Review: Il mio Dante

Il mio Dante by Roberto Benigni
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

What a great book. I had never been able to catch any of Benigni's lectures on Dante, which I heard were excellent. Having read this book I can certainly believe it. My main complaint is that it only touches upon a fraction of the Divine Comedy. 

Benigni brings Dante to our living rooms and makes him a friendly (very intelligent) neighbor who talks to us about life and, especially, death. 

Some great asides that didn't have anything to do with the Divina Commedia itself:

"Un libro che resiste così tanto, o è erotico o è religioso. Prendiamo la Bibbia: non esiste opera più erotica e mistica della Bibbia"

"La Bibbia infatti è l'unico caso un cui l'autore del libro è anche l'autore dei lettori." (p. 26)

"Il mondo si divide in due: quelli che dividono il mondo in due e quelli che non lo dividono."

"Anche a me piace la vita, perció morire sarà l'ultima cosa che farò." (p. 28)

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Review: The Guest

The Guest by Hwang Sok-yong
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is much heavier than the other books I've read by this author (Familiar Things and At Dusk). It is also fundamentally different, dealing quite literally with the ghosts of the past. Two brothers, born in North Korea before the war, who escaped, and then became ministers in the United States. One of the brothers passes away a few days before the younger one goes back to visit North Korea. 

None of it is gratuitous, but there is plenty of horror and murder. More specifically, many things that were blamed on the Americans and Japanese, turn out not to have been them at all, but to have been North Koreans against other North Koreans; quite literally neighbor against neighbor and families turning on each other. 

Apparently the author caught quite a bit of flack for this novel. 

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Review: 12 Months to $1 Million: How to Pick a Winning Product, Build a Real Business, and Become a Seven-Figure Entrepreneur

12 Months to $1 Million: How to Pick a Winning Product, Build a Real Business, and Become a Seven-Figure Entrepreneur by Ryan Daniel Moran
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is probably a great book for anyone who: A) sells physical goods to B) end consumers (as opposed to other businesses). 

If you are in a B2B business or wish to enter one, then there is next to nothing for you here. 

If you sell a service to end consumers, there are probably still many good tips. In fact, I plan on implementing them for my online courses, so we'll see how that goes. 

Some of my (copious) notes. I haven't put them in order yet:

It's not about your product, but your customer. Understand your customer

Where does your customer hang out? (who else does he/she follow/listen to?)

Create a promotional video (even on your phone, find tutorials online)

Find an influencer (around 10K followers) to promote it (and/or your product)

Stack the deck. Find people who will buy before you launch (1,000 fans, 100 friends, 1 microinfluencer). Get to 100 sales on launch day.

Goal: Get 10 reviews

Next: See what your customer will want next (CV? Networking? Translation agency? Sales?)

All courses need to follow a trend. What type of person do I want to be (what type of brand/business)?  - What do I want to be? 

Find influencers with 10K followers. (similarweb.com). Make a list of 10 people you can talk to. GIVE them something. What will help them. 

Stage 1

1. Find your core customer (this should make you cut off a good portion of your customers). Make your core customer love your product

2. Outline 3-5 products your core customer buys (that you can create later)

3. Choose first product

4. Share your progess. (document your journey). Where your audience can see. 

5. 

6. Stack the deck (even with ads for first few hundred fans). Find influencer with 10K followers

7. Take an order as quickly as possible

Stage 2. Growth

1. Does your audience want your product? They like it but sales are slow (need marketing to right people?)

2. Think small. Get 1 review today. Make one customer happy. Post EVERY good piece of feedback on Social media

3. Cultivate a core group of buyers (VIP list? FB group? 

4. Use PPC ads

Stage 3:

Launch as many products as you can

Advertise via influencers and audiences

Make relationships

Pay yourself (so you can work fulltime in business)

take strategic risks

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Review: Smilla's Sense of Snow

Smilla's Sense of Snow by Peter Høeg
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Absolutