Book Meme: First Part
Apr. 29th, 2021 11:29 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakFrom oracne.
1: What book did you last finish? When was that?
Yesterday, a reread, "Vom Wunsch, Indianer zu werden" by Peter Henisch, about a fictional meeting between old Karl May and Franz Kafka. It's clever and witty and affectionate towards both authors. Non-German speakers: the fundamental gag of the premise is that May is regarded, for the most part, as trivial pulp fiction, while Kafka of course is utter high brow literature. Henisch's novella shows they have more in common than literary critics would want to admit, and, like I said, it's just plain fun.
2: What are you currently reading?
Another reread (for essay-writing purposes): Heinrich Mann's two Henri Quatre novels. The last thing I've read that I hadn't read before were all the Fanny Mendelssohn books talked about here.
3: What book are you planning to read next?
"Vom Frühling und von der Einsamkeit. Reportagen aus den Gerichten", which is a collection of articles by Gabriele Tergit. She was the first female reporter covering trials in the Weimar Republilc, and the trials she covered went from every day robberies and con people (male and female alike) to Adolf Hitler (showing up repeatedly as a witness towards the end of the Republic in attempts to put his followers on trial for their physical violence including murder. If you're wondering, Gabriele Tergit managed to avoid the fate of being arrested in 1933 once Nazis were in charge, but barely and with some luck, and left the country literally the next day, ending up in Britain. This particular collection of her articles, covering the 20s and early 30s, has been described as a psychogram of the Weimar Republic. Tergit also wrote two novels I've read, which is why I'm curious about her non-fiction.
4: What was the last book you added to your TBR?
The various Murderbot novellas. I will get around to them one day!
5: Which book did you last re-read?
See above.
6: Which book was the last one you really, really loved?
Counting rereads: Desdemona, if only you had spoken! ("Wenn du geredet hättest, Desdemona"), which is a collection of fictional monologues by women both invented (like Effi from Fontane's novel "Effi Briest") and real (Goethe's lover and later wife Christiane Vulpius) by Christine Brückner which I recced tocahn. Only counting first time reads: I didn't love "Der König und sein Narr" by Martin Stade, because it's too harrowing and viscerally sad for that, but really got to me, and I think it's a fantastic novel; more about it here.
7: What was/were the last book/books you bought?
Piranesi by Susannah Clarke and Der König und sein Narr by Martin Stade.
8: Paperback or hardcover? Why?
Piranesi in electronic format, and Der König und sein Narr as a paperback. In the former case, buying it as an ebook was easiest, and in the later case, it's out of print right now, my usual library didn't have it, and the hardcover is too expensive.
9: Children's, YA, NA or Adult? Why?
Until this meme, I had no idea the category "NA" existed, I had to google it. Anyway: I do read books targeted at all age groops. Recently I was part of a jury for a reading competition which introduced a couple of children's books to me I hadn't been aware of, two of which I thought I want to check out later. Most of the books I've read this past year were probably "adult", not least because I did a lot of non-fiction reading for research purposes.
10: Sci-Fi or fantasy? Why?
Eh, I like both and refuse to decide.
11: Classic or modern? Why?
I take it this means classic or modern literary fiction with a capital L. Time was when I would have replied "classic" unhesitatingly because I hadn't found a whole lot of 20th century literary fiction that I'd liked, whereas I have by now, and I also had to read some indegistable pre 20th century works, so it's more balanced.
12: Political memoirs or comedic memoirs?
Ha. Don't tragedians get memoirs, too? Thing is: I've read A LOT of memoirs by now. Of all calibres. Back when I was massively in Beatles fandom, I noticed that a lot of memoirs really show that they were written by professional ghostwriters based on interviews with the people in question - which, fair enough, not everyone is a writer, and the result is a readable book. But it also means the tone is incredibly similar and feels at times oddly like a pretense at a YA novel. Which is why when I got around to Klaus Voormann's memoirs they felt like a breath of fresh air. They were explicitly written by an old man looking back on a period of his youth, not with a ghostwriterly pretense of writing like his younger self would have seen those events, and the awareness that most of the people he's talking about are dead by now is there. Of course, dispensing with a ghostwriter doesn't necessarily mean the result will be more readable; I remember how disappointed I was when I read Marlene Dietrich's memoirs. She was a very interesting woman; her memoirs felt incredibly dull.
Speaking of dull, political memoirs can be, not least if you don't know too much of the participants, or if they feel too much like the slightly fleshed out version of a protocol, but otoh if the memoirist a) can write, and b) has an axe to grind, they can be incredibly entertaining, like Lord Hervey's trashy tell all of George II. and family, more about it here. The memoirs of George II.'s grandmother, Sophia of Hannover, the Queen England almost and never had, are also tremendously entertaining, making fun in the opposite direction Hervey did, more here; in general, the memoirist having a sense of humor helps (only not so much if they employ it punching down instead of up).
So my answer to this would be: depends on the author, since contrary to the cliché, showbiz memoirs can be dull and political memoirs can be a riot. But if you want to know what I really love: letters. Not written with the benefit of hindsight, and they can offer a more immediate sense of the "voices" of everyone involved, be they politicians, artists or both., and if we get both sides of a correspondence preserved, all the better.
13: Name a book with a really bad movie/tv adaption.
So hard to single out just one, but a woman's gotta do what a woman's gotta do. Let's go with the first movie I walked out on when watching it in the cinema and thus never finished, the 1993 version of The Three Musketeers (the one with Tim Curry as Richelieu). Oh, how I hated it, let me count the ways. Any version of the Musketeers where they kill off Mylady (Rebecca de Morney) one third into the movie is rubbish by definition. Then there's the evil vizir plot foisted on Richelieu (seriously, I blame this movie for introducing something subsequent US adaptions went with as well, the idea that Ricihelieu, Cardinal with zero royal blood, was after the throne, to say nothing of such howlers like "Austria's loss is France's gain" (about Anne of Austria, who was, in fact, a Spanish princess; the "of Austria" moniker is owed to the fact she was a Habsburg). Oh, and because we can't have adultery for sympathetic characters in a US movie, Constance isn't married, and the Duke of Buckingham/Anne liason doesn't exist, either. And all of the wit of Dumas' novel is gone for dumb slapstick. And... anyway. I still loathe and despise it. I learned my lesson, though, and when the same Disney team had a go a year or two later as the Count of Monte Christo, I stayed the hell away. Since I hear that one has Albert as Edmond's son, I clearly made the right decision.
14: Name a book where the movie/tv adaption actually was better than the original.
oracne named Emma Thompson's adaption of Sense and Sensibility, which is a great example I entirely agree with, but it also means I have to come up with something else. Hm, let's see: The Third Man, based on the novella of the same name by Graham Greene, though this is something of a special case in that Greene wrote the novella in explicit preparation for writing the screenplay. However, as the final film has some changes Greene isn't responsible for and which depart not just from his novella but also from his screenplay, I think it counts. As in: crucially, the ending - the novella and Greene's screenplay both ended differently and offered a conventional happy ending for our hero and heroine, but when shooting the scene in question, the director and actress got inspired. Also, of course, one of the most famous improvised speeches ever, given by my guy Orson Welles as Harry Lime when exiting the Ferris Wheel. Not to mention that the film can offer the famous zither soundtrack by Anton Karas, the fantastic cinematography and the way it renders post war Vienna, and any number of Austrian and German actors in supporting roles making the "there but by the skin of our teeth go we" hopefull cynicism around the main cast believable while in the novella it feels observed from the outside.
