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[sam_t]

Yet another list of books! This is where I could do with a page that isn't linked to a particular date, so that I could add and update the list later without having to remember when I posted it. However, as I'm less likely to lose the list here than anywhere else...

Things To Read, in no particular order:
Binary Myths 1 and 2. I picked this up from the library on a whim and in a hurry. I think it's 20th century writers writing about writing.
G.P. Taylor, Shadowmancer, Wormwood
Peter Haydon, Beer and Britannia
Liza Picard, Dr. Johnson's London
Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe. I'm fairly certain I can't have avoided reading this, but as I can't remember nearly enough about it, it's time I did so again.
Samuel Richardson, Clarissa
Lois McMaster Bujold, Young Miles, Miles Errant, Memory
Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange
Machiavelli, The Prince
Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
Horace Walpole, The Castle of Otranto
Salman Rushdie, Anything apart from Midnight's Children, Imaginary Homelands and Haroun and the Sea of Stories, as I've got those.
Laurence Sterne, A Sentimental Journey
Daniel Defoe, A Tour Round the Whole Island of Great Britain
Samuel Pepys, Diary (not in one go!)
Aphra Behn, Oroonoko (sp?)
Sarah Fielding, The Governess
Edward Copeland, Women Writing About Money
Fanny Burney, Evelina, Cecilia
Choderlos de Laclos, Les Liaisons Dangereuses (in translation first)
Eliza Heywood, Love in Excess
Charles Lamb, Essays of Elia
Samuel Johnson, Rasselas
Laura Ulrich, A Midwife's Tale
Ashok K. Banker, The Ramayana series
Katie Hickman, Courtesans
Brian Keenan, Four Quarters of Light
Count Francesco da Mosta/John Parker, Venice
Flora Fraser, Princesses
Philip Pullman, The novels that aren't the His Dark Materials trilogy
Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell
Ellen Kushner, ?
Madeleine E. Robins, ?
Jo Walton, ?
Ursula K. Le Guin, Dancing at the Edge of the World
Gregory Maguire, Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister
Lord Dunsany, ?
Helen Maria Williams (An English Lady), A Residence in France during the years 1792-1795
Mary Wollstonecraft, A Vindication of the Rights of Women
Nabokov, Lolita
Louis de Bernières, Señor Vivo and the Coca Lords. I bought this second hand a while ago and haven't read it yet. Shame on me!
Margaret Atwood, The Blind Assassin, and any other novels except The Handmaid's Tale because I've got that one
Alexander McCall Smith, Morality for Beautiful Girls

Some of them are sitting on my bookshelves waiting to be read, some looked vaguely interesting in bookshops, and others were recommendations. This list has got a lot longer since I joined a few more LJ communities!

Comments

[forthwritten.livejournal.com]

I think I might do a similar thing where I buy books, they loiter on my shelves and one day I hope that the time is right to read them. At the moment I'm reading Mark Musa's translation of Dante's Inferno.

[sam-t.livejournal.com]

Yes, I'm terrible for buying second-hand books and then not reading them - hence making a list to try to make sure I do get round to it eventually.

The Musa's a verse translation, isn't it? What do you think of it? I've read the Mandelbaum (Everyman) translation, which is blank verse with weak and strong line endings suggesting the terza rima, rather than attempting the rhyme. I found it very readable - a good balance between clarity and poetry - although I can't read Italian so I can't comment about the accuracy of the translation. The only other translation I've read is some of the Sayers, which does go for the terza rima. I think it sounds rather awkward in consequence, English not having all of those helpful vowel endings.

[forthwritten.livejournal.com]

Musa actually wrote a short section called Translator's Note: On Being A Good Lover for the Inferno - not sure if it appears in the other parts.

Musa goes for rhymeless iambic pentameter, quite pared down and simple but powerful and fluent language. It seems somehow false and forced to try to recreate the terza rima in English when as you say, it is grammatically and lexically very different from Italian. I'd be interested in looking at a terza rima interpretation to see how it's done though.