The OF Blog: My Non-English Library, Part I

Saturday, September 27, 2008

My Non-English Library, Part I

Dark Wolf asked me earlier this week if I would take pictures of my personal library, as part of a meme in which he's participating. I said I'd try to have something up this weekend, time permitting. But since all I have is a cell phone (an LG Chocolate, for those who are that damn nosy) with a crappy battery life to take photos, I have decided to modify the meme a bit to suit my own needs and interests.

In this post and at least two others tonight, you'll see a series of photos of the 200 or so non-English language books that I own. For the most part, these are mixed in with a few English-language titles, but I tried to have the photos focus on the foreign language ones. I have books published in Spanish, Latin, Italian, French, German, Portuguese, Serbian, and Hungarian in these photos. I'll try to give at least some description of the title and language under each photo:
Left: Jose Saramago, Memorial do Convento (Portuguese); Luís de Camões, (Portuguese); Gerson Lodi-Ribeiro (ed.), (Portuguese); Selected SonnetsComo era gostosa a minha alienígena!Ficçõoes: Revista de Contos Ano VIII - Número 15 (Julho de 2006) (Portuguese); Fábio Fernandes, A Revanche da Ampulheta (Portuguese); Ričard Bah, Galeb Džonatan Livingston (Serbian translation of Jonathan Livingston Seagull); Italo Calvino, Ako jedne yimske noći neki putnik (Serbian); Ј.К. Роулинг, Хари Потер и Дворана Тајне (Serbian Cyrillic edition of Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets); Frenk Herbert, Arakis: peščana planeta (Serbian translation of the first third of Dune).


Left: Змберто Еко, Тајанствени Пламен Краљице Лоане (Serbian Cyrillic translation of Umberto Eco's The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana); Antoan de Sent-Egziperi, (Serbian); Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Mali PrincRegulus: Vel Pueri Soli Sapiunt (Latin); Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Der Kleine Prinz: Mit Zeichnungen des Verfassers (German); Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Il Piccolo Principe (Italian); Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, El Principito (Spanish); Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Le Petit Prince (French); Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, A Kis Herceg(Hungarian); Umberto Eco, Il Nome Della Rosa (Italian); Umberto Eco, Il Pendolo di Foucault (Italian).


Second from Left: Dino Buzzati, La boutique del mistero (Italian); Italo Calvino, Se una notte d'inverno un viaggiatore (Italian); Vergil, Æneid Books I-VI (Latin); Vergil, Æneid Books VII-XII (Latin); Victor Barocas, Fabulae Mirabiles: Fairy Tales in Latin (Latin); Friedrich Schiller, Don Carlos: Dramatisches Gedicht (German); Stanley Appelbaum (ed.), Great German Poems of the Romantic Era: Berühmte Gedichte der deutschen Romantik (German); Arthur Rimbaud, A Season in Hell and The Drunken Boat (French).


Second from Left: Andrzej Sapkowski, La Espada del Destino; Andrzej Sapkowski, Tiempo de Odio.


Third from Left: J.R.R. Tolkien, El Hobbit; El Señor de los Anillos I: La Comunidad del Anillo; El Señor de los Anillos II: Las Dos Torres; El Señor de los Anillos III: El Retorno del Rey; El Silmarillion; Los Hijos de Húrin (all in Spanish).

Thirty-five down, around 160-165 left to go...

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Riesci a leggere senza problemi in tutte queste lingue?

Ciao
Marco

Larry Nolen said...

Ha! Entiendo italiano sólo por español...pues...entiendo 70-80%? ;)

And for the English-only folks: Yes, I do have problems, since what Italian I do understand is via my knowledge of Spanish, meaning I get about 70-80% of what's happening at best. But I'm working on it and Buzzati is much easier for me than Eco, for obvious reasons ;)

Mihai A. said...

Very nice books you have on the Part I. I like a lot many of them, with a plus for Sapkowski and Tolkien's editions :)

Anonymous said...

That's the spirit.
Reading a book is a good crash course into a foreign language.
That's what I said last Saturday to a non-English speaking 70-year old who was looking for Mary Renault's Il Re deve morire and I convinced to buy The King Must Die.
(In my defense,it was a used books market for a local charity and the price was 1/2 Euro).
Have you seen this blog for daily Spanish microfictions?

Ciao,
Marco

Larry Nolen said...

Marco,

The first book I read at all in Spanish was Cien años de soledad (I would read a chapter in English, then go and read it in Spanish) 4.5 years years. I made sure to write down all the words I didn't know and I looked up the translations and then memorized them. Now I'm getting close to being comfortable with translating spoken conversations and hopefully 6-12 months in a Spanish-speaking country (if I ever get the chance to get my MA in ESL and go teach abroad in the next 2-5 years) will finish the language acquisition.

Then I can turn my focus on learning Serbian and later Russian...

Larry Nolen said...

Oh, and I hadn't seen that site - thanks! I'll add it to my blogroll later!

 
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