Dream of a red mansion and journey to the west, maybe the translation was just really bad but I couldn't get through the first page.Queen Michael said:
When's the last time you read books like these?
- Thread starter Queen Michael
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The closest I can claim are the following. I will preface that I don't read outside a specific series or genre often and anything I read (and not listen to by audiobook) takes me a considerably longer time to complete than my peers.
1 - Fort Freak, of George R. R. Martin's Wild Card's series. One of the contributing authors is David Anthony Durham who will return for the next book in the series, Lowball.
2 - Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges (To be fair, not a novel and I didn't complete it as it was an exceptionally difficult read for me, though still interesting.)
1 - Fort Freak, of George R. R. Martin's Wild Card's series. One of the contributing authors is David Anthony Durham who will return for the next book in the series, Lowball.
2 - Ficciones by Jorge Luis Borges (To be fair, not a novel and I didn't complete it as it was an exceptionally difficult read for me, though still interesting.)
I've read Invader Summer and A Wind Named Amnesia by Hideyuki Kikuchi (translated obviously) though primarilly picked the combo book up as I remembered enjoying the anime version of the latter. By the same token read Metro 2033 after playing the game. Really enjoyed all three.
My answer to both would be "The Count of Monte Christo" by Alexandre Dumas.
This is a very weird topic. I'm not sure what you're trying to say with this. Sounds like you don't know either.
This is a very weird topic. I'm not sure what you're trying to say with this. Sounds like you don't know either.
1. I don't keep track of the racial identities of the authors of the books I read, but the most recent one I know would be Tony Morrison's Song of Solomon, which was two years ago.
2. Natsume Koseki's Kokoro, last week. Previously; Voltaire's Candide, two months ago. In a non-academic context; Gabriel Garcia Marquez' One Hundred Years of Solitude, about six months ago. And this is from a literary Anglophile.
I'm curious, when's the last time you read a book by a Native American author?
2. Natsume Koseki's Kokoro, last week. Previously; Voltaire's Candide, two months ago. In a non-academic context; Gabriel Garcia Marquez' One Hundred Years of Solitude, about six months ago. And this is from a literary Anglophile.
Yeah...it's saying that the handful of writers who faces those people have seen includes at least one white writer.Queen Michael said:
I'm curious, when's the last time you read a book by a Native American author?
+1drummond13 said:
It's an understandable criticism; I'm Chinese-American and I didn't like Journey to the West (haven't read enough of Dream of the Red Chamber) much either. I like to compare to Homer's Odyssey; ancient epics, while of historical value, simply aren't worth much in terms of entertainment value. The art of writing apparently wasn't very well-developed back then (especially in terms of character development, nonexistent in both the Greek and Chinese epics). The translations, in my experience, mostly attempt to stay faithful to the style of the original texts, rather than accommodate modern audiences (although from what I've seen of Red Chamber it's a little more palatable).ExtraDebit said:
Foreign stuff "G w t Dragon Tattoo" springs to my mind as well. As does the "Nochnoi Dozor/Night Watch"...well "Wächter der Nacht" ^^ I did read all of them, too (so, Russian in the original).
Normally I read stuff which is of some English origin though I'm German and I read a lot of German literature therefore, too.
Black writers....like many of the other commenters, I mostly don't know if a writer is black. If it's a German writer the chances are crazy small that he is black...I do read a lot of American writers but I guess the ones I've read are all white but like I said, no idea...I've read Egyptian authors though, Chinese...
EDIT: Phew....Dumas was black? Then I DID read something of a black guy. Did I dodge some kind of bullet then?
Normally I read stuff which is of some English origin though I'm German and I read a lot of German literature therefore, too.
Black writers....like many of the other commenters, I mostly don't know if a writer is black. If it's a German writer the chances are crazy small that he is black...I do read a lot of American writers but I guess the ones I've read are all white but like I said, no idea...I've read Egyptian authors though, Chinese...
EDIT: Phew....Dumas was black? Then I DID read something of a black guy. Did I dodge some kind of bullet then?