And since I'm thinking of post war black and white movies: Billy Wilder's One, Two Three is in fact a (loose) adaption of Ferenc Molnar's play from 1929, wihich as it happens I have read, since I had to do a report on Ferenc Molnar for a seminar back in my uni days. It has far more bite than the play, not least because of the changed setting to post WWII Berlin, and such a lot of of Wilder's feelings about Berlin, both the affection and the anger, went into that. In Molnar's play, the character giving the young lover a capitalist overhaul remains a suave string puller; in Wilder's movie, he's James Cagney, and the satire goes just as much in his direction (and that of Coca-Cola). In short: definitely an improvement in every way.
15: What book changed your life?
There's one example that's way too rl to name here, since I want to keep this journal as a fannisih zone. Other than that, I have to say that both The Mists of Avalon and subsequently Hastur's Heritage by Marion Zimmer Bradley made a tremendous difference back in the day when I was thirteen. (No, you don't have to link me; I have read about her abusiveness back when the story broke and since.) The Mists of Avalon because it was in fact the first novel based on myths I'd read (at age 13) which offered a different and female-centric interpretation (look, my basis for Arthurian myths back then were the Prince Valiant comics and various movies, and all the novels I'd read based on Greek myths also were relatively straightforward adaptions), and Hastur's Heritage because it was literally the first piece of fiction I'd read which presented homosexual relationships in a sympathetic fashion. Until then, all the gay characters I had encountered in fiction were either evil and comic relief. This really made an incredible difference to my teenage self's world view and made her question a lot of other clichés and assumptions as well.
16: If you could bring three books to a deserted island which would you bring and why?
Watership Down, because it's one of my comfort novels, at least one of the big Russian classic (either by Tolstoy or Dostojewski) because I'm still shamefully ignorant of them except by osmosis and keep postponing my readings, and on the island, I couldn't anymore, and the Gustave Flaubert/George Sand correspondence, preferably in the audio version read by Christa Berndl as George Sand and Christian Brückner as Flaubert, because Flaubert is every neurotic author you can imagine while old age George Sand is just fabulous in her enjoyment of life and common sense attitude, and the (symypathetic) clash of these two voices would fit with every mood I'm likely to get on this island and would keep providing me with some perspective.
oracne.1: What book did you last finish? When was that?
Yesterday, a reread, "Vom Wunsch, Indianer zu werden" by Peter Henisch, about a fictional meeting between old Karl May and Franz Kafka. It's clever and witty and affectionate towards both authors. Non-German speakers: the fundamental gag of the premise is that May is regarded, for the most part, as trivial pulp fiction, while Kafka of course is utter high brow literature. Henisch's novella shows they have more in common than literary critics would want to admit, and, like I said, it's just plain fun.
2: What are you currently reading?
Another reread (for essay-writing purposes): Heinrich Mann's two Henri Quatre novels. The last thing I've read that I hadn't read before were all the Fanny Mendelssohn books talked about here.
3: What book are you planning to read next?
"Vom Frühling und von der Einsamkeit. Reportagen aus den Gerichten", which is a collection of articles by Gabriele Tergit. She was the first female reporter covering trials in the Weimar Republilc, and the trials she covered went from every day robberies and con people (male and female alike) to Adolf Hitler (showing up repeatedly as a witness towards the end of the Republic in attempts to put his followers on trial for their physical violence including murder. If you're wondering, Gabriele Tergit managed to avoid the fate of being arrested in 1933 once Nazis were in charge, but barely and with some luck, and left the country literally the next day, ending up in Britain. This particular collection of her articles, covering the 20s and early 30s, has been described as a psychogram of the Weimar Republic. Tergit also wrote two novels I've read, which is why I'm curious about her non-fiction.
4: What was the last book you added to your TBR?
The various Murderbot novellas. I will get around to them one day!
5: Which book did you last re-read?
See above.
6: Which book was the last one you really, really loved?
Counting rereads: Desdemona, if only you had spoken! ("Wenn du geredet hättest, Desdemona"), which is a collection of fictional monologues by women both invented (like Effi from Fontane's novel "Effi Briest") and real (Goethe's lover and later wife Christiane Vulpius) by Christine Brückner which I recced to
cahn. Only counting first time reads: I didn't love "Der König und sein Narr" by Martin Stade, because it's too harrowing and viscerally sad for that, but really got to me, and I think it's a fantastic novel; more about it here. 7: What was/were the last book/books you bought?
Piranesi by Susannah Clarke and Der König und sein Narr by Martin Stade.
8: Paperback or hardcover? Why?
Piranesi in electronic format, and Der König und sein Narr as a paperback. In the former case, buying it as an ebook was easiest, and in the later case, it's out of print right now, my usual library didn't have it, and the hardcover is too expensive.
9: Children's, YA, NA or Adult? Why?
Until this meme, I had no idea the category "NA" existed, I had to google it. Anyway: I do read books targeted at all age groops. Recently I was part of a jury for a reading competition which introduced a couple of children's books to me I hadn't been aware of, two of which I thought I want to check out later. Most of the books I've read this past year were probably "adult", not least because I did a lot of non-fiction reading for research purposes.
10: Sci-Fi or fantasy? Why?
Eh, I like both and refuse to decide.
11: Classic or modern? Why?
I take it this means classic or modern literary fiction with a capital L. Time was when I would have replied "classic" unhesitatingly because I hadn't found a whole lot of 20th century literary fiction that I'd liked, whereas I have by now, and I also had to read some indegistable pre 20th century works, so it's more balanced.
12: Political memoirs or comedic memoirs?
Ha. Don't tragedians get memoirs, too? Thing is: I've read A LOT of memoirs by now. Of all calibres. Back when I was massively in Beatles fandom, I noticed that a lot of memoirs really show that they were written by professional ghostwriters based on interviews with the people in question - which, fair enough, not everyone is a writer, and the result is a readable book. But it also means the tone is incredibly similar and feels at times oddly like a pretense at a YA novel. Which is why when I got around to Klaus Voormann's memoirs they felt like a breath of fresh air. They were explicitly written by an old man looking back on a period of his youth, not with a ghostwriterly pretense of writing like his younger self would have seen those events, and the awareness that most of the people he's talking about are dead by now is there. Of course, dispensing with a ghostwriter doesn't necessarily mean the result will be more readable; I remember how disappointed I was when I read Marlene Dietrich's memoirs. She was a very interesting woman; her memoirs felt incredibly dull.
Speaking of dull, political memoirs can be, not least if you don't know too much of the participants, or if they feel too much like the slightly fleshed out version of a protocol, but otoh if the memoirist a) can write, and b) has an axe to grind, they can be incredibly entertaining, like Lord Hervey's trashy tell all of George II. and family, more about it here. The memoirs of George II.'s grandmother, Sophia of Hannover, the Queen England almost and never had, are also tremendously entertaining, making fun in the opposite direction Hervey did, more here; in general, the memoirist having a sense of humor helps (only not so much if they employ it punching down instead of up).
So my answer to this would be: depends on the author, since contrary to the cliché, showbiz memoirs can be dull and political memoirs can be a riot. But if you want to know what I really love: letters. Not written with the benefit of hindsight, and they can offer a more immediate sense of the "voices" of everyone involved, be they politicians, artists or both., and if we get both sides of a correspondence preserved, all the better.
13: Name a book with a really bad movie/tv adaption.
So hard to single out just one, but a woman's gotta do what a woman's gotta do. Let's go with the first movie I walked out on when watching it in the cinema and thus never finished, the 1993 version of The Three Musketeers (the one with Tim Curry as Richelieu). Oh, how I hated it, let me count the ways. Any version of the Musketeers where they kill off Mylady (Rebecca de Morney) one third into the movie is rubbish by definition. Then there's the evil vizir plot foisted on Richelieu (seriously, I blame this movie for introducing something subsequent US adaptions went with as well, the idea that Ricihelieu, Cardinal with zero royal blood, was after the throne, to say nothing of such howlers like "Austria's loss is France's gain" (about Anne of Austria, who was, in fact, a Spanish princess; the "of Austria" moniker is owed to the fact she was a Habsburg). Oh, and because we can't have adultery for sympathetic characters in a US movie, Constance isn't married, and the Duke of Buckingham/Anne liason doesn't exist, either. And all of the wit of Dumas' novel is gone for dumb slapstick. And... anyway. I still loathe and despise it. I learned my lesson, though, and when the same Disney team had a go a year or two later as the Count of Monte Christo, I stayed the hell away. Since I hear that one has Albert as Edmond's son, I clearly made the right decision.
