what are you reading?

[Silga]

Other Lithuanian books with English, German or Slovenian translation:

There is another Antanas Škėma book I am not familiar with called The Apocalyptic Variations (lt. Apokaliptinės variacijos). There is a German translation titled Apokalyptische Variotionen.

Another cult novel is Tula (Jurgis Kunčinas, 1993). Just like in Vilnius Poker, story takes place in Vilnius, in one of its neighborhoods. https://tinyurl.com/aejbcfjd

One more book from Jurgis Kunčinas that I haven't read is translated to German called Mobile Röntgenstationen.

Whitehorn's Windmill (lt. Baltaragio malūnas) (Kazys Boruta, 1942). Written during the German occupation. It was later adapted as a film The Devil's Bride (Arunas Zebriunas, 1974). Film is available with English subtitles as well. The book is translated to Slovenian (Baltaragisov mlin).
As a side note: German writer Hermann Sudermann was born in East Prussia, modern day Lithuania and the last adaptation of his work to cinema was done by Zebriunas with his film Journey to Paradise (Kelionė į rojų, 1980) based on Sudermann's collection of stories The Excursion to Tilsit (Die Reise nach Tilsit) also known as Litauische Geschichten (Lithuanian stories) which also served as a base for Murnau's Sunrise.

Czeslaw Milosz, winner of Nobel Prize in 1980, was born in Lithuania and his two popular novels are centered on his childhood in Lithuania - The Issa Valley (1955) and Native Realm (1959).

Stalemate (lt. Lygiosios trunka akimirką) (Icchokas Meras, 1963). About Vilnius Ghetto during World War II and a chess match between Nazi Commandant and a young Jewish boy.

Forest of the Gods (lt. Dievų miškas) (Balys Sruoga, 1945). Sruoga, a professor of Vilnius University, was deported to Stutthof concentration camp. Forest of the Gods is a fictional memoir book inspired by his experience. It was adapted to a successful film by the same name in 2005. I think english subs exist. Also translated to German (Der Wald der Götter)

I guess some books by Ignas Šeinius (in Swedish Ignas Scheynius) might be available in English and German. He was a Lithuanian diplomat and writer who later moved to Sweden, stopped writing in Lithuanian and wrote in Swedish. One of his most notable work is The Hunchback (lt. Kuprelis, 1913). Šeinius book I would like to read myself is The Ordeal of Assad Pasha.

The collection of folk stories by Vincas Krėvė-Mickevičius called The Herdsman and the Linden Tree.

Weirdly, I couldn't find any English translations of the most famous contemporary Lithuanian female writer Jurga Ivanauskaitė. However, I found that one of her most acclaimed books The Witch and the Rain (lt. Ragana ir lietus, 2002) was translated to both German (Die Regenhexe) and Slovenian (Čarovnica i dež). http://www.mmcentras.lt/jurgos-ivanausk ... rain/78681

Three Seconds of Heaven (lt. Trys sekundės dangaus) (Sigitas Parulskis, 2002). This book is also available in Slovenian (Tri sekunde neba) and German (Drei Sekunden Himmel).

[sally]

thanks for the extensive info silga! i like the sound of tula (have added it to my list) i got overexcited earlier and even though i have a strict no-buying-more-books rule currently in place, i bought 'those whom i would like to meet again' by giedra radvilavičiūtė on the reasoning that it's a collection of essays and therefore my rule doesn't apply (plus it was a third of the price of all the other books i looked at, bargain!)

[Silga]

I've never heard of Giedra Radvilavičiūtė, but I checked and she looks famous and with a lot of accolades to her name.

[---]

i read a book, for the first time since april of 2020. as in, not just the first 10-50 pages, but the entire thing. it was a collection of short stories by alice munro called "something i've been meaning to tell you". it was v fire. i think what i liked the most was how all the protagonists inhabited such different identities, but had a common pathos. i like that, that's good. this was my favourite quote:

"My grandmother's marriage had been another matter. The story was that she had married my grandfather while still in love with, though very angry at, another man. My mother told me this. She loved stories, particularly those full of tragedy and renunciation and queer turns of fate. Aunt Madge and my grandmother, of course, never mentioned anything about it. But as I grew up I found that everybody seemed to know it. The other man remained in the district, as most people did. He farmed, and married three times. He was a cousin of both my grandfather and my grandmother, and so was often in their houes, as they were in his. Before he proposed to his third wife--this was what my mother told me--he came to see my grandmomther. She came out of her kitchen and rode up and down the lane in his buggy with him, for anybody to see. Did he ask her advice? Her permission? My mother strongly believed that he had asked her to run away with him. I wonder. They both would have beenaround fifty years old at that time. Where could they have run to? Besides, they were Presbyterians. No one ever accused them of misbehavior. Proximity, impossibility, renunciation. That does make for an enduring kind of love. And I belileve that would be m grandmother's chice, the self-glorifying dangerous self-denying passion, never satisfied, never risked, to last a lifetime. Not admitted to, either, except perhaps that one time, one or two times, under circumstances of great stress. We must never speak of this again."

[sally]

currently reading james kelman's how late it was how late cuz i bought it after it won the booker prize (total shite usually) in i guess 1995 and haven't read it yet. the only booker prize winning novel to have over 4000 fucks

[sally]

okay i devoured the kelman in two days (the fucks just eased by) so now that there seems to be a large wasp (maybe a hornet) lodged in an unassailable corner of my bedroom i have raided the downstairs bookshelves and discovered that for some reason i have both the 1983 & 2001 calder editions of impressions of africa, neither of which i've read!


which one should i read? or one page from one, one the next?

[der kulterer]

Impressions of Africa!

RR age 3 on a swan

[nrh]

have any of the impressions of africa fans here read 'how i wrote certain of my books' by roussel? i remember liking it as much or even more than the novel.

[der kulterer]

i read "death and the labyrinth: the world of raymond roussel" by foucault but didn't read "'how i wrote certain of my books" yet.
at the time of my RR frenzy, i wasn't able to access the copy of this book.
maybe time is ripe to try once again.
i have zero doubts "'how i wrote certain of my books" is ultimate metaperfection.

[der kulterer]

i also hope once watching (the inaccessible)...
IMPRESSIONS OF AFRICA (Jean-Christophe Averty, 1977)
THE AMAZING VOYAGE OF GUSTAVE FLAUBERT AND RAYMOND ROUSSEL (Steve Fagin, 1986)
has anyone watched any of these two films?

[wba]

Nevertheless, I looked online into what books were translated to English or German and here are some that I, at least, know of and are famous enough:

Twodeadmagpies, you're right. Ricardas Gavelis is without a doubt one of the most revered writers. And I see that his books were translated to English. Sun-Tzu's Life in the Holy City of Vilnius (2002) and his most popular book Vilnius Poker (1989), a cult classic of its generation. Gavelis, like Skema, also died in his 50s, leaving behind a lot of unfulfilled ideas and potential. https://tinyurl.com/36a3y5cz

Another novel by Gavelis - Memoirs of a Life Cut Short (1991). https://tinyurl.com/a6ftjtjh

I'll think about more writers and find out what's available.

Thnaks for the Gavelis mentions and recs! I've put him on my to-read-list.

I also discovered a feminist novel set in the 2nd century after christ, called GLESUM (2016) by Rasa Aškinytė, which was recently translated into German and sounds good.

[wba]

Other Lithuanian books with English, German or Slovenian translation:

Wow, thanks for all the recs and info!!!!

I will look into it!
Nice to see that some stuff is available in Slovene.

[wba]

Whitehorn's Windmill (lt. Baltaragio malūnas) (Kazys Boruta, 1942). Written during the German occupation. It was later adapted as a film The Devil's Bride (Arunas Zebriunas, 1974). Film is available with English subtitles as well. The book is translated to Slovenian (Baltaragisov mlin).
As a side note: German writer Hermann Sudermann was born in East Prussia, modern day Lithuania and the last adaptation of his work to cinema was done by Zebriunas with his film Journey to Paradise (Kelionė į rojų, 1980) based on Sudermann's collection of stories The Excursion to Tilsit (Die Reise nach Tilsit) also known as Litauische Geschichten (Lithuanian stories) which also served as a base for Murnau's Sunrise.

I've found a fine copy of Whitehorn's Windmill in German and might try that one (if I don't stumble over a slovene edition first). Sounds great any way!
Haven't read anything by Sudermann either, but I'm intrigued now. I hope I'll stumble upon some of his works in some antiquarian bookshop or another.

