Books People Can't Finish

[tompe]

Originally Posted by speakingtohe

I am with you. I didn't actually finish. Maybe 2/3. I had to keep going back to try and make sense and it didn't seem to work. Still this was a book given to me by a friend who loved it, so each to their own.

Helen

Strange, there was nothing wrong with the plotting.

But I checked with someone that had read both the Swedish and the English version and the English translation is not good at all. So maybe what you experiences is a problem with the translation.

[speakingtohe]

Originally Posted by tompe

Strange, there was nothing wrong with the plotting.

But I checked with someone that had read both the Swedish and the English version and the English translation is not good at all. So maybe what you experiences is a problem with the translation.

As I said each to his own. And while I don't speak Swedish, I know that a lot of people liked the book that don't speak Swedish either. It was actually recommended to me by a Romanian friend who does not speak English that well or any Nordic languages.

Glad you think it was a good book and enjoyed it.

Helen

[tompe]

Originally Posted by speakingtohe

As I said each to his own. And while I don't speak Swedish, I know that a lot of people liked the book that don't speak Swedish either. It was actually recommended to me by a Romanian friend who does not speak English that well or any Nordic languages.

Glad you think it was a good book and enjoyed it.

Helen

Sure, but if the plotting is consistent or not is not a matter of taste. Either things hold together or the do not. And in the Swedish version at least there was no problem at all understanding what happened and how things fitted together.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by tompe

Sure, but if the plotting is consistent or not is not a matter of taste. Either things hold together or the do not. And in the Swedish version at least there was no problem at all understanding what happened and how things fitted together.

Hell, then I'll bite:

What was the big deal at the end with the evil capitalist?

Spoiler:

What happened to him, other than some bad publicity? It didn't seem like much, if anything, happened at all, after all the much-ballyhooed "evidence" that the dead girl's father was supposed to be giving to Mikael (that's right, right? Mikael, or something like that?). For me, when I read it, it laid there like nothing much occurred to him. There was no detail.

What it felt like was a bunch of telling, not showing, now that I think about it. As though the author kept telling us "he's gonna get it, he's gonna get it, he's really gonna get it now...and then he got walloped," and that was it. Maybe that was an issue with the English translation, but if so, for me, it was a big one. Huge letdown.

I really do want to know, if there was something I missed. I'm not asking to argue the point.

And my other issues, about the blind neighbors and the coincidences? THAT couldn't be translation, that had to be plotting. IMHO.

Hitch

[tompe]

The evil capitalist fled the country and was killed.

[Hitch]

Spoiler:

Originally Posted by tompe

The evil capitalist fled the country and was killed.

Tompe:

I seem to remember him dying...this definitely must have to do with the translation, because I know the sort of half-assed retribution really left me feeling cranky about it.

(Now, she said, sighing, I'll have to go back and review the last 1/4 of the book. Dammit.)

P.S.: I'm spoiler-ing it for anyone who hasn't read it.

Hitch

[tompe]

The father did not have the evidence. But Salander found evidence that was published.

[tompe]

I have read the first book three times but I do not remember the blind neighbor. Remind me, who was he or she?

[Prestidigitweeze]

In Chapter MMMDCCCXCII, Lisbeth's moth Olafine was forced to live in a gentrified wad of cashmere, so that when the evil capitalist exploded, his heather-bronze sweater unraveled and Olafine did a frenetic victory dance, flailing its legs and antennae, which caused traffic pile-ups among the fire ant colonies that returned in the previous chapter, which in turn redirected several phalanxes into the gas tank of Blomkvist's stolen Fuldamobil and led to the controversial "angry salamander" denouement that many of us continue to malign on every thread in every forum in the world.

(The preceding explanation was 100% spoiler-free.)

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by tompe

I have read the first book three times but I do not remember the blind neighbor. Remind me, who was he or she?

Tompe:

I meant, the innumerable "blind" neighbors (the coffee shop owner, for one, that was eyeing the protagonist as a possible date/whatever) who all live and work along that ONE road in and out of town. That road where NOBODY saw the son drive the women in; nobody noticed that they never came out. I didn't mean literally blind, I meant it a bit sarcastically.

And interestingly, I remember Lisbeth's actions from the US movie (I have the original trilogy with subtitles queued up to watch on my Roku), but I really don't recall them from the book. I must have been too vexed by then to pay attention, which does happen to me when I get annoyed with a book. ;-)

Hitch

[varlog]

if there is a list called "The Books That Changed the Way You Think" I'll put this so very fanny/deeply sad "Catch 22" in it (I've read it as teenager)!
Had no problems with "LOTR", "Millennium", left "Ulysses" after 5 pages, never started "Moby Dick" (know vague what it is about, no interest), "Fifty Shades of Grey" (ditto), Atlas Shrugged (never heard about, probably because I'm not native English speaker), "Wicked" (?), "Eat Pray Love" (?), "The Casual Vacancy".
I've read of course "Something Happend" but dont' remember anything - except that Yossarian was so very very old.. but still going(?).
To induce my son to read Rowling's HP I've read to him the first page of one of the books. I remember that it was an exceptionally good first page, but ... he's read them all, me ... not. The films were not so good...

[rkomar]

Originally Posted by varlog

To induce my son to read Rowling's HP I've read to him the first page of one of the books. I remember that it was an exceptionally good first page, but ... he's read them all, me ... not. The films were not so good...

Man, you're a hard film critic! I thought the films were well done. What did you think made them so bad, considering that children and teenagers were expected to enjoy them?

[tompe]

Originally Posted by Hitch

Tompe:

I meant, the innumerable "blind" neighbors (the coffee shop owner, for one, that was eyeing the protagonist as a possible date/whatever) who all live and work along that ONE road in and out of town. That road where NOBODY saw the son drive the women in; nobody noticed that they never came out. I didn't mean literally blind, I meant it a bit sarcastically.

Aha.

Well I did not react on that fact. Maybe the windows in the car was black? And there was not many people living there and they did not talk with each other so there was no way to synchronize the information. I do not think this was strange. It also gets pretty dark outside and you will not see inside a car when it is totally dark outside.

[varlog]

Originally Posted by rkomar

Man, you're a hard film critic! I thought the films were well done. What did you think made them so bad, considering that children and teenagers were expected to enjoy them?

Somehow the films were lacking the right atmosphere for me. In particular I had too oft impression I was looking at very lengthy next Harry Potter video game commercial.
Than again I didn't say they were really bad, only not so good. Probably original Rowling is much better - judging on this one page I 've read.

[bearymore]

Originally Posted by issybird

I think for books like Don Quixote, i.e., honking huge pre-20th century works not written in English, the quality of the translation is critical. The public domain translations can be impossible, translating archaic language and form into archaic language and form. If you're going to do it, it's worth spending the money on a current translation.

You are so right. The quality of the translation makes all the difference. For some reason, more recent translations of many of the books that have been mentioned here have made all the difference for me. For War and Peace and, for that manner, any of the Russians the recent translations by Pevear and Volkhonsky can't be beat. After slogging through the Constance Garnett translation of W and P several years ago, I picked up Pevear and Volkhonsky's translation and felt that I finally discovered why the book is considered a classic. After several abortive tries at older translations, I found Edith Grossman's 2003 translation of Don Quixote to be very readable and finally made my way through that book. Last, any discussion of translated classics shouldn't leave out the wonderful recent translations of The Iliad and the Odyssey by Robert Fagles.