14: Name a book where the movie/tv adaption actually was better than the original.
oracne named Emma Thompson's adaption of Sense and Sensibility, which is a great example I entirely agree with, but it also means I have to come up with something else. Hm, let's see: The Third Man, based on the novella of the same name by Graham Greene, though this is something of a special case in that Greene wrote the novella in explicit preparation for writing the screenplay. However, as the final film has some changes Greene isn't responsible for and which depart not just from his novella but also from his screenplay, I think it counts. As in: crucially, the ending - the novella and Greene's screenplay both ended differently and offered a conventional happy ending for our hero and heroine, but when shooting the scene in question, the director and actress got inspired. Also, of course, one of the most famous improvised speeches ever, given by my guy Orson Welles as Harry Lime when exiting the Ferris Wheel. Not to mention that the film can offer the famous zither soundtrack by Anton Karas, the fantastic cinematography and the way it renders post war Vienna, and any number of Austrian and German actors in supporting roles making the "there but by the skin of our teeth go we" hopefull cynicism around the main cast believable while in the novella it feels observed from the outside. And since I'm thinking of post war black and white movies: Billy Wilder's One, Two Three is in fact a (loose) adaption of Ferenc Molnar's play from 1929, wihich as it happens I have read, since I had to do a report on Ferenc Molnar for a seminar back in my uni days. It has far more bite than the play, not least because of the changed setting to post WWII Berlin, and such a lot of of Wilder's feelings about Berlin, both the affection and the anger, went into that. In Molnar's play, the character giving the young lover a capitalist overhaul remains a suave string puller; in Wilder's movie, he's James Cagney, and the satire goes just as much in his direction (and that of Coca-Cola). In short: definitely an improvement in every way.
15: What book changed your life?
There's one example that's way too rl to name here, since I want to keep this journal as a fannisih zone. Other than that, I have to say that both The Mists of Avalon and subsequently Hastur's Heritage by Marion Zimmer Bradley made a tremendous difference back in the day when I was thirteen. (No, you don't have to link me; I have read about her abusiveness back when the story broke and since.) The Mists of Avalon because it was in fact the first novel based on myths I'd read (at age 13) which offered a different and female-centric interpretation (look, my basis for Arthurian myths back then were the Prince Valiant comics and various movies, and all the novels I'd read based on Greek myths also were relatively straightforward adaptions), and Hastur's Heritage because it was literally the first piece of fiction I'd read which presented homosexual relationships in a sympathetic fashion. Until then, all the gay characters I had encountered in fiction were either evil and comic relief. This really made an incredible difference to my teenage self's world view and made her question a lot of other clichés and assumptions as well.
16: If you could bring three books to a deserted island which would you bring and why?
Watership Down, because it's one of my comfort novels, at least one of the big Russian classic (either by Tolstoy or Dostojewski) because I'm still shamefully ignorant of them except by osmosis and keep postponing my readings, and on the island, I couldn't anymore, and the Gustave Flaubert/George Sand correspondence, preferably in the audio version read by Christa Berndl as George Sand and Christian Brückner as Flaubert, because Flaubert is every neurotic author you can imagine while old age George Sand is just fabulous in her enjoyment of life and common sense attitude, and the (symypathetic) clash of these two voices would fit with every mood I'm likely to get on this island and would keep providing me with some perspective.
