Guilty Pleasures, pt. 1.5 / REVIEW: DEATHNOTE: Another Note - The Los Angeles BB Murder Cases - NISIOISIN

• Year first released:  2006 (Japanese), 2008 (English)
• ISBN of the edition I read:  9781421518831
• Publisher of the edition I read: VIZ Media LLC
• My rating (out of 5): 4.5-ish. or maybe 2ish. hmm... 

Now I want to explain to you one of the reasons I’ve been thinking about guilty pleasures recently:

Just last week, I read the Japanese light novel DEATHNOTE: Another Note - The Los Angeles BB Murder Cases by NISIOISIN. As usual, after reading it, I sat down to write a review of it for you. I found that I was rather stuck, though.

First of all, I absolutely LOVED the book. But when I tried to discuss the book’s style, I had to admit that it’s, frankly, pretty badly written. (I believe that some of this was bad translation, but definitely not all of it.*) It had a constantly shifting POV that was more than a little distracting. To add to this, the first-person narrator played a rather confusing role in the story, one that I don’t think I can definitively explain for you. This is largely because I don’t think I fully understood who the narrator was supposed to be – in fact, to be even more blunt, it felt like the author made a mistake in who the narrator, as a character, is in the overall DEATHNOTE universe. Oops. 

Perhaps, then, I loved the book because it had such great content (even though the form was bad) …right?

Well, partly yes. The plot was great, and had a killer ending. (No pun intended – I mean, it’s a serial-killer mystery, after all.) But what I certainly loved most about the book was the character L (who you’ll know if you’ve read the DEATHNOTE manga or seen the corresponding anime). Revisiting his character – and in prose, instead of only manga or anime form – was an absolute delight. He’s every bit as fantastic and hilarious and genius here as he was in the manga/anime. Very possibly my favorite character to have come out of the genre as a whole.

So then. When I tried to give a numerical score to the book, I wanted to give it a 4.5.

I realized, though, that this score is actually rather misleading. This book doesn’t really deserve a 4.5, for many of the reasons I already described (amongst several others). 

Yet I totally loved the book. It was an absolute blast for me. And so calling it anything less than a 4.5 feels wrong, too.

It turns out that the book is great, but it's not actually good.

Weird, I know.

Another Note was not high-quality. But dang it if it wasn’t one of the funnest books I’ve read recently – and, therefore, worth every minute I spent with it.**

* * * 

*This is actually the second book I've read by NISIOISIN in the past couple weeks. Each had a different translator. Both translations were fine - nothing entirely remarkable or entirely egregious - but overall I think the other book, Decapitation, flowed a little better as far as the translation is concerned.

**By the way, if you’re thinking of reading this book, it’s highly advisable that you read the original DEATHNOTE manga or watch the anime first. This is because:

1. Even though this book is a prequel to the manga/anime series, it actually contains spoilers for the series. 
2. The series is a better “jumping-off-point” to getting a grasp on L’s character. This book itself doesn’t do much of anything to help you understand his personality; it’s better to come to the book with a good feel for it already. (And, again, since L is my favorite part of the book, approaching the manga/anime first will almost certainly increase your enjoyment of this book.)

All that said, if you are familiar with the tropes of DEATHNOTE and are considering this book: Yes. Absolutely. Read this - just know that it's not as "high-quality" as many other great books you could be reading. (In fact, I might even say it's not as "high-quality" as the manga itself, even though it's still totally worth it - especially if, like me, you realize how amazing L is.)

Guilty Pleasures, pt. 1

(Don't worry; this will only be a one-and-a-half part series, not five like The Art of Translation. 😏)

It had to come up sometime.

What’s up with so-called “guilty pleasures”? Is that even a real thing? Is it okay to read them? Is it okay to admit that you read them?

You may have noticed from this blog that I’m rather into literature of a “higher quality,” so to speak: classics, award-winners, literary fiction (instead of genre fiction*), foreign literature, etc. This is what I spend most of my time reading. I’m careful to analyze a book’s form (more than its content), will praise all sorts of aspects of writing (not just “Yeah, the book was fun/cool/clever, I guess.”), often sprinkle my thoughts with references to other books and writers, etc.

Despite this, though, the answer to all of the above is: yes, they exist; yes, it’s okay to read them; and yes, it’s okay to admit that you read them. Of course it is! Gotta do what you love, right?

As I’ve stated once or twice before, if I’m not reading to learn, I’m reading to be entertained or inspired. And dang it if “guilty pleasures” aren’t entertaining. Sometimes all I’m in the mood for is a fun book that’ll make me smile or laugh without requiring any sort of depth as I approach it. In fact, odd though it may sound, sometimes it's great to read for fun as a break from reading for analysis. 

Crazy, I know.

So what qualifies as a “guilty pleasure,” anyway?

I suppose the easy answer to this is: a book (or movie, video game, song, etc. though I’m not really thinking about those right now) which isn’t really “high-quality,” so to speak, but is highly enjoyable anyway. Or we could say it's a book that we like more than it, per se, deserves to be liked.

Of course there can be exceptions to that description (and some people might take offense to it, though I promise none is intended), but it’s close enough for us to work with for now.

For sure guilty pleasures can go too far sometimes. Fifty Shades of Grey should never be read by anyone ever, even if you're only approaching it as a "guilty pleasure." No no no. Please read anything else in the history of ever. Ever. I mean: ever. Like, EVER. No really.

But on the whole, taking a break from the depth and the analysis and the captivatingly intellectual can be refreshing, right?

I'll give you an overarching example (then a couple specific examples).

