Veronica decides to die-Paulo coelho

Not got one on the go, which is a surprise for me. Need a good one.

[quote="darkhorse57"]Charles Baudelaire's 'On Wine and Hashish' lies unread next to my bed (will start it tonight if I don't get interrupted).

Why it lies unread? You don't read it by the same reason as me cause Charles Baudelaire is the author of the only theme i.e. drug addition, inner world of the hashhead and bla bla bla

[quote="heidyj"]

darkhorse57 wrote:

Charles Baudelaire's 'On Wine and Hashish' lies unread next to my bed (will start it tonight if I don't get interrupted). Why it lies unread? You don't read it by the same reason as me cause Charles Baudelaire is the author of the only theme i.e. drug addition, inner world of the hashhead and bla bla bla

Exactly

When I`m not pretending to read Moby Dick (Only another 126 wretched chapters to go) I`m reading The Imitation of Christ by Thomas a Kempis. Even if you`re not a Christian it still has merit as an early take on the self-help book.

This could sound revoltingly pretentious but it's not meant that way - but I've just been reading a collection of poems by Pablo Neruda called Full Woman, Fleshly Apple, Hot Moon - the translation into English by Stephen Mitchell marches alongside the original Spanish, and it really adds to the poetry.

Always liked Neruda's stuff for the gorgeous imagery he uses and also how he writes about the little things along the way - Ode to an Onion/to Laziness/to my Socks - theyre not nonsense poems but he gets such great stuff out of simple things.

Once you've read the English version and then read the Spanish - even though you might not understand it all, it definitely adds something - Spanish sounds beautifully liquid at the best of times, but it's even better here.

Ok, I was right - revoltingly pretentious! But I don't care

Today I read an old Fat Freddy's Cat comic, but since it's not a book, I suppose I should really start a Cominc thread.......

I do agree with Anaximander that translating poetry from one language into another is fraught with pitfalls. The difference in metre or linguistics will surely always result in losses, or maybe worse. I spent time in Sweden twenty years ago and the Swedes have a huge tradition of poetry reading, but translation in either direction was always a little flat at best. There is a feel in poetry that gets lost I think. On the subject of the thread though, I have just finished "Early to rise" an account of a year on a farm in Suffolk by a green teenager in the 1930s just before the depression took hold. There were still more farms in Suffolk at this time using horses than tractors. The book on rigging a sailing barge is getting a yearly recap as it is the time of year to rerig the Thames barges and there is too much rope to want to make a silly mistake which may need to be rectified up the mast with the skipper cussing at me. For light and amusement I think I shall be starting "The riddle of the sands" by Erskine Childers. I read it many years ago and it is wonderfully old fashioned. "This day and age" a small collection of poetry from 1919 to 1960 seems to be frequently thumbed through at the moment from which "Sacco writes to his son" by Alun Lewis, and "At the Cenotaph" by Sassoon,... well both such powerful poems and written in such a simple fashion. "Sacco" especially so. The inspiration for this poem was the last letter from a convicted murderer in America who was an Italian immigrant, and after seven years on death row he was executed. Many people even then thought he was innocent, and now decades later this is not doubted. Sacco and Bartolo were framed. The dignity of his final letter is caught perfectly in this poem. Happy reading to all be it Thelwell or Trotsky! Roo.

I`ve never read any of Sassoon`s poetry, although I am familiar with Memoirs of a Fox-Hunting Man, the funniest book I`ve ever read that wasn`t meant to be comic. His petty snobbery is quite magnificent. Opening a page at random...

"For Joe had been brought up in the darkest part of Manchester, and he prided himself on being an old-fashioned Socialist. But his Socialism was complicated by his fair-minded cognizance of the good qualities of the best type of the officer class, with whom he had been in close contact ever since he enlisted"

I`ve just finished one of those Osprey military history books about the battle of Flodden. In the interests of preserving fragile Anglo-Scottish relations I will read one about Bannockburn this coming weekend.