no subject
Date: 2021-04-29 12:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-04-29 02:01 pm (UTC)"It is a curious thing, which does honor to them both, that Flaubert and George Sand should have become loving friends towards the end of their lives. At the beginning, Flaubert might have been looked upon by George Sand as a furious enemy. Emma [Madame Bovary] is George Sand's heroine with all the poetry turned into ridicule.
and: To the last she speaks from a temperament lyrical, sanguine, imaginative, optimistic and sympathetic; he from a temperament dramatic, melancholy, observing, cynical, and satirical. She insists upon natural goodness; he, upon innate depravity. She urges her faith in social regeneration; he vents his splenetic contempt for the mob. (...) For her, finally, the literary art is an instrument of social salvation--it is her means of touching the world with her ideals, her love, her aspiration; for him the literary art is the avenue of escape from the meaningless chaos of existence--it is his subtly critical condemnation of the world.
and:
We have spoken of George Sand as a faithful daughter of the French Revolution; and by way of contrast we may speak of Flaubert as a disgruntled son of the Second Empire.
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Date: 2021-04-29 03:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-04-29 12:36 pm (UTC)Cutting out adultery would destroy rather a lot...
And probably remove a rather large chunk of Aramis's life...
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Date: 2021-04-29 01:38 pm (UTC)But other than Lester, I can't think of a version that follows the novel in the exact manner of her death, either. Most have the brains to not kill her off so early, though!
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Date: 2021-04-29 03:11 pm (UTC)The TV series did a good job with her.
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Date: 2021-04-30 06:23 am (UTC)What are the novels like? I mean would you recommend them? Because based on your description of Tergit's life, I would definitely be interested in reading.
Oh, and regarding NA fiction: I had to google it as well, which, when I realised that it was yet another marketing-related age bracket, led to a mild feeling of discomfort, mostly because I' firmly rooted in the "Let everyone read whatever books actually speak to them" camp.
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Date: 2021-04-30 02:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-04-30 10:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-04-30 02:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-05-01 05:13 pm (UTC)But if you want to know what I really love: letters.
Yes! And for this question I was thinking: what about diaries?? ;) (Though of course we don't get both sides for that.)
So hard to single out just one
Heh, yes. Though in my generation/cultural-group I feel like it was The Dark Is Rising that trumped all others for us :) (I haven't even watched it, having noped right out on hearing that the main character of this quintessentially British Isles book was made into an American in the movie.)
Ohhhh, Marion Zimmer Bradley. What I remember as formative is her Sword and Sorceress anthologies (which I think I got to before Mists, hence that one being not quite as formative for me) which were my first introduction to stories that were female-centric.
And yes forever to sympathetic gay characters making a difference to teenager worldview -- for me (as I think may have come up before) it was Madeleine L'Engle and Orson Scott Card -- both of whom, of course, have other issues -- but in the 80's/90's their books were literally the first introduction I had to sympathetic gay characters, and made such a difference to my teenage self, and I will always be grateful to them for that.
Thank you again for Desdemona, which I am still thinking about :D (Interestingly, it's the Lysistrata one that's been stuck in my head for the last while, although your mention of Effi Briest made me think more about that one too -- haunting, and I really need to check out the original.)
ETA: Love your icon :D
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Date: 2021-05-02 05:59 am (UTC)The Dark is Rising: yes, I've heard that it's dreadful, and that plus the fact I still haven't read the novel in question prevented me from watching it.
Americanization of British characters: I massively resented this in the film version of Possession, when along with the nationality there was a complete character change for Roland. And I remember how horrified I was when finding out there have been various American versions of Erich Kästner's Das Doppelte Lottchen under the name "The Parent Trap" in which the US setting also includes making the mother, who in Kästner's novel is a hard-working journalist living in Munich, into a Boston society matron. Otoh, I've learned to appreciate other movies which transport the original setting across countries - Akiro Kurosawa famously did so with Macbeth ("Throne of Blood") and King Lear ("Ran"), and speaking of Macbeth, one of Orson Welles' stage adaptions I'd love to have seen was moving the action from Scotland to Haiti with an all black cast (which he directed in his early 20s). So this isn't an absolute rule for me. This said, if as in "Possession" or "The Dark is Rising" the main character is made American (but everything else remains), it looks like pandering to the US audience under the assumption it won't like a non-US hero, which I think is wrong and patronizing to the audience to boot.
