It is a truth universally acknowledged (and recently addressed in Barclay Bram Shoekmaker‘s Millions review of Mo Yan‘s Frog) that literary translation is an imperfect art, and this list of mistranslated “literary moments” only offers more evidence for the claim. But for every serious blunder there’s also a truly ridiculous one (or more). For example, the French translated the title of Animal Farm as Animals Everywhere!, which sounds a lot like a charming children’s book and not at all like Orwell.
Animals Everywhere!
The Wind-Up You Chroncile
Do you love old jazz? Are you nostalgic? Did your wife mysteriously disappear? Then you might be in a Haruki Murakami novel. At The Toast, Alice Lee gives criteria to determine whether you're part of Murakami's fictional universe.
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“I did most of my reading at the International House of Pancakes.”
David Sedaris chats with The New York Times about his reading habits in the first installment of their latest series, "By the Book."
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Greatest Geek Books
These are the nine greatest geek books of all time, according to Wired readers.
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Tuesday New Release Day: Smith; Campbell; Moore; Brooks; Marra; Ōe; Niffeneger
Out this week: M Train by Patti Smith; Mothers, Tell Your Daughters: Stories by Bonnie Jo Campbell; 100 Years of the Best American Short Stories edited by Lorrie Moore; The Secret Chord by Geraldine Brooks; The Tsar of Love and Techno by Anthony Marra; Death by Water by Kenzaburō Ōe; and Ghostly: A Collection of Ghost Stories by Audrey Niffenegger. For more on these and other new titles, go read our Great Second-Half 2015 Book Preview.
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An Encounter with a Stranger
Over at Longreads, you can read the first chapter of Alexander Chee’s The Queen of the Night – one of the most anticipated books of 2016.
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Harlequin History
"How did a humble Canadian publisher—which got its start reprinting other companys' books—become the name most associated with romance? It's a long story, involving a peripatetic former fur trader and his opinionated socialite wife, a Procter-and-Gamble-trained Harvard MBA, some jilted Americans and a whole crowd of damned scribbling women." From Pictorial comes the story of "How Harlequin Became the Most Famous Name in Romance."
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“What does any human being want?”
In the Times, Dwight Garner reviews the new edition of Bartlett’s Familiar Black Quotations, a compendium of quotes from notable black writers dating from ancient times to the present. Among other figures, Thurgood Marshall, Ralph Ellison, Zora Neale Hurston and Cory Booker all have quotes in the book.
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Today in Irish Poetry
Need a dose of new Irish poetry in your life? The Irish Times (naturally) has you covered. In the Saturday edition, John McAuliffe reviews two new and notable collections: The Boys of Bluehill by Eilean Ni Chuilleanain and The Days of Surprise by Paul Durcan.