Though I haven't yet discussed it in this realm, I love horror. (I'll be sure to share LOTS of thoughts on the matter in the future. Hehe...) That said, there are very very precious few horror books that I (or most people, I would argue) would actually consider to be "high quality." The overwhelmingly vast majority of horror novels are really nothing more than...well, guilty pleasures. There are plenty of exceptions, of course, especially amongst the classics: Dracula, Frankenstein, the works of Edgar Allan Poe. But these days, most horror is more enjoyable than it is intellectually gratifying.

(By the way, I could actually say the same thing about Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and Mystery; I merely decided to focus on Horror for a moment there.)

And that's okay.

I'm also a sucker for novelizations of video-games - or, at least, books that are based on/take place in video game universes. A couple favorites are Bioshock by John Shirley and Darksiders: The Abomination Vault by Ari Marmell. Are they going to win awards? Were they written exceptionally well? Absolutely not. But they sure as heck were fun. And even though I know a lot of these aren't going to be good, I still can't help but pick them up when I go to Barnes & Noble.


What about you, friends? What are some guilty pleasures that you read/enjoy? (But please don't tell me if it's Fifty Shades of Grey.)

* * *

* This may surprise you, my claim that I read more general literary fiction as opposed to genre fiction (mystery, sci-fi, etc.). If you look at the number of my reviews for genre fiction, they add up to more than the general fiction, at least as of the time I'm writing this. That said, though, I'll ask you to keep a couple things in mind:

1. I'm trying to give you a good variety of reviews. I'd hate to only give you one type of review, or reviews for only one type of book.
2. I'm not posting the reviews for every single book I read, nor even in the order I read them. In fact, I've only reviewed for you a little over half of the books I've actually read since I first began this blog several weeks ago. (I'm sort of working on some of the others, but these things take time, you know.)

REVIEW: Decapitation: The Blue Savant and the Nonsense User - NISIOISIN

• Year first released:  2008 (Japanese), 2017 (this English translation)
• ISBN of the edition I read:  1945054212
• Publisher of the edition I read:  Vertical
• My rating (out of 5):  4

Looking at the cover of this book, it’d be very easy to form a quick judgment of it. It sure looks like one of those crazy Japanese cartoons, doesn’t it? – and, therefore, it must be for people who like all that that weird Japanese stuff, right?

Well…not really, no.

Yes, Decapitation is a Japanese “light novel” – basically a popular short novel. (The closest thing we produce here in the U.S. would probably be a mass-market paperback.) They don’t generally serve as examples of the highest quality of Japanese literature. And yes, very often, light novels are written that tie-in to manga.

This isn’t a book that’s necessarily targeted at teens, though, nor is it exclusively for people who are already into Japanese media. Instead, Decapitation is a locked-room mystery that is more likely to remind you of Agatha Christie than a comic. Technically, it takes place on an island off the coast of Japan, but there’s very little about the plot or the setting that feel particularly culturally exclusive (for better or worse).

A group of eight strangers – all geniuses – are summoned to an island palace on the whim of an incredibly wealthy and highly bored heiress. Soon enough, one of them ends up dead – decapitated, as you might guess from the book’s title – and, of course, everyone on the island is a suspect in this inventive, twisty novel.

Admittedly, the writing takes a small amount of adjusting to get into. I found myself a bit confused for the first 20 or 30 pages. It wasn’t that the setting or the action was hard to follow – everything was explained/displayed well enough – it was simply hard to understand exactly why things were being expressed in just this way. Wait…is this character speaking right now, or just thinking? Why are some of his thoughts in quotation marks, but not others? etc.

After that first small stretch, though, either it got better, or else I somehow acclimated – it’s hard to say which for sure. Either way, it stopped being of concern very shortly into the book.

Once I got past this small bump in the road at the beginning, the rest of the book came together rather nicely. Though the subject matter was serious (we’re talking about a murder mystery here, of course), NISIOISIN still managed to sprinkle in a healthy amount of levity, without being too obnoxious, cutesy, or out-of-left-field (all things I’ve noticed are sometimes a struggle in other manga and light novels). In fact, the overall tone of the book was fantastic - a definite highlight, all things considered.

The story moved along quickly, the characters were distinct (with the intentional exception of the triplets, of course), and the twists were enjoyable. I wasn’t as shocked by the ending as I’ve been by other similarly-themed novels, but, since Decapitation gives us more to enjoy than just an ending, this wasn’t particularly problematic or distracting. 

I highly enjoyed Decapitation and veritably raced through it. And, if you're at all a fan of mystery - especially one that's more quirky than most other stories in the genre - you probably will, too. 

The Right Time to Read

(Note: If you're a reader of my other blog, this post may look familiar to you. It's a topic I want to touch in this space as well, though, so I've brought it over and spiffed it up a bit for you.)

Right about a year ago, I read The Unbearable Lightness of Being by Milan Kundera. This was actually the second time I’ve read it; I first read it about six years ago. (And, as I explained in my last post, it's actually pretty rare for me to re-read a book.)

What's weird about this, though, is that I really didn't like Unbearable the first time I read it.

The writing is incredible. Stylistically, Kundera is a first-class writer, all the way. But I wasn’t wild about the plot - or the characters - at all. 

And yet I read it again.

There was actually a very specific reason I pulled it out of the box it was buried in to give it another shot. That reason doesn’t really matter right now; I’d like to get at a different point for now.

This time around, I liked it quite a bit more than the first time. I’m still not too thrilled with some of the plot points and character quirks, but I found them much more forgivable this time. Originally, I’d have given it a 2/5. Now, it’s probably more of a 3.5/5 or so. It’s still not perfect, but there are a lot of things to admire about it.