The Lysistrata based speech certainly got my attention as well! Not least because when I was at school, I was part of the drama group, and we actually performed an Aristophanes play for our school's 400th anniversary; not Lysistrata, though, but The Assemblywomen (women infiltrate the general assembly in male disguise and engineer a coup turning over the rulership of Athens to women). Because of several bawdy sex jokes in the play, our headmaster went on stage before us and told the parents in the audience that if they're wondering how decent a school it is that stages Aristophenes, well, as decent as the monks who preserved the play by transcribing it in the early middle ages.
Effi Briest is a novel I love, so if you can find a decent English translation, I'd reccommend it.
no subject
Date: 2021-05-03 05:44 am (UTC)WHAT NO
(I love the book, but had not watched the movie and in fact knew very little about it.)
Heh, I have watched The Parent Trap (when I was really little, I couldn't tell you very much about it now) and had never known it was based on a book!
This said, if as in "Possession" or "The Dark is Rising" the main character is made American (but everything else remains), it looks like pandering to the US audience under the assumption it won't like a non-US hero, which I think is wrong and patronizing to the audience to boot.
Agreed. I don't mind it in things like Clueless either, where the setting is integral to the adaptation. But yes, either change the whole thing in a way that is consistent and sensible or don't change it, not this awful middle ground of making the main character American.
our headmaster went on stage before us and told the parents in the audience that if they're wondering how decent a school it is that stages Aristophenes, well, as decent as the monks who preserved the play by transcribing it in the early middle ages.
LOL! That's awesome :D
Back when you were talking about Fontane in salon, I looked around and found that Effi Briest was one of the few Fontanes available in translation, so it was already on my list, which made the monologue rather more interesting to me :)
no subject
Date: 2021-05-03 12:08 pm (UTC)Heh, I have watched The Parent Trap (when I was really little, I couldn't tell you very much about it now) and had never known it was based on a book!
Not just any book, but one by Erich Kästner, aka the one German author who remained in Germany during WWII (despite being indexed after having watched his own books burn in 1933) and still got printed in Israel throughout and after the war, because his novels were loved that much. More about Kästner here, here and here. Das doppelte Lottchen isn't my favourite of his, but it was the first one I ever got to know, via a recording, no less. Kästner had a terrific voice. Behold a scene from the very first film version, in which the twins realize that they are twins; the male narrator, off screen voice in this movie of 1950 is actually that of Erich Kästner, who also spoke the audio book, and like I said, child me was charmed by the voice as much as by the story.
Oh, why not: while I'm linking, here is the lego version of "Das doppelte Lottchen", and here is a trailer to a more recent film version, which puts the story in the present day and names the twins Charlie and Louise instead of Lotte and Luise. (BTW, I'm not sure the updating works, because there's a huge difference between divorce in Germany, 1948, and divorce today. But never mind that.)
no subject
Date: 2021-05-05 05:23 am (UTC)Welp, as a consequence of your links I have now downloaded kindle samples of the three books I can find in translation (Emil, which I believe you've recced to me in the past; Das doppelte Lottchen; and something called "Going to the Dogs"?) :P
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Date: 2021-05-05 05:55 am (UTC)Kästner: Emil - which translation does kindle provide a sample of, out of curiosity? What I did was linking you to this very interesting article about the Emil translations. "Going to the Dogs" sounds like it could be the English title of Kästner's "adult" novel Fabian.
no subject
Date: 2021-05-07 04:32 am (UTC)