that the entire book is written in dialogue. There is no narrator to set the scene or explain the action, which can make it tricky to keep straight who's talking. However the translator has added some narrative phrases here and there, such as "suggested Celestina" or "Sempronio grunted to himself", and this does help keep the reader on track.

Some call "Celestina" the first European novel, considered second in importance only to Don Quixote in Spanish literary heritage. I discovered that the word "celestina" is even listed in the Spanish dictionary as a "go-between" or "procuress", proving the lasting effect the book has had on Spanish culture over the centuries. In 1904 Pablo Picasso painted this portrait called "Celestina":

Pablo Picasso's "Celestina"

There is a long article about the book online at the LA Times website, written by one of the all-time great Spanish authors, Juan Goytisolo, who also wrote the introduction to the book I read.
"Celebrating the 500th Anniversary of Spanish Literature's Most Audacious and Subversive Work", Juan Goytisolo, 1999.

I enjoyed "Celestina" and found parts of it quite funny.

Back to the Classics 2018: A Classic in Translation

Kristin Lavransdatter, part 1 The Wreath
Sigrid Undset
Penguin, 1997 translation by Tiina Nunnally
Norwegian original "Kransen", 1920
297 pages

If you hated "Kristin Lavransdatter" when forced to read it in school, put off by all that archaic English, there is Good News! This stalwart classic has been reborn in easily readable English, translated by Tiina Nunnally, an award-winning translator from Seattle, Washington.

In an interview in the Seattle Times, Nunnally says of Undset "She was writing in a 1920s Norwegian — beautiful, straightforward language." And thus this translation is in beautiful, straightforward modern English.

Kristin Lavransdatter is a young girl in Norway in the early 1300s. The publisher's blurb on the back cover sums up the plot nicely:

"...The Wreath chronicles the courtship of a headstrong and passionate young woman and a dangerously charming and impetuous man. Undset re-creates the historical backdrop in vivid detail, immersing readers in the day-to-day life, social conventions, and political undercurrents of the period".

I thoroughly enjoyed the book and found the story engaging enough that I plan on reading the other books in the trilogy, "The Wife" and "The Cross". The story of Kristin Lavransdatter and Erlend Nikulaussøn is timeless and I can imagine it being set in many times and places, much as the play "Romeo and Juliet" is sometimes set in other eras. Sure, their beliefs, laws, and wedding customs might be different from those in the modern western world, but the human tale is enduring. Sometimes young people do make bad life choices, but how they deal with the consequences speaks to their character.

I also liked learning about life in the Middle Ages in rural Norway. Nothing is made to seem quaint or archaic; there is no condescension from a modern point of view. All is perfectly reasonable within the customs of the time. Undset must have been an observant nature lover, for her descriptions of the Norwegian countryside are quite vivid and detailed.

The Nobel Prize in Literature 1928 was awarded to Undset "principally for her powerful descriptions of Northern life during the Middle Ages", according to the Nobel Prize's web page.

"Sigrid Undset - Facts"
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1928/undset-facts.html

The publisher of this translation, Penguin, has a short reader's guide for the trilogy online:

Kristin Lavransdatter Reader’s Guide
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/297272/kristin-lavransdatter-by-sigrid-undset/9780143039167/readers-guide/

For anyone interested in the process of literature translation, the above-mentioned Seattle Times article about Nunnally is quite interesting. The interview is by Mary Ann Gwinn, who is featured in the Bookmarks segment of PBS's “Well Read: A Series for the Serious Reader” and is herself a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist.

Finding the Right Words
An award-winning Seattle translator gives voice to writers from other lands
https://web.archive.org/web/20010911125850/http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/pacificnw/2001/0909/people.html

All in all, a satisfying read for me, one which I'd recommend!

Stone Quarry by S. J. Rozan

Stone Quarry
S. J. Rozan
St. Martin's Minotaur, 1999

"Stone Quarry" is book six in the Lydia Chin/Bill Smith series of mysteries about two New York City private eyes. They have separate practices but often work together. The unusual twist to the series is that the odd-numbered books are about Lydia Chin's cases and told from her point of view, while the evens are Bill Smith's from his point of view. Lydia's cases often involve her Chinatown neighborhood and offer glimpses of local customs; Bill's are more noir and violent. She's twentysomething and lives with her mother, who only speaks Chinese and wants Lydia to be a good Chinese girl with a (Chinese) husband. He's much older, very cynical, has been around, and knows lots of low-lifes and cops. He's also a bit of a tortured soul and sweet on Lydia.

This time Bill has gone to his cabin in the woods of upstate New York, not for relaxation but to take on a job finding some lost art work for a local woman. Then a young man Bill is very fond of goes missing and both the good guys and the bad guys are out to find him. There's a body or two; secrets get uncovered; Bill gets beat up and shot; and Lydia joins him to help out. All par for the course in a Bill Smith/Lydia Chin novel!

I like this series, even though it's a bit more violent than my usual cozy-mystery fare. Lydia and Bill are just friends, though Bill wants something more. Their repartee isn't Tracy and Hepburn, but it's fun. I've enjoyed all six and I look forward to reading the next five. Fingers crossed that Rozan continues the series, although the last one was published in 2011. She has won many mystery writing awards for her novels and short stories.