This is actually the second time I’ve done this, though - re-read a book that I didn’t like the first time around.

I also did this with Till We Have Faces by C. S. Lewis. I first read it many years ago (probably about 11-12 years ago or so). It wasn’t bad, I guess…but it was terribly boring. Or so I thought.

When I had occasion to read it again (like Unbearable, there was a very specific reason I revisited Faces), I realized that Till We Have Faces is actually INCREDIBLE. In fact, it now sits in my top 10 favorite books.

Why would I dislike a book so much the first time around, and yet grow so fond of it the next time?

Considering these two little tidbits, I can imagine this means that perhaps there is a “right” time to read a book, so to speak. I wonder if, when I first approached Unbearable or Faces, I had simply come to them at the wrong time (too early, in these cases).

If this is true, I can’t help but wonder: What makes it the “right” time or the “wrong” time to read a book?

Obviously the books themselves don’t change. It can only be something in me that has changed in between readings. But what was the thing that changed?

• Am I more mature now than I was then? (hopefully, yes)
• Am I wiser? (again, I hope so)
• Do I pay more attention to the words? (meh – it’s hard to say)
• Am I looking for different things in books now than what I was looking for then?

…actually, there might be something to that last question.

The first time I read each book, it was just a book I had recently picked up that I thought sounded interesting. There was really nothing more to it than that. And I didn’t like them.

When I returned to each of the books some years later, I had a very specific reason to read them. And now I like them.

I wonder, then, if our motives for reading a certain book actually affect how we feel about the book as a whole.

This sounds like a reasonable assumption. In fact, I see no reason not to assume this is the case.

That said, though, here are the next questions:

• What other books could get the same treatment as Unbearable and Faces?
• How many books have I read (just once) and liked, that maybe I would not like now?
• How many books have I read (just once) for a reason and liked, which I may not have liked in a different circumstance?

And, perhaps most importantly of all:

• What specific reasons for reading a particular book would make me like that book more? What specific reasons for reading a particular book would make me like that book less?

There’s really no way to know the answer to these questions, of course. But they’re fun to think about.

Friends, this is a topic in which I have more questions than answers. 
So what are your thoughts on this? 
Have you ever experienced something similar?

Re-Reading Books

As much as I love literature – reading it, exploring it, getting lost in it, pondering it, picking it apart, writing it, writing about it, talking about it, collecting it, etc. – there’s one thing about me that might surprise you:

It’s actually pretty rare for me to re-read novels.

For sure it happens. There’s a list of books I’ve read more than once, and there’s another list of books I imagine I’ll read again at some point in the future. But I have to admit: both of those lists are much smaller than you might expect.

The novel I’ve read the most amount of times is Looking for Alaska by John Green (which I’ve read four times so far, and suspect highly that I’ll read again). There were various reasons I’ve read it each time, but it truly is a fantastic, 5-star book, without a doubt.

Then there are other books which I completely adored, about which I could rave almost endlessly, but which I’ve only read once and, frankly, will probably never read again.

Sometimes this is for practical reasons. I totally dug Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell by Susana Clark. It was a highly enjoyable – and often very humorous – read, with incredibly intricate characters. But it’s about 1,100 pages long. I can read three new books in the time it would take to tread the same ground again. Why would I spend all that time reading something I already know?

Sometimes books put too much weight on the ending (such as I explained in my review of The Devotion of Suspect X). It’s not exactly like you can be surprised a second time, when you “find out” who the killer is (again). Once is enough.

Sometimes this is because I don’t want to ruin the impact of the book. The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy is my favorite novel so far this year (and one of only two 5-star ratings I’ve given so far this year). I worry, though, that it may not feel quite as majestic if I pick it up again. I’d rather not risk tarnishing my impression of it.

More than anything, though, I’m simply always hunting for new experiences. I don’t want to feel like I’m “going backwards.” Finishing a book tends to make me feel productive – a feeling which is highly important to me – and re-reading books just don’t leave me feeling that way, at least not as much.

I’ll tell you about a few books I’ve re-read, though. Especially considering how rare it is for me to re-read a book, I suppose that could mean that there’s something particularly special about these books. I’ll let you decide…

• Looking for Alaska by John Green – Read four times, and will probably read again.
• Dracula by Bram Stoker – Read three times, and will probably read again. (Possibly soon, in fact – it's been awhile since I last read it, and I’m starting to feel the itch…)
• Bad Monkeys by Matt Ruff – Read twice; will probably NOT read again.
• The Five People You Meet in Heaven by Mitch Albom – Can’t remember if I’ve read it two or three times; probably won’t read it again (but it’s more likely I’ll read this again than Bad Monkeys).
• Asylum for Nightface – Read two or three times, and will almost inevitably read again.

A few books I’ve only read once so far, but I’m looking forward to reading again:

• Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
• This Census Taker by China Mieville
• Genesis by Bernard Beckett
• That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis
• Momo by Michael Ende (which I really should read again, especially considering it's one of my very favorite books ever)

A few books I read once and especially liked (4+ rating), but will probably not read again:

• The Crossing by Cormac McCarthy (5)
• Blindness by Jose Saramago (4.5)
• Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norell by Susana Clark (4.5)
• The Prague Cemetery by Umberto Eco (4)
• The Last Samurai by Helen Dewitt (4) (No, this is not at all related to the Tom Cruise movie, and yes, I was fully aware of that before I read it.)

What are your thoughts on this, friends? 

Do you have any books that fit into one of these categories? 

Are there any books that you’ve read countless times? 

Let us know!

