What 📔book are you reading right now?

Yes, one thing I love about English is its shameless hybrid nature... it can be concrete like the Germanic tongues and sleek like the French, whatever's required. It's all I know how to fluently speak... I'm Canadian, but almost entirely working-class English in origins. Both sides of the family spoke some variation of Yorkshire for the last thousand years, and my tongue has trouble going outside that. They taught us French for six years in school and I came away knowing none of it... later taught myself, from books, enough to get by. I can get the gist of French, but not the nuances, really.

Alice Alice, I recently had to put down a translation of Dostoevsky... could sense there was something tremendous behind it but translation just couldn't bridge me there, not entirely. Got frustrated, picked up some Kerouac.

Alice Alice said:

Oh, does Les Miserables resemble War and Peace? I used to like War and Peace when was at school, and at the same time I loved Hugo's Notre Dame. So I just wonder

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Well the beginning of book 2 of Les Miserables is a description of the Battle of Waterloo along with a discussion of its historical significance so there's a distinct parallel with Tolstoy's description of Borodino and discussion of his theory of history in the appendix. LM doesn't have as large number of characters of W&P and they don't have the Russian habit of the same characters having different names depending on the context! Hugo is more explicitly Christian in his moralising but not excessively so.

Hugo can be quite clever and subtle. For instance, when the bishop of Digne first arrives he quickly exchanges his large palace for the smaller hospital attached to his cathedral - inverting the account of the building of the Temple and Palace by Solomon. This foreshadows the key action of letting Valjean keep the silverware he steals.

Rivendell_librarian said:

Well the beginning of book 2 of Les Miserables is a description of the Battle of Waterloo along with a discussion of its historical significance so there's a distinct parallel with Tolstoy's description of Borodino and discussion of his theory of history in the appendix. LM doesn't have as large number of characters of W&P and they don't have the Russian habit of the same characters having different names depending on the context! Hugo is more explicitly Christian in his moralising but not excessively so.

Hugo can be quite clever and subtle. For instance, when the bishop of Digne first arrives he quickly exchanges his large palace for the smaller hospital attached to his cathedral - inverting the account of the building of the Temple and Palace by Solomon. This foreshadows the key action of letting Valjean keep the silverware he steals.

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Thanks for your answer. Now I want to read Hugo's epic. And can you tell, what do you think of War and Peace as an epic? I mean, is it interesting to read. I'm just willing to know, what people think of Russian classics and of War and Peace as a symbol of it

I really adore Victor Hugo... he first gave me the courage, writer-wise, to go off on whatever tangents, not worry about it.

I have read War and Peace. It took a while and the large number of characters made it difficult at times. I found a useful web-page that listed them with their alternative names that helped a lot. What Tolstoy does, arguably better than other novelists, is take you into the mind of each main character in turn. And he does create some wonderful believable characters. Yes, Hugo and Tolstoy do both go off on tangents but I like them. I got the impression that Hugo was a Bonapartist (not a royalist!) who accepted Bonaparte's time had come at Waterloo. And Bonaparte also features strongly in War and Peace. Living now rather than then it is hard to appreciate how important Bonaparte was in Europe and Russia in the early 19th century

Rivendell_librarian said:

I have read War and Peace. It took a while and the large number of characters made it difficult at times. I found a useful web-page that listed them with their alternative names that helped a lot.

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I've tried (and failed) to read W&P a few times before, and it's this aspect that made it difficult. I need to find that webpage!

There are scenes in War and Peace I will never forget. Most potent of all, quite strangely, is Prince Andrei standing off in the reserves while just a ways away the Battle of Borodino rages, them standing in formation as the odd stray bullet brings one of them down.

Many others, of course. Translated as it is for me, there's something in Tolstoy so bloody primordial I've hardly read its like.

Rivendell_librarian said:

I have read War and Peace. It took a while and the large number of characters made it difficult at times. ...

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That eerily sound like one of the criticisms levelled at "The Silmarillion". One critic compared it to a telephone book because of all the names, at least if my memory of the relevant passage in one of the books dealing with JRRT and his works is correct (the usual suspect would be Tom Shippey).

Olorgando said:

That eerily sound like one of the criticisms levelled at "The Silmarillion". One critic compared it to a telephone book because of all the names, at least if my memory of the relevant passage in one of the books dealing with JRRT and his works is correct (the usual suspect would be Tom Shippey).

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At least the Sil gives you a fighting chance with family trees and maps.

I guess, names from War and Peace sound more strange to you, than names from Silmarillion.

I never had much trouble keeping track of who's who in War and Peace... the characters are all memorable, with distinct personalities, names like Natasha, Pierre, and Helena, Dolokhov. But I confess The Silmarillon I never could really penetrate.

Alice Alice said:

I guess, names from War and Peace sound more strange to you, than names from Silmarillion.