[nrh]

just started gerald murnane's "the plains," only the second of his i've read after his much later "barley patch" (which i think is a genuinely great book). this one has an unnamed would-be-filmmaker narrator entering australia's vast inland region to convince the wealthy land-barons who seem to rule the area in a kind of feudal system to bank role his movie about the area; so far most of the book has the narrator drinking in a hotel bar and going off on digressions about the arts and culture of the plains region. the effect is kind of like impressions of africa from an extreme deadpan remove (i am about 80 pages in and i don't think i've seen a comma yet).

[sally]

oh god i finally finished impressions of africa (after reading a load inbetween) it was torturously boring, all that techno-object based surrealism is so engineering-manual man-brained i can't believe i eventually read it all the way through.

so to compensate i went too far the other way in nonsense and have started reading hélène cixous (stigmata) and amongst the po-faced hysterics and incomprehensible unconditional mother-daughter love parts (is that a french thing? i read simone de beauvoir's little book last year about losing her mother and that also had this mystifying tender relation with a mother that wasn't just hatred, recrimination & resentment on both sides) inbetween these mad passages, are literally word for translated word thoughts i've had so i'm obliged to keep reading until the end of this one when all i really want is a nice juicy crime story or something

[der kulterer]

oh, then i don't recommend reading "Locus Solus" because it is even "worse".
i was tortured by "Locus Souls" but then "Impressions of Africa" was already a smooth enjoyable reading.
tho, maybe it is just a question of getting accustomed to dreadful torture and whoever starts with unbearable "Impressions" finds "Locus Solus" enjoyable.
tho, i expect you are not going to give Raymond a second chance to impress...

[sally]

i'm sorry lav

[sally]

in respect of RIP. it's an art book! with pictures! (tend to stay away from them as they can be almost as overwhelming as cinema books but he's dead and it was on the shelf)

[der kulterer]

ha, i see "tiepolo pink" is a phrase coined by proust!
then "tiepolo pink" is a must-read (in some indefinite future).
i didn't read the whole "in search of lost time" yet and thus "tiepolo pink" phrase slipped in between my read pages.
but soon (hopefully) gonna read the whole "in search of lost time" systematically (not haphazardly)!
there is a nice local 6-volume edition published in 1979-1985 (local volume 6 contains both original volumes 6-7) and i am collecting it from local second-hand bookshops.
i already acquired volumes 2-6 (still missing volume 1).
once i will have all of them, gonna delve into reading them all (including the "tiepolo pink" passage).
btw. when i will be in pension (closer to death), i guess, i will read just (or mostly) art monographs.

[der kulterer]

btw. my annual entry fee to the local library is near to expiration.
so, tomo, i plan to visit the library and besides leaving there few pennies i expect to borrow some local contemporary fiction because i resolved to try to get familiar with the contemporary fiction written in the local tongue.
it is not (or is it???) that with growing old i am becoming a conservative/nationalist (Morrissey-like) prick but i feel a certain urge to get familiar with what folks who live (these days) in near proximity write about.
actually, i resolved to do this already about a year ago but because i failed to do so, i am resolving again (for real) now.

[sally]

you pay to belong to a library? (although tbh if my library had any books i wanted in or didn't charge you more than the actual thing costs on amazon to inter-library-loan it, then maybe i'd pay too)

i have never read any proust. (mainly because i would have wanted all of 'in search of' but could never find them all together at a reasonable price, and i'm not sure i want to commit anyway....and of course the library doesn't have any of them)

[der kulterer]

my year-long fee to the prague municipal library is 60 czk (2 gbp).
so, the fee is symbolic (economically it makes no sense).

library has countless offshoots spread throughout the city.
entry into the main offshoot (that i intend to visit tomo) is adorned with this sculptural object made of books.
https://twitter.com/wandersmiles/status ... 93410?s=20

but to rely on the municipal library while trying to read "in search of lost time" in a systematic manner is hopeless.
there are not enough copies available to satiate all the local readers and thus one has to read haphazardly (what is at the moment at hand).
thus i am hunting in second-hand bookshops for my own set.