REVIEW: Death with Interruptions - Jose Saramago

• Year first released:  2005 (Portuguese), 2008 (English)
• ISBN of the edition I read:  9780151012749
• Publisher of the edition I read:  Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
• My rating (out of 5):  3.5

I included Jose Saramago in my list of favorite authors. Though that’s certainly still true – and, I suspect, always will be – Death with Interruptions was more hit-and-miss than usual for him. Actually, to be more specific, it’s hit then miss.

Interruptions carries a tone much like all of Saramago’s other books. As usual, he takes a highly serious subject matter, sprinkles in a healthy dose of humor, and provides innumerable observations about what humanity really is when stripped to its core – the good, the bad, and all the sincerity and hilarity in between. This formula is present all throughout, and works just as well as it always does for Saramago.

His style is consistent here as well: The book is long-winded, with sentences that can go on for pages and a complete disregard for the proper use of punctuation. (In particular, he doesn’t use quotation marks for dialogue, and those multi-page long sentences are, unsurprisingly, terrible run-ons.) Other authors can’t always pull off these items as well, but Saramago is able to make this form work surprisingly – and consistently – well.

But now I must explore why Interruptions is hit-then-miss.

The premise is rather simple: one day, nobody dies. For reasons which no one can identify, death simply stops performing her millennia-long duty. For better or worse, this trend carries on for months.

The first half of the book comes together exceedingly well. Using a highly unique approach, Saramago shows us the sorts of consequences this sudden deathlessness has for the people of the unnamed country in which the book takes place. (It is certainly European, but likely not meant to be a real country.) Specifically, the first half of the book shows us all of these scenes and ideas without presenting us with any characters to speak of. Yes, there are plenty of people in the book – the prime minister, the king, a reporter, a Catholic cardinal, a group of philosophers, a funeral director, etc. But these people aren’t characters so much as they are examples. None of them have names. We don’t follow any of their individual stories or personalities as such; rather, they merely enter the page in order to highlight the unfolding of the story, and are usually forgotten once their time is done. (Much like most humans throughout history, you might notice – an absolutely brilliant move on Saramago’s part.)

For readers who enjoy books with deep characters, this description may sound off-putting. It is certainly unorthodox, but actually works fantastically. This is a what-if novel, a story about the types of things that might happen in this given scenario. And, as Saramago masterfully shows us, including individual personalities might actually gum up the works a bit. Who specifically is involved doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things; the story is what matters here.

Now then. Everything I’ve just described is the “hit” of the book. It is also, unfortunately, only the first half of it.

Almost exactly halfway through the text, death herself (yes, her, and yes, with a lowercase ‘d’) appears. Her first appearance is actually a highlight of the book; I rather enjoyed the way Saramago first introduces her into the folds of the story.

But then she stays. And then she comes across one human who, for some reason, seems untouchable by her. We still don’t have a name for this mysterious person (he is only known as “the cellist”), but he, too, becomes a focus throughout the remainder of the book.

I fear that this sudden introduction of two particular characters who take up the entirety of the second half of the book strips away what made the first half work so well. 

Granted, the story of death and the cellist is interesting. We wonder who this man is, why he seems to be untouchable to death, and what sort of revelations we’ll be privy to as the plot evolves. In fact, in another book, I’d have been happy to read this story.

And yet, in Interruptions, after first experiencing half of the book in a particular way with a particular focus, the story of the cellist feels out of place. Why should we have a what-if novel profoundly devoid of individual personalities, then suddenly have the narration laser-focus in on one person? What happened to the idea that personalities aren't what matter in this hypothetical scenario? 

Interruptions, then, comes across as two novels which share a premise and a chronology, but which ultimately have different things to say. Each works on its own, but together, they just don’t jive.

REVIEW: Stories of Your Life and Other Stories - Ted Chieng

• Year first released:  2016
• ISBN of the edition I read:  9781101972120
• Publisher of the edition I read:  Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
• My rating (out of 5):  technically, 3.5625 (you'll see why in a moment...)

You might remember from my blog on types of short story collections that Stories of Your Life is the example I gave for a collection of unrelated short stories.

It's actually rather difficult to give a fair rating to a collection of unrelated short stories. The stories are all so different. In this case, they're all sci-fi-ish, but that's really the only connection between them. No frame story, no recurring characters or themes, etc. How do you rate that overall? It wasn't so hard with The Stories of Ibis, because, even though that was a series of short stories as well, there was a gravity to that book which tied everything together. No such gravity exists in Stories of Your Life (which isn't a bad thing, of course: this is simply a different type of short story collection, one which doesn't call for such a gravity).

In fact, it's been a few weeks now since I've read Stories of Your Life, and I've tried more than once to sit down and attempt to write a review for you. I just couldn’t figure out the right way to do it, though. 

Now I decided I'll just start by saying that. 

The only things I can really say about the collection as a whole is that Ted Chieng is incredibly imaginative. His stories are highly unique and generally well-written. And, of the two stories that had unique settings (rather than, say, everyday modern cities), I quite enjoyed those settings.