I reread Count of Monte Cristo recently and I've read both the original Three Kingdoms as well as the translated versions. Also, I don't understand this whole need to know a book by a black author. The simple fact the TC has thrown that into the ring points to the fact he or she is a bit of a racist if they focus on the author's skin color and not the books they wrote.
Then again, the same could be said for films as well. Name one white film maker and many people would elude to Star Wars or Lord of the Rings because they are big names and pretty famous. Name one black film maker and people might be stumped (as would I) because I really don't care that much about who makes the movies I enjoy. There are a handful of film makers I follow (Rob Zombie and Quentin Tarantino for instance), but past that I don't really care about the people behind the movies just as much as I don't care about the person behind the pen. Sounds a little harsh, but that's probably going to be the general consensus if you go around and ask random people to start naming authors by skin color.
Then again, the same could be said for films as well. Name one white film maker and many people would elude to Star Wars or Lord of the Rings because they are big names and pretty famous. Name one black film maker and people might be stumped (as would I) because I really don't care that much about who makes the movies I enjoy. There are a handful of film makers I follow (Rob Zombie and Quentin Tarantino for instance), but past that I don't really care about the people behind the movies just as much as I don't care about the person behind the pen. Sounds a little harsh, but that's probably going to be the general consensus if you go around and ask random people to start naming authors by skin color.
I have no idea if it's also true for ancient Chinese works, but for the Greek stuff it's actually completely anachronistic to think of them as "texts" or to imagine that they were designed to be read. They were part of an oral tradition, meaning that they were meant to be performed by bard-like people and passed on orally, which obviously alters the storytelling requirements somewhat (it was probably episodic, and the focus has to be on keeping the audience engaged moment to moment rather than creating elaborately fleshed out characters).dyre said:
It's also pretty likely that there was no "original text" or even a "Homer" who completely composed the poems from scratch. What we have is in all likelihood just one version of many that happened to be written down at some point and survive. Same goes for stuff like the Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf, though not for the Roman Aeneid, which actually was composed and written down by Virgil.
Not particularly relevant to this thread, but since I've spent several terms studying this stuff I thought I'd contribute something potentially interesting
Yeah, fair point. I realize they were originally just oral tradition, which is necessarily episodic in nature when telling an epic, but I have to say, even if I tried to read the Odyssey piecemeal and imagined it being narrated by Morgan Freeman, I still probably couldn't enjoy it! I suppose it may be unfair to apply the standards of the written novel to a recorded oral epic, but, well, what can I say...I guess "oral tradition as a medium of storytelling sacrifices many elements found in conventional written works and the Odyssey suffers as a result of it" would be more accurate?Eamar said:I have no idea if it's also true for ancient Chinese works, but for the Greek stuff it's actually completely anachronistic to think of them as "texts" or to imagine that they were designed to be read. They were part of an oral tradition, meaning that they were meant to be performed by bard-like people and passed on orally, which obviously alters the storytelling requirements somewhat (it was probably episodic, and the focus has to be on keeping the audience engaged moment to moment rather than creating elaborately fleshed out characters).dyre said:
It's also pretty likely that there was no "original text" or even a "Homer" who completely composed the poems from scratch. What we have is in all likelihood just one version of many that happened to be written down at some point and survive. Same goes for stuff like the Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf, though not for the Roman Aeneid, which actually was composed and written down by Virgil.
Not particularly relevant to this thread, but since I've spent several terms studying this stuff I thought I'd contribute something potentially interesting
I don't excuse Dickens's terrible writing just because he was paid by the page and split up his stories to publish in a monthly journal, so I won't excuse Odyssey just because it is a collection of various stories told by random guys sitting around a fireplace!
I think it says that there is a much greater amount of white people than black people in our respective societies.Queen Michael said:
On topic, I don't know if I've read anything by a black author. If I have, I've either forgotten or never realised in the first place.
The only translated works I've read that I can think of are Let the Old Dreams Die by John Ajvide Lindqvist and The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. Granted, they're both popular authors but it's all I could think of. I'd mention The Bible but I never read the whole thing.
