"The distant clouds are shaking now / as if the light is tempting them ... "

[larryhammer]

" ... yearning for a shore with waves of gold / I crash upon it and wake up in the morning / and my day begins"

Sparked by this poll, an accountimentizationisming of my current readings:

For fiction: Sir Gawain and the Green Knight translated by John Gardner.

For poetry: Kokinshuu translated by Rodd and Henkenius.

For non-fiction: Southern Arizona Nature Almanac: A Seasonal Guide to Pima County and Beyond by Hanson & Hanson, supplimented by a small pile on the natural history of the Sonoran desert.

For practicing Japanese: Tebukuro o Kai ni ("Buying Mittens") by Nankichi Niimi, taken a page a day: "Samui fuyu ga hobbou kara, kitsune no oyako no sunde iru mori e mo yatte kimashita" it begins -- "Cold winter came down out of the north to a forest where a mother and child fox lived." This is a picture book edition, with illustrations depicting the kitsune as arctic foxes -- for the win. I also have a translated edition for checking my understanding, both thanks to Janni. Have I mentioned I like Janni? (After this, I have Ooki na Mori no Chiisa na Ie ("Little House in the Big Woods") by Roora Ingarusu Wairuda. Have I mentioned I like my local used book store's foreign language section? This one will be harder, because there's not as much kanji.) (Yes, that does make sense.)

For learning Japanese: Um ... I haven't actually done any lessons since before WFC. In theory, I'm halfway through All About Particles by Naoko Chino and on my second reading of The Handbook of Japanese Verbs by Taeko Kamiya, this time doing the drills.

For memorizing kanji: Guide to Reading and Writing Japanese 2e. by Florence Sakada, supplimented by Henshall's guide to remembering and a sturdy kanji dictionary. By the time I get through Sakada's out-of-date list of elementary school kanji, I'll be ready to switch over to Henshall's lists. That will be several months yet, at the rate I'm going.

So what are you all in the middle of?

---L.

Comments

[rymenhild.livejournal.com]

Can you tell me about the Gardner translation? I'm preparing a syllabus for a Sir Gawain and associated poems class, and I want to start with a translation to give the students a little time to learn the dialect.

[larryhammer]

It's decent -- it's an edition of the complete poems of the poet, with a critical introduction that doesn't have too much stupidity. It's been a while since I read whatever translation is used by the Norton Anthology (Bonhoff?), but my memory is that Gardner's is a bit less stiff but doesn't reproduce as much alliteration. Can't say how accurate his translation is, as while I can manage Chaucer's dialect, the one time I tried Pearl in the original, I couldn't.

---L.

[movingfinger.livejournal.com]

So what are you all in the middle of?:

Peter Freuchen's Arctic Adventure
knitting Christmas present
Thanksgiving prep
desk clearing
assembling stack of recently-acquired prints to be framed
laundry
Mozart Oboe concerto via Bayerische Rundfunk

Avoiding:
Remodel planning
Garden cleanup for winter
really effective desk clearing

[larryhammer]

How's the Freuchen?

(And if you're cleaning your desk, I think you get a bye on the remodeling, at least for a while.) (bye? by? bi?)

---L.

[movingfinger.livejournal.com]

Freuchen is dryly funny, something I didn't expect. He's quite a controlled writer, restrained and understated, so I'm not sure whether the moments that I think "Knud Rasmussen, you jerk" are due directly to what Freuchen is conveying to me or whether I'm reading too much under the text.

A remarkable book from a remarkable man.

Bob Bartlett comes off as an asshole, but I suppose he wouldn't have been the man he was if he'd been a nice guy.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Laura Ingalls Wilder is bigtime popular over there.

And yes it does make sense about the kanji. A sea of hiragana is the worst.

[larryhammer]

As big as L.M. Montgomery?

Re: sea of hiragana -- my copy of Oyasumenasaiotsukisama, let me show you it.

---L.

L.M. Montgomery

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

That's her name. I was going to mention her too, but I couldn't remember her name, could only remember Anne of Green Gables and it was just beyond me to do the one tiny Google search that would have secured the information, so I just let it go.

Yes. Well, almost. ... and actually, my data is now 15 years old. But back in the early 1990s, she seemed to be nearly as popular as L. M. Montgomery.

LOL Oyasumenasaiotsukisama

Re: L.M. Montgomery

[larryhammer]

Did you know there's a currently running (unless it just finished) anime that's a prequel to Anne of Green Gables? Montgomery is still big.

---L.

Re: L.M. Montgomery

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I didn't, but it doesn't surprise me.