That said, here's just a quick rating and glimpse of each individual story:

• Tower of Babylon - 3.5. Very cool premise, and the setting was positively outstanding. The ending was just a bit too vague to really drive the point home, unfortunately. (I had to read the last page about three times before I fully grasped the point/what was going on.)
• Understand - 2. Definitely the least interesting and inventive of the collection. It's basically Chieng's version of the 2011 Bradley Cooper movie Limitless (which isn't really a good thing - although, to be fair, Understand first appeared 20 years before Limitless).
• Division by Zero - 3. The way the pieces of the plot weaved in and out of each other was an interesting approach (and, personally, I love when authors use complicated mathematics in stories), but ultimately it felt a bit too unfocused to really be great.
• Story of Your Life - 4. This is the short story that the 2016 Amy Adams movie The Arrival is based on. Loved the ideas, and the word play was great. It didn't really prompt much of an emotional investment in the characters, though, which made it feel just a little bit more hollow than I would have liked.
• Seventy-Two Letters - 4. Steampunk meets Kaballah? - yes, please. I loved the premise and the setting. Overall a great idea, but it felt unnecessarily long.
• The Evolution of Human Science - 3. Actually a short essay (a very short essay) rather than a story. Though it was expounded decently, it didn’t cover any ground that was altogether that new.
• Hell is the Absence of God - 4.5. Definitely my favorite of the collection. It had a terrific theme and resolve, and touched a couple personal chords in me. (I'd consider explaining what those are, but they'd involve spoilers.)
• Liking What You See - 4.5. The most unique story of the collection in its tone, structure, and theme. The entire story reads like a documentary of a controversial - but clever - new technology, with various people and companies from all sides debating it. I appreciated how realistic the entire thing was - I could absolutely see this being a real documentary.

How can I give you an overall review of this? If I come up with the average score of everything, it comes out to 3.5625 – so there's that, I guess. But of course a review is much, much more than just a number. 

I could say something like, "Read all the stories that I rated X or higher," but that doesn't feel right either. On the one hand, I'd say that you'd be missing the least if you skipped Understand, but I also don't think it's reasonable to say, "If you only read one story out of this collection, it should be Absence!"  Partly, I'm suspicious that Absence is my favorite from the book precisely because I felt a personal connection to it, for my own reasons and experiences. And very likely you won't feel that connection. Also, I certainly wouldn't say that Absence is the most representative of the collection as a whole. Therefore, even though it's my favorite, it's not necessarily the one that I'd feel the most comfortable driving you towards, at the cost of the others. (If you're wondering, I'd say that Story of Your Life is, appropriately, probably the most representative of the book overall.)

At any rate, I enjoyed my time with Stories of Your Life, and could, in fact, see myself coming back to it down the road - even if I only pick out certain stories next time around. There are lots of great ideas in here that are worth spending time with. I'll certainly be happy to check out more of Chieng's work in the future.

The Art of Translation, pt. 5

I hope this series on the Art of Translation has given you a few things to think about when you approach translated literature. There's a whole world of fantastic books out there waiting to be read, and it would be a shame to shy away from them just because you have to read them via translation.

Perhaps in the future I'll make more observations on the subject and decide to share them with you, but for now, I'm calling this the end of the series.

That said, I'd like to spend one last post talking a bit about some exceptionally well-translated books for you, just to give you a few examples (and reading suggestions – hint, hint).

Without further ado:

1.

In my review of Six Four by Hideo Yokoyama, I said, “Six Four is easily the best-translated, and – to whatever extent this can be determined around the translation – the best-written book I’ve read from Japan.” This is because all of the pieces fell into places just right: the use of idiom, description, and sentence structure totally worked. It wasn’t clunky (like, for example, Vampire Hunter D by Hideyuki Kikuchi and translated by Kevin Leahy, which felt downright jarring to read). In fact, we might even say that Six Four felt like it could have originally been written in English.

(Okay, so I guess that it was one more piece of advice on judging a translation: does it feel like it could have been written in English originally? – if so, that’s probably a good translation [though of course this still doesn’t say much about the accuracy of the translation]).

So Six Four is the best translated book (that I’ve read so far) to come out of Japan. Sweet!

(Oh, and, to give credit where credit is due: it was translated into English by Jonathan Lloyd-Davies. Thanks, Jonathan!)

2.

The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco was originally published in 1980 in Eco’s native language of Italian. Incredible, fast-paced, highly intriguing book, full of wit, nuance, history, and literary references galore. And, in reading William Weaver’s English translation (1983), you would never once even think to guess that it was written in any language other than English. The book reads so fluidly, so perfectly in English, I would almost say it’s hard to believe it didn’t start out that way.

If you want a fantastic example of Italian translation at its absolute pinnacle, The Name of the Rose is a great place to start. (And, by the way, it’s definitely a 5-star book all the way, so you should read it for that sake, too. Truly a joy to read.)

3.

And finally, you might want to brace yourself, because I saved the best for last: A Void by Georges Perec

Here’s the first remarkable thing about A Void:

In the French language (the book’s original language), the most commonly used letter is ‘e’. And so, because Perec loved having fun and being crazy with his writing, in the original French version of A Void, the letter ‘e’ doesn't appear (with three exceptions: je ["I"], et ["and"], and le ["the"]). And it uses real words, too – he didn’t simply take random words and leave out the ‘e.’ He solely used words that simply didn’t have ‘e’s. (And it’s a full-length novel, mind you, not a short story.)

Whoa! Epic, right?

Here’s the next remarkable part (which might be even more epic, actually):

Just like in French, the most commonly used letter in English is also ‘e’. And so, in the spirit of fun and challenge and amazingness, in the English translation of A Void, translator Gilbert Adair translated the entire book while still accomplishing the same feat: no ‘e’s.

Holy cow.

If that isn’t translation at its finest, I can’t tell you what is. Seriously. 

Aside from these three specific books, I've always been a fan of Jose Saramago's common translator, Margaret Jull Costa (translating from the Portuguese); as well as Zoran Zivkovic's long-time translator Alice Copple-Tosic (translating from Serbian); and William Weaver's translations of Italo Calvino's books (translated from Italian). (In fact, you'll remember that William Weaver also translated The Name of the Rose, which was my example #2 above - it seems that guy really knows his stuff.)

