Falling in Love...

... with books.

Ever since I learned how to read, I loved it. There was something about that turning of the page, that dark text on paper, the curves of A to the sharpness of Z, as soon as I learned how it was the only thing I wanted to do. I was that awkward person in the corner of the party who would rather read about friendships than have them. That isn't to say that I never had friends, I just tended to like my books a little bit better. My childhood was definitely one of a reading nerd.

All this is very well and good, right up until I started University. To jump topics, my very first day at Middlebury this summer my professor for Oral and Written Spanish said this about our coursework: "No es difícil, es mucho." Now I'm not sure I agree; for one thing quantity preludes difficulty, but I digress. The thing about college is that there is so much to do, every second of every day there is a new experience, or at least an essay due at midnight and late-night cookie deliveries. I spent the eve of my 19th birthday writing an essay, and when I finished at 3am I went to brush my teeth and noticed the entire hall had signed a happy birthday poster that was written in Harry Potter font using a purple Sharpie.

In my cultures class at Middlebury we spoke about "La Movida Madrileña" and my professor quoted someone (I don't remember who it was) saying that in Spain no one slept, because there was so much that they had the liberty to do once Franco's regime had ended. Brandeis isn't exactly recently-liberated Spain, but I still never sleep.

All this is to say, I am a busy individual. Reading, which got my whole life was an escape, somehow became a chore. As a Comparative Literature major with minors in creative writing and classical studies I've had to read a lot. Even my other major, linguistics, for all that it is a science has had a hefty amount of reading. Once I finish that Literature essay at 3 am the only thing I want to do is brush my teeth and sleep, not pick up another book.

Feeling this way hasn't been comfortable to me, and for all that I enjoy college in that small way I haven't been happy in the thing that I love.

Thankfully, my love in reading has been rekindled once more, but it's not with Harry Potter this time, it's with Isabel Allende. It was "Eva Luna" (in the original Spanish of course; I wasn't allowed English this summer) that reminded me that reading is fun and I'm happy to have had my experience at Middlebury, because I've fallen in love with reading again, and that's wonderful.

Recommended Reads!

Today is the last day of the Bread Loaf Translators' Conference, and I was going to write about that, but I want to have time to full compose my thoughts on it. In lieu of that, please enjoy this post of book recommendations!

Every job I've done has had to do with books. Whether it was processing ILL, doing inventory, working at a Harry Potter themed summer camp, shelf reading, tutoring, planning a poetry workshop, it all came down to books. Of all my jobs, my favorite is probably the book reviews. In my senior year of high school I started a book review blog for my local library, which sadly never got picked up after I graduated and stopped working there. That said, I had fun while working on it, and even after I stopped, I have continued to make small remarks on books I have read in my reading journal. Not every book I read gets an entry. Unfortunately I lost it about 15 books ago, and to back fill it out is difficult. That said, I have gone over the books I have read in the past year, and now present five snippets from my reading journal (note: not all of these have been released in the last year, it's just when I got around to reading them, some have been on my list for a while).

A Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami (1982) translated by Alfred Birmbaum (1989)

Pretty much nothing in this book made sense to me and I love it. Somehow I still followed even though no characters have names, everything they say is enigmatic, impossible and downright nonsensical I'm chill with it because it all fits and in fact did make sense after I read through it again. A fantastic story that I can't properly explain because it's just a wild trip you have to take for yourself. (I haven’t read the sequel/prequel, so no spoilers please!)

Can't and Won't by Lydia Davis (2014)

These stories were all super fascinating! The varying length was catching, and I thought the book was aesthetically put together quite well. 

Stone Mattress by Margaret Atwood (2014)

Not enough good things to say. Each story just popped in the most excellent of ways, like a dagger to the heart (but in a good way without the pain and death).

Swing Time by Zadie Smith (2016)

I absolutely devoured this book. The juxtaposition of the main character and her old friend Tracey is extremely well defined, and the non-linear nature of the story, while confusing at first, was really the only way it could have been written. It's a book that upon completion I scanned through my mental list of people to lend it to immediately upon finishing. 

Ways to Disappear by Idra Novey (2016)

It's no secret to anyone who knows me or has read this blog that I'm in love with translation. This book is one of my favorites that I have read in a long time, and a lot of that is due to the way that translation was woven into the theme of this book without overwhelming the plot or using convoluted means to do so. The main character, while not entirely sympathetic, is the kind of character where I like her because of her faults, rather than despite them. I highly recommend.

These are but a few of the books that I have read and recommend; expect future posts like this as I find book recommendations quite fun. 

Cheers,
Talia

Failure

Like most people, I make commitments that I don't always follow through on. If you have followed through with every single thing you have committed to do over the entirety of your life then congratulations, you are not like most people, are you even human because I think that failure is an intrinsic trait of humanity. No one is perfect, and as my favorite JK Rowling quote goes

"You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all―in which case, you fail by default."*

Not posting on the first Sunday after I said I would post every Sunday probably counts as a failure, but not as much as it would be if I failed Semantics for example. Which it is quite possible I could do considering I understand type theory about as much as I understand what it would be like to hate chocolate. All things considered I'm lactose intolerant and dark chocolate is definitely my least favorite desert, so there is some understanding, but mostly confusion. I'm being over dramatic of course, it is highly unlikely that I will fail Semantics. I do think my GPA might take a hit, but not an irreparable one.

To be honest, I spent most of my break reading. I read Swing Time by Zadie Smith, Everything Leads to You by Nina LaCour, Exit West by Mohsin Hamid, The Grownup by Gillian Flynn and am halfway through The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Díaz. I'd like to think I could have read more books, but I was actually working throughout the break too.

Mostly I focused on my translations, because I have been struggling with them throughout the semester. At the beginning, it really was like pulling teeth, because for some reason the words just wouldn't flow. Now that we are closer to the end however, I feel like I am closer to the text, and one night mid semester I actually woke up wide awake at half past midnight only to start translating. I would have thought it was just a bizarre dream, but in the morning, I had 100 new lines of poetry. It was a distinctly unpolished work in the light of day, but I have been pecking at what I have translated ever since and now I think it is starting to be more cohesive.

Translating poetry is difficult, because on the one hand I feel like I am betraying the words, but on the other hand English isn't formed in the same way. I suppose this is something I will struggle with for the entirety of my life, but that prospect doesn't make it any better. I am very excited for this summer though because I will be going to Middlebury's Bread Loaf Translator's Conference, and that is something to get really excited over. You can bet I will make a blog post or two about that. I’ll also just write lots of posts about translation in general though, because that’s kind of the point of this blog.

Cheers,
Talia

*This quote is now the end quote for all my emails. Previously it was “We often just accept the things that we like and complain a lot about the things that we don’t like. But if we could, like, intensely dwell on the really great things in life the way we intensely dwell on the negative things in life. I think that would be fantastic.” ― Hank Green
But the aesthetic I am going for fits better with the JKR Quote, which is from her 2008 Commencement Address at Harvard. The printed version is called Very Good Lives and sales benefit her charity Lumos, as well as university-wide financial aid at Harvard.