[sally]

currently reading patrick white's voss (so many fucking words, i'm sure half of them aren't necessary, mid-century stuff is such a headache) and it's inscribed at the beginning by the first owner i assume: brian biddulph, kuru, july 1959. google tells me there's a kuru in india, nigeria and finland. which one is it most likely to be?
(alternatively in 1959 it was a prion disease that was a precursor to BSE, linked to uncontrolled laughter, which sounds nicer, though not sure this book'll do that)

[rischka]

Lately I notice strange connections everywhere and I hope this isn't a sign of mental illness? I'm staying in a motel in a tiny Colorado town which weirdly enough has an upright piano in the lobby. And the book I brought with me is piano stories ... recommended by someone here I'm sure. So I started to read and it is marvelous. Thx whoever you were

[wba]

oh, I forgot to share an anecdote:
The first Partick Modiano novel I read (last month, on vacation) was translated by Peter Handke into German (a very good translation, by the way). It was called La Petite Bijou, published in 2001 in French.
After that I picked up another Modiano novel called Du plus loin de l’oubli, which came out in 1996 in France, and which Modiano dedicated specifically to Peter Handke. Imagine my surprise when I opened the first page and Handke popped up again. I guess it isn't often that a writer dedicates a novel to someone who will later translate one of his other novels into a foreign language...

[wba]

I'm currently reading SCHWARZE WEIDE (which means "Black Willow" but is actually the name of a river in the novel) by Horst Lange, published in Nazi Germany in 1937, and it might be the best book I've read this year (not sure yet, as I've only read about a third of it at page 200). So much for the much-used phrase "there aren't any worthwhile writers in dictatorships", which is a phrase that has been especially in use in regards to German-language literature published in Germany between 1934 and 1945...

[sally]

Lately I notice strange connections everywhere and I hope this isn't a sign of mental illness? I'm staying in a motel in a tiny Colorado town which weirdly enough has an upright piano in the lobby. And the book I brought with me is piano stories ... recommended by someone here I'm sure. So I started to read and it is marvelous. Thx whoever you were

i loved piano stories! i take almost every book to the charity shop once i've read it, but i kept that one! altho it was probably nrh or brian that made me buy it years ago.

has anyone read experimental film by gemma files? looks like a trashy horror novel (so good for right NOW) but it's about the evil lurking in recently unearthed nitrate reels so wanna read it but doesn't seem to be affordably available here

are there any other doom-laden novels about ominous old film other than flicker by theodore roszak (which i enjoyed way more than i should)?

i haven't started it yet but i bought the cine goes to town by richard abel (french cinema 1896-1914) for £1.49 and it's so huge it wouldn't fit through my letterbox even out of the packaging. absolute bargain (even if in this monster volume it still doesn't tell me which films gaston modot played pierrot in)

[wba]

i haven't started it yet but i bought the cine goes to town by richard abel (french cinema 1896-1914) for £1.49 and it's so huge it wouldn't fit through my letterbox even out of the packaging. absolute bargain (even if in this monster volume it still doesn't tell me which films gaston modot played pierrot in)

always wanted to own that one but it was always way too expensive to buy!
I did borrow it from the library a few times though.

[sally]

i haven't read anything i enjoyed enough to find worth mentioning for ages! (i mean there was perec's the art of asking your boss for a raise, but it was like 80 pages and i inhaled it and that was that)

and i know i have a zillion books in the house still left to be read and i already broke my book buying ban on the £1.49 unpassable abel bargain but on looking for creepy novels about old movies i found this and i bought it and it can't come soon enough:

A colleague's violent death and a rediscovered copy of an old, never-released Karloff/Lugosi movie set film editor Sandy Allen on the trail of the movie's history. But Sandy unearths secrets far older and more frightening than the 50-year-old horror movie--and finds herself threatened by an ancient, evil cult.
ramsey campbell's ancient images

[wba]

i haven't read anything i enjoyed enough to find worth mentioning for ages! (i mean there was perec's the art of asking your boss for a raise, but it was like 80 pages and i inhaled it and that was that)

and i know i have a zillion books in the house still left to be read and i already broke my book buying ban on the £1.49 unpassable abel bargain but on looking for creepy novels about old movies i found this and i bought it and it can't come soon enough:

A colleague's violent death and a rediscovered copy of an old, never-released Karloff/Lugosi movie set film editor Sandy Allen on the trail of the movie's history. But Sandy unearths secrets far older and more frightening than the 50-year-old horror movie--and finds herself threatened by an ancient, evil cult.
ramsey campbell's ancient images

That campbell horror novel sounds great!
Thanks for the tip!

I am currently reading my second novel by Ernst Kreuder, "Herein ohne anzuklopfen" (1954) which could be loosely tranlsated as "entering without knocking", and it's another fantastic read.
I alos just discovered that there's a lengthy book of correspondence by Ernst Kreuder and Horst Lange, written between 1938 and 1971!