The Art of Translation, pt. 4

In part 3 of this series, I said, "...isn't the translator's job not only to make a book readable for us, but also to make it connect with us?"

I want to shift focus slightly and spend a bit of time considering what sorts of translations connect with us. Is it always the most accurate translation? Does the "most accurate" translation automatically equal the "best" one? Hmm...

This time around, rather than talking about hypothetical blue skies and hair pulling, I’m going to use an actual literary example from an Italian book you’ve probably heard a thing or two about: The Inferno by Dante Alighieri.

Technically speaking, The Inferno is actually an epic poem (basically a book-length poem). And in its original Italian, the book rhymes.

I don’t speak a word of Italian. I think buon giorno might mean good day, or something like that. That’s about it, though. (Okay, fine: if I’m right about that, I guess I speak two words of Italian.)

That said, I’m going to give you lines 1-6 of The Inferno in four different forms:

• The original Italian
• Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s 1867 translation
• Robert Pinsky’s translation (© 1994 by Robert Pinsky)
• Google’s translation

…but not in that order. ;)

Let’s see if we can guess which is which. Should be fun, right?

A

Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita

   mi ritrovai per una selva oscura,

   ché la diritta via era smarrita.

Ahi quanto a dir qual era è cosa dura

   esta selva selvaggia e aspra e forte

   che nel pensier rinova la paura!

(Okay, I’ll give you a hint just this one time: this one’s the Italian.)

B

In the middle of the walk of our lives

   I found myself in a dark forest,

   as the straightway was lost.

Ah how to tell what it was was tough

   it is wild wild and hard and strong

   that in thought re-fears fear!

C

Midway on our life’s journey, I found myself

   In dark woods, the right road lost. To tell

   About those woods is hard—so tangled and rough

And savage that thinking of it now, I feel

   The old fear stirring

D

Midway upon the journey of our life

   I found myself within a forest dark,

   For the straight-forward pathway had been lost.

Ah me! how hard a thing it is to say

   What was this forest savage, rough, and stern,

   Which in the very thought renews the fear.

Again, I don’t speak Italian. But if we look at these translations, we can probably pick out a couple important tidbits about them, don’t you think?

First of all, what’s up with the repeated words in B? The repeated “was” is okay – just an unfortunate quirk of English that pops up sometimes. But why is “wild” repeated? 

Actually, if we compare B to the original, we can see where that "wild" repetition comes from. In right about the same place as “wild wild,” the Italian has selva selvaggia. Even without speaking Italian, we can see how similar those two words are – both start with “selva,” the second word just adds a suffix. I wonder if the Italian “-ggia” is similar to the English “-ly.” (I have NOT looked this up; I’m just theorizing.) In which case, selva selvaggia might mean something like “wildly wild.” – if so, that’s actually not quite as ridiculous, is it?

Also, interestingly, neither C nor D use the word “wild” here. C uses “tangled,” and D tells us the forest is “savage.” And neither uses a repetition, nor even an -ly adjective. Hmm. Maybe it's just a typo in B's translation? (Hey, these things happen sometimes...)

I have no idea which of these words is the most accurate. Then again, we’re talking about a forest here. Wouldn’t you say that all three (wild, savage, tangled) could be synonymous?

So all three might be decent translations, but B, at least, sticks the most true to the repetition in the original Italian. This seems important. The punctuation seems kind of weird in this one, though - although, then again, it actually matches the original Italian pretty well.

Now what can we pick out of C?

Perhaps the most obvious thing we can say about C is that where the line breaks happen in C doesn’t match either of the other two versions. B and D seem to end line 1 with the idea of our “life’s journey.” C, though, finishes the life’s-journey thought, then keeps going into the “I found myself” bit, all in line 1 (whereas “I found myself” begins in line 2 in the other two translations). In fact, perhaps because of this, C is a line and a half shorter than B and D.

C is also the only one that uses "woods" instead of "forest." Of course these words are highly synonymous, but why would it disagree with B and D on this front - even if it's only slightly?

Surely you see the pattern here: by comparing these four versions – even without speaking Italian – we can already see that C is shaping up to be less literal than B and D. It doesn’t automatically mean it’s a bad translation, per se, but, based on these few examples, it’s not the one I’d call the most accurate, at the very least.

Anything special about D?

The line breaks seem about right, as far as we can tell. It certainly isn't the most fluid of the translations, though – would you say? Sure, we can totally tell what’s going on in these lines. It feels a little forced, though. Not the smoothest of the three, anyway. (For example: who says "the forest dark"? Wouldn't we normally hear "the dark forest"?)

Aside from this, though, the overall ideas in D seem to match the other two reasonably enough.

So then. What’s your guess? Between B, C, and D, which is which? (Again, your choices being: 1867 Longsfellow, 1994 Pinsky, and 2017 Google.)

…

You’re absolutely right!

B = Google

C = Pinsky

D = Longsfellow

Google (B) certainly seemed the most literal. Clunky read and bad punctuation, but it seems rather accurate.

Pinsky (C) is probably the easiest to read, but he definitely takes the most liberties. (In fact, I didn’t point this out, but Pinsky’s is the only version that tries to make everything rhyme. Not the same rhyme scheme that Dante uses, but at least he tried to use rhymes. Lots and lots of them, if you read the whole book.)

Longfellow (D) was a bit old-timey – but, then again, it was translated 150 years ago, so of course it is. And it seems to have the right ideas, more or less.

That said, next time you read The Inferno, which translation would you pick?

• Literally Literal* (Google),
• Old-Timey But Halfway Accurate Wording (Longfellow), or
• Readable But Not-So-Accurate (Pinsky)?

Is one translation better than another? If by "better" we mean "more accurate," then yes, certainly one of these is "better." But which do you think will help you understand and enjoy and connect with the book more? And, ultimately, wouldn’t you say that’s the best translation for you, at least?

*Please tell me you picked up on why I called it "Literally Literal" – get it? – like this translation’s “wildly wild” thing? 

...Anyone?

 …eesh. Tough crowd.

REVIEW: Lovecraft Country - Matt Ruff

• Year first released:  2016
• ASIN of the edition I read: B00UG61LNS (read on Kindle), paperback
• Publisher of the edition I read:  Harper
• My rating (out of 5):  2.5 

I wonder if I missed something while reading Lovecraft Country. Reading it, I perceived it as an okay drama about a black family in Jim Crow-era racism, with plenty of helpings of the occult.

After I read it, though, I discovered that it was a Goodreads Choice Award Nominee for Horror, and that it’s considered a “dark fantasy horror.”

After discovering these things, I couldn’t help but think, Wait…this was supposed to be a horror?

Sure, the book was fine. It didn’t complete my life to have read it, but it wasn’t a waste of time. And yes, there were a small handful of eerie, supernatural elements to it. Dark fantasy is fine, I guess. But…horror? I didn’t think Lovecraft Country was even trying to scare me.

The title, too, is a bit of a misnomer. There are a few connections in the book to H.P. Lovecraft, and those were fun. There were only a few of them, though, and – with one particular exception – they were more like Easter Eggs than actual plot points. At the very least, certainly they weren’t strong enough of a tie to the works of H.P. to really name the book after him.

While we’re at it, there’s one more thing that’s worth saying about the book: the book is called a novel. And it almost is. There’s a description on the back to tell you what you’re getting into. What the outside of the book forgets to tell you, though, is that, more than a novel, per se, Lovecraft Country is more of a series of connected, chronological short stories featuring the same cast of characters. Further, it doesn’t mention that the description from the back of the book only describes the first (and best) story within.

Perhaps all of this is neither here nor there when it comes to deciding how good of a book it is, of course, but it’s still an interesting point: yes, the book itself – the plot, the characters, the writing – are fine, but everything about the book seems like a series of errors in judgement. Wrong genre label, misleading title, inaccurately described format...It’s all so fallacious, in fact, that I can’t help but wonder if it was actually intentional. A peculiar marketing strategy? – maybe. Either way, it's all rather misleading.

On to the book itself, though:

Lovecraft Country is a mysterious set of stories, drawing you in to its well-imagined characters: their personalities, their struggles, their secrets. The cast of characters, in fact, was probably the best part about the book as a whole. Also, Lovecraft Country showed a different view of racial issues and tensions than most fiction I happen to read, which was, for me personally, a good change of pace. And I appreciated how each of the individual story pieces tied together in a cohesive way (in the final story, The Mark of Cain). The final story wasn't nearly as climactic as it should have been - at least, compared to the climaxes of a couple of the other stories - but at least it brought everything together in an agreeable way.

None of these elements ultimately make this an unmissable book, though. Lovecraft Country fit neatly into a hole in my reading schedule, and it was a fine filler. I almost imagine it like a mid-album song: it was never meant for radio play; it’s not getting a music video. It’s just a passable song to make the album a little longer.

If you’re in between books, looking for some padding, or wanting to read a horror that isn’t a horror (hey, I know some people who like those, weird though it may sound), then sure, Lovecraft Country is fine. Don’t stick it too high on your To-Read list, though. 

The Art of Translation, pt. 3

We can consider a book’s idioms.

We can consider its use of descriptions.

There's another element we haven't gone over yet, and, in fact, it's the one I notice the most in my own reading. It's also, unfortunately, the hardest element to pin on the author versus the translator. (That is, it's the hardest to figure out who is to blame if this element goes wrong.)

That said, let me first point out: when I'm reading a translated book and I just can't quite figure out whether it's bad writing versus bad translating, I tend to lean towards blaming the translator. If it's 50/50, I'd hate to point fingers at an author who really is a good writer, and just got stuck with a bad translator. I'd hate to be the author in that situation, at least. And isn't the translator's job not only to make a book readable for us, but also to make it connect with us?


So then. The biggest thing I notice about translated books - even more than its idioms and descriptions - is its use of sentence structure.

To do this, let's go back to my blue-sky example from part 2:

There's nothing inherently wrong with the sentence "The sky was blue," right? It says what it needs to say. It's grammatically correct. It tells us something about the setting.

Let's imagine a translated-into-English book with a paragraph something like this, though:

The sky was blue. The air was warm. The sun was shining. A bird was singing. It was nice today. Joe was feeling happy. He liked nice days. Joe went on walks. Walks made him glad.

Gross.

I mean, really: this is downright atrocious, isn't it? What exactly makes this so atrocious, though?

Every one of these sentences is fine on its own (if a little mundane). It's okay to say the sky was blue and that Joe was happy. But every sentence in this paragraph is structured the same way:

Subject - Noun - Object (with an occasional adjective thrown in there)

And, in this case, they're all exactly four words long.

It's like each sentence was made with a cookie cutter. They're basically the same sentence over and over again, just with words swapped out here and there. And our poor, anxious, literary hearts can only take so much of reading the same sentence again and again.

So if this is our translated-into-English book, we can see that something is definitely wrong here. These sentences need to...well, to dance a little. They need to be different lengths and tell us different ideas and reorganize the way in which the words are presented.

What about something like this?

The sky was blue. The warm air wrapped around Joe, making him glad to be on a walk. If it were up to him, this is how every day would be: clear skies, singing birds, the sun shining brightly. He always felt particularly happy on days just like this, days when he could be outside in the world, taking in the colors and the sounds the earth had to offer.

