Thursday, September 1, 2022

August 2022

 Another month has come and gone. I more than doubled last month's, despite being busy in Vegas the last four days. 

Books read:

  • How to Succeed as a Freelance Translator, by Corinne McKay. 
  • The New Plant Parent, by Darryl Cheng. We're getting houseplants again and this time, I don't want to kill them.
  • From Here to Eternity, by James Jones. One off my 50 Classics list. Very good.
  • Civil Wars, by Caesar. Also good. One more Caesar "war" book to go.
  • Mulliner Nights, by PG Wodehouse. Great, as usual.
  • Children of Cain, by a friend. Really good. Can't wait to see in print and listed in Goodreads.
  • Earth Alone, by Daniel Arenson. Not good. A bad version and obvious plagiarism of Starship Troopers
Books bought (all $2 deals this month!):
  • Extinct Languages, by Johannes Friedrich. I can't pass up a book on language for two bucks.
  • Fear: A Novel of World War I, by Gabriel Chevallier. Ditto for war books in NYRB editions.
  • The Smell of Night, by Andrea Camillieri. My wife read his first in this Italian detective series and loved it, so now I buy his whenever I see the $2 Kindle deals. I need to read one thought, to see if I've wasted my money.
  • Putin's Playbook: Russia's Secret Plan to Defeat America, by Rebekah Koffler. Reading this on Audible. Preaching to the choir.
  • The History Man, by Malcolm Bradbury. I heard he's a good author, so why not for two bucks.
  • Creativity: A Short and Cheerful Guide, by John Cleese. Yes, that John Cleese. 
  • Babel: Around the World in Twenty Languages, by Gaston Dorren. I hope this one is better than the traveling 60 language one I read (again) several months ago.
Almost done with the Middle Egyptian class and they've announced the next translation group. We'll be translating The Instructions of Amenemhat. Can't wait to start it. It'll start sometime in September. 

Speaking of September, my Serbian/Croatian refresher with the DLI instructor starts again in a couple weeks. I plan on taking the DLPT the week of Thanksgiving. Fingers crossed for a 2/2. I've got to get back to watching Novine, but have been busy this trip. I might start reading Agatha Christie's A Cat Among the Pigeons, which I've got in a Croatian version.

I paused the Esperanto book for a bit so I could beta-read my friend's book and finish the family book club choice. I'll jump back in it after BCS. I am still reading plenty of the language, though, as I'm still translating Mi Stelojn Jungis al Revado, by Mikaelo Bronstejn. 

3 comments:

  1. Great month!
    I see you love all things about languages. I do too. I know a few languages. Even though my blog is mostly in English, I'm actually French, living in the US though.
    I'm currently teaching myself Italian and Japanese.
    I have a friend who knows how to read Middle Egyptian.

    I kind of laughed at the title of the first book listed here. I did translations for many years, including novels, but it's really hard to live exclusively on that job!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks for the comments Emma! Do you know about the site Language Learner's Forum? https://forum.language-learners.org/ Very nice site with tons of people learning various languages. The "Resources" section is particularly nice.

      Delete
  2. Oh, and I should mention that if you are ever interested in studying Middle Egyptian (or any of its resulting languages and variants), Glyphstudy is the place to do it: https://glyphstudy.groups.io/g/main

    ReplyDelete

So many books...

 ...and even a language! Good Lord I've read so much since last posting! Will post in less than a week my "March 2024" post so...