1. By an African-American author, no, I don't think I have. I don't know why, and I've never thought about it until now.
2. I suppose that would be The Trial (Der Process) by Franz Kafka. On my to-read shelf, I also have Anna Karenina by Tolstoy as well as Crime and Punishment by Dostojevskij, and I plan to read them both as soon as I'm done with Game of Thrones.
2. I suppose that would be The Trial (Der Process) by Franz Kafka. On my to-read shelf, I also have Anna Karenina by Tolstoy as well as Crime and Punishment by Dostojevskij, and I plan to read them both as soon as I'm done with Game of Thrones.
I'm reading Dream of etc. right now, and I read Journey to the West years ago. Love both of them.ExtraDebit said:
Maybe that's why I love them; the Swedish translations are more about accomodating modern-day audiences.dyre said:
Never claimed my country was smart. And I have no interest in what we call English class that goes over stuff like that(still not sure why it's called English and not "how to write essays and analyze stories/poems" besides the fact that's a long title for a class name but that's the gist of what it is).Queen Michael said:
So why the focus on just black authors and not authors of any other ethnicity/race than white? And why not female authors who write things other than romance/paranormal romance? And why just novels and not just published literary works by (insert description of author here)?
I think it says exactly what the replies indicate: that to most readers, race genuinely isn't an issue. If someone has written a good book, the reader tends not to care what the author looks like. Some authors are highly publicized (Stephen King springs to mind), and readers are familiar with their their appearance, but that's not a racial issue.Queen Michael said:
In response to your original questions:
1: I read a few books in college that could be considered about 'being black'. They were fine, and I'm not sorry I read them, but they aren't among my favorites. The stories just weren't engaging enough. It had nothing to do with the races of the characters. I frankly don't give a hoot if someone is black, white, yellow, or brown. I'd be curious if they were green, but if a green person wrote a lousy book, I wouldn't feel obligated to like it just because they were green.
2: I read Stieg Larsson's 'Millennium' trilogy, as well as a half-dozen of the 'Vampire Hunter D' books. Living in America, it can actually be kind of hard to guess (without research) whether an author is from another country. America has so many cultures and races mixed together that anyone might be from Europe, Asia, or some sleepy little neighborhood in Idaho. Again, it seems to come back to the question of whether the book is good. If so, why does it matter where the author hails from? Doesn't an author's interest lie in having people read their books? Why is it necessary for a reader to find out what they look like? If we judge authors on appearance rather than quality of work, aren't we undermining their work before we can fairly evaluate it?
I read that! What a great collection of bizarrely unique short stories.SeeDarkly_Xero said:
On topic:
Number One: "Patternmaster" by Octavia Butler (black AND a woman!...Boo-yah!)
Number Two: The first two "Witcher" books by Andrzej Sapkowski; the first three "Nightwatch" books by Sergei Lukyanenko
By the way, I'm seeing a lot of posts where people say they don't research authors they like.
I guess I'm curious as to why not? Why would you NOT want to know more about an author whose books you appreciate? Wouldn't you want to know more about a musician or actor whose performance just blew you away. Aren't you interested in what drives them or colors their work?
Again, I'm just curious...not being critical.
Oddly enough, my captcha is "The Bible", which depending on one's point of view, could fall into either category.
1. I have no idea. I've read well over a thousand SF and Fantasy books so I suspect I have. The only one I know is black I haven't read the books, only seen the movie adaptations(Alexander Dumas).
2. Yes, several. From Russian, probably more too, again see: read over a thousand books in SF and Fantasy. (For russian I've read Metro 2033 and A Roadside Picnic).
2. Yes, several. From Russian, probably more too, again see: read over a thousand books in SF and Fantasy. (For russian I've read Metro 2033 and A Roadside Picnic).
Translated work may be less common among English or American audiences but if you were to ask that question for other mediums like ART, I regularly view and support artists from all over the world that are women and minorities.
DeviantArt is a great site to visit. Though, you can view written work (which I do, mostly German and Japanese) as well.
DeviantArt is a great site to visit. Though, you can view written work (which I do, mostly German and Japanese) as well.