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Quite the contrary. The great Russian authors were translated decades ago, long before the Sil. And for that matter, names from foreign countries, especially European, have been known through the news all over Europe for ages. Getting the pronunciation right is an entirely different matter, especially if special letters beyond the 26 of the classical Roman alphabet are needed in transcription. But that's not limited to languages written in Cyrillic script, the Scandinavians have several special vocals, a's and o's mostly - or German, for that matter, with our frequent ä, ö and ü (my name is written with one of those, meaning while living in the US I switched to the writing more comprehensible to the Anglo-Saxons, being ae, oe and ue).
A selection from the Windows character map which I probably would have trouble pronouncing right:

à á â ã ç è é ê ë ì í î ï ð ñ ò ó ô õ ø ù ú û ý þ ÿ ā ă ą ć ĉ ċ č ď đ ē ĕ ė ę ě …

There's more, many, many more …

Olorgando said:

Quite the contrary. The great Russian authors were translated decades ago, long before the Sil. And for that matter, names from foreign countries, especially European, have been known through the news all over Europe for ages. Getting the pronunciation right is an entirely different matter, especially if special letters beyond the 26 of the classical Roman alphabet are needed in transcription. But that's not limited to languages written in Cyrillic script, the Scandinavians have several special vocals, a's and o's mostly - or German, for that matter, with our frequent ä, ö and ü (my name is written with one of those, meaning while living in the US I switched to the writing more comprehensible to the Anglo-Saxons, being ae, oe and ue).
A selection from the Windows character map which I probably would have trouble pronouncing right:

à á â ã ç è é ê ë ì í î ï ð ñ ò ó ô õ ø ù ú û ý þ ÿ ā ă ą ć ĉ ċ č ď đ ē ĕ ė ę ě …

There's more, many, many more …

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Oh. Then I understand
Yes, pronunciation is very different from non-Slavic languages. If I was not Russian, it could blew my mind.
Oh and in Russian there is "ë" letter

Ealdwyn said:

I speak some Swedish and the additional vowels ö, ä, å, and the Norwegian/Danish ø, æ, å are not a problem. But many years ago I learned a little Russian and always had problems with ъ, ь, ы.
I'm a native British English speaker, so maybe that's why I find the Slavic sounds more difficult than the Scandinavian/Germanic ?

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Well, I am native Russian speaker and I understand, why you find it sounding more difficult Too much differences between languages, though I have never found English or German sounding strange

German doesn't sound strange to me, as it's close enough to English... same with the Romance languages. But I must admit, if I had to learn Russian, I don't know if I could do it. I'm always in awe how someone from another world linguistically can learn English... salutations.

Sir Eowyn said:

I never had much trouble keeping track of who's who in War and Peace... the characters are all memorable, with distinct personalities, names like Natasha, Pierre, and Helena, Dolokhov. But I confess The Silmarillon I never could really penetrate.

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Tolstoy is a a novelist of the mind - taking you into the minds of his main characters in turn. More so than being a novelist of scenes - though there are memorable scenes e.g. the two major battles, the ballroom scene.

But there are a lot of characters and Tolstoy does use different names for them (in the Russian way):
List of characters in War and Peace
e.g. Vasily or Vas'ka Denisov

and compare with Les Miserables:
List of characters in Les Miserables

Not quite in keeping with the thread title, but I will be reading John Garth's 2003 Tolkien and the Great War, as my favorite book store, where I had ordered it, informed me by e-mail earlier today that it had been delivered. 😃

Good book! And he has a new one coming out.

Olorgando said:

Not quite in keeping with the thread title, but I will be reading John Garth's 2003 Tolkien and the Great War, ...

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Squint-eyed Southerner said:

Good book! And he has a new one coming out.

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Finished reading it yesterday, and yes, it is a good book.
Quite possibly, due to to the notice on the front cover "'Tolkien' - Now A Major Motion Picture", one source or inspiration for the 2019 biopic - which I have not seen. But from what I've read about the film on JRRT sites the time covered seems to be pretty similar.

In a small way, I would see it as being something of a companion book about the TCBS to Humphrey Carpenter's 1978 "The Inklings".
Small due to the much shorter time of their existence. The nucleus, in a way, was comprised of JRRT and Christopher Luke Wiseman (after whom Christopher T was named), whom JRRT met at Kind Edward's School in 1905, when Wiseman was 12 and JRRT 13. The TCBS seem to have been formed in 1911, the same year in which JRRT went to Oxford, so very late in his school career. As per Garth's account, they included, for a time at least, more people than the four commonly mentioned, besides Wiseman the younger Geoffrey Bache Smith and Robert Quilter Gilson. At the "Council of London" on 12 December 1914 held at the home of the Wiseman family, often mentioned in other writing, only these four attended, and decided that the TCBS would now be limited to those four. At least JRRT and Wiseman had apparently become disgusted with the attitudes of those others (some named) who were "evicted" at this "Council". With Gilson being killed on the first Day of the Battle of the Somme on 01 July 1916, and Smith succumbing to wounds in 03 December 1916, the TCBS were again reduced to the nucleus of JRRT and Wiseman mentioned above. After the war, as JRRT and Wiseman drifted apart professionally, the TCBS were effectively replaced by C.S. Lewis and of course the Inklings. But JRRT had sporadic contact with Wiseman pretty much up to his death, as Wiseman also lived in retirement on the South Coast of England near Bournemouth, and apparently active in local politics of a sort.

Garth naturally concentrates on the writing JRRT did in this time, basically culminating in what became "The Book of Lost Tales" volume 1. Which showed much still needing to be written. Later developments are only sketched, as repeating "HoMe" wasn't necessary.