read any good books lately...

^ How are those two books? They look rather interesting from here.

Alex, I presume Breakfast of Champions was your first Vonnegut?  If so, it's not the best place to start.  I'd definitely seek out some of his other work though.  I'd go for Slaugterhouse-5 and The Sirens of Titan.  Those two are fantastic.

Ah, fair enough.  Is this English or French by the way?

And why on earth is there such a price hike?  Most books of the same size (so whatever the generic paperback size is) are usually all the same price, however popular one may be over an other.

So most Vonnegut books over here should be the same price if they're all the same size (all mine are by Vintage, except The Sirens of Titan which is by Victor Gollancz -- but is the same size).

Indeed.  Most books are overpriced.  Especially Classics.  I can read those Classics online for free.  I know Penguin usually do a good job and they have a well known person writing the foreward but that doesn't make me warrant spending a lot of money on something I can read legally for free!

Of course, if the books still have copyright on them and cannot be read legally for free, then that's a different matter.  But £7.99 for a book still seems pricey to me.

James wrote: Ah, fair enough.  Is this English or French by the way? And why on earth is there such a price hike?  Most books of the same size (so whatever the generic paperback size is) are usually all the same price, however popular one may be over an other. So most Vonnegut books over here should be the same price if they're all the same size (all mine are by Vintage, except The Sirens of Titan which is by Victor Gollancz -- but is the same size).

It's a Romanian translation, very good one.

The books I bought in this last lot were very cheap, in fact. I just wanted to use the money I had buying one book for as many new (to me) authors as possible. That's why I chose to buy shorter and cheaper books, discounted, older issues with the original price from when they were published, etc. instead of their most famous ones, which are usually longer and more expensive (always a recent issue with an up to date price, because they tend to sell well). I ended up buying 20 books by different authors that were new to me (with only one expception, Salinger) with the same money I would have used to buy 5-6 novels of a greater "caliber".

In this case I was wrong, though, Breakfast Of Champions was the most famous Vonnegut available, apparently S-5 isn't translated yet. It was priced only 2 pounds. Books are still quite cheap in Romania, and I'm good at finding the best deal. I did this with Roth (American Pastoral was 9 pounds so I took Portnoy's Complaint for 3 pounds), Pamuk (My Name Is Red was 9 pounds so I took The White Fortress for 5), and others. I spent about 5 pounds per book, in average. The next step is to further investigate further the authors I liked most (regardless of the price, because I know now that I'm liking them).

Ricochet wrote: harmonium.ro wrote: Orhan Pamuk's The White Fortress - absolutely wonderful book, I loved it. It happens to be about a time and space I've always been interested in (late mediaeval - early modern Levant), and it reminds me a lot of Cervantes, which is one of my favourites. Very postmodern too, with a great narrative twist at the end. 9/10 Hmm, it was the second Pamuk I read after My Name is Red, and I was underwhelmed by it.

My Name Is Red must be amazing, in that case. I'm glad I had such a fortuitous encoutner with this book, then. I wouldn't have recommended it to you, though, it's not very much up your alley as far as I know your tastes.

EDIT: BTW I'll get The Sirens From Titanic next for Vonnegut, it's available for about 5 pounds.




Edited by harmonium.ro - October 03 2011 at 16:29

Just finished Down And Out In Paris And London by George Orwell.

Alex, I thought you were still in Paris!  I presumed you'd found a French translation.

And to be fair, you should read him in English as I'm guessing it'd be much better.

I've always presumed Slaughterhouse-5 was his best and most well known.  So it's a surprise it hasn't been translated into Romanian.

I cannot even imagine how Vonnegut would read in any other language.  I guess though it's much like myself reading Dostoevsky in English.

James wrote: Alex, I thought you were still in Paris!  I presumed you'd found a French translation. And to be fair, you should read him in English as I'm guessing it'd be much better. I've always presumed Slaughterhouse-5 was his best and most well known.  So it's a surprise it hasn't been translated into Romanian. I cannot even imagine how Vonnegut would read in any other language.  I guess though it's much like myself reading Dostoevsky in English.

I am still in Paris! I buy books from Romania because they're much cheaper and because I can't read for pleasure in foreign languages. My command of foreign languages is not enough to let me connect with the text and get immersed in its literary intricacies. Fortunately Romanian is a language exceptionally proper for translation, due to a great flexibility. It always adapts to the character of the original, instead of forcing the original to its own tradition. We don't even have that much of a textual / literary tradition to impose a distortion on the reading of a translation.

The language in The Breakfast Of Champions was so (intentionally) simplistic that I guess it would read well in any translation. It reads like something even I could have read it in the original English version.

^ Yeah, it's cheap according to Western prices, not necessarily for Romanians. 

Re McEwan, I bought the short stories collection, First Love, Last Rites + In Between The Sheets in this last lot.

What exactly is a superficial read?