Yes, I know this is still garbage. But at least there's variation, right? At least each sentence sounds different and flows nicely and doesn't feel like it was tossed out of the same blender as each and every one of the sentences surrounding it.

But now we have to come to the question we keep asking: If we pick up a book with the first paragraph I shared, is it bad writing or bad translating?

This is going to get just a touch mathematical.

Yes, the author can write those terrible sentences, and the translator can translate them just as terribly.

Or else the writer can write wonderful sentences that follow the fantastic, intricate, varied grammar of another language, which the translator simply doesn't bother to rearrange in a meaningful way for the sake of his English audience.

Either way, what's the common denominator between these two scenarios?

One is Bad Writer + Bad Translator.
One is Good Writer + Bad Translator.

There's not really an option here for Bad Writer + Good Translator, though, is there?
And this sure as heck isn't the case of Good Writer + Good Translator. Something is definitely wrong.

When the use of sentence structures is this terrible in a translated-into-English book, whether or not the original writing is bad - which we can't always say for certain - what we can say is that, almost assuredly, the translation is bad. The translator did nothing at all to help these sentences mean something to us.

This is why, when a translated-into-English book feels off, I usually try to give the original author the benefit of the doubt and assume it's the translation that's funky.

REVIEW: Everyone's a Aliebn When You're a Aliebn Too - Jomny Sun

• Year first released:  2017
• ISBN of the edition I read:  0062569023
• Publisher of the edition I read:  Harper Perennial
• My rating (out of 5): 5. 500. 10,005. Infinity. All the numbers. Everything.

Just looking at my rating of this book, you can already guess where this is going. So I’m just going to say it outright:

HOLY GOODNESS THIS BOOK IS INCREDIBLE.

Like, miraculously incredible. Like, in the uppermost echelon of incredible. Like...wow.

Also: it’s heart-bleedingly adorable. Yeah, that’s a real thing. At least it is now, because that’s what this book is.

Okay, okay. Time to put a little substance on these enormous claims (but only a little, because I will very quickly run out of positive adjective for telling you how wonderful this book is).

At its heart, Everyone's a Aliebn When You're a Aliebn Too is a graphic novel about an alien who is making friends with earth creatures (a dog, a snail, a tree, etc.), each of whom provides the alien with highly insightful observations about life, purpose, and the things that we focus on. The alien, in turn, also has his share of insights that are simply marvelous. I’d be happy to give you some examples, except that I don’t want to ruin the wonder and the surprise that is every single page of this book.

And really, this can’t be overstated: the insights in Aliebn are not only wonderful, but so beautifully simple that you can’t help but wonder why they haven’t occurred to you before – or why, in fact, they don’t already guide your life.

To add to this, it’s also hilarious beautiful poignant tear-jerking lovely sad unassuming melodic smile-jerking amazing keen succinct worthwhile worththetime worththemoney worththeworld sincere twitterpating cute astonishing striking remarkable moving meaningful excellent brilliant outstanding exceptional humble intelligent quirky honest astounding awe-inspiring…

(Hey, look at that! I actually didn’t run out of positive adjectives too quickly after all!)

Please, friends: read this book. Sincerely. I only want what's best for you. And this is it.

The Art of Translation, pt. 2

As I explained in my previous post on the topic of translations, one way we can start judging the strength of a translation is via idioms. But of course not every sentence has an idiom. In fact, you might only come across a handful of idioms in an entire book. (Actually, this is unlikely. When you’re reading a book written in your own first language, you won’t even notice the majority of the idioms used because they’re already part of your everyday speech. Kind of weird, if you think about it.)

Now let’s take a look at another angle we can play: use of descriptions.

Suppose we have a translated-into-English book that begins with the line, “The sky was blue.”

(Let me interrupt myself already with a pro tip for you: Say you’re standing in a bookstore, curious about this new book you just happened to pick up. If the first sentence is “The sky was blue.” just set the book down and walk away. You don’t need that monotony in your life. Anyway. Moving on…)

Like I said, suppose we have a translated-into-English book that begins with the line, “The sky was blue.”

This is a really boring line, isn’t it? At least, it’s a boring first line, if nothing else.

So if we pick up a translated-into-English book that begins with this line, are we dealing with a bad translation, or a boring writing style?

Likely it’s a boring writing style, right? It’s not the translator’s fault that the book was written so tediously; he has to play the cards he’s been dealt. (<-- Look at that! - another idiom.)

Now let’s suppose we pick up a translated-into-English book with the first line(s) something like this:

The sky was blue, but only barely; you might have even missed its blueness if you didn’t look closely enough. It was almost blue by mistake, like a blueness just barely squeezing its way through the thick clouds, a blueness trying to prove that it was here first, that it would still be here even after all the clouds and their unearthly gray have moved on to haunt a different corner of the world.

(I kind of like those sentences, actually. Heck, maybe I’ll put them in one of my own stories someday…)

If we read these sentences, is this good translation, good original-author’s style, or possibly both?

In this case, we can’t know how accurate the translation is. But we can rest assured that the author’s original probably wasn’t just “El cielo era azul.” (“The sky was blue.”) Right? (That’d be a mighty brave translator, if so.)

It turns out these sentences were good writing, and, therefore, most likely they were put there by the original author.

Again: the translator has to play the cards he’s been dealt. And in this case, he’s been dealt some good cards.

If you’re reading a translated-into-English book, ask yourself, How solid are the descriptions? If the descriptions are decent, you can guess that the author’s original writing is pretty decent, too. (And, clearly, there’s a good chance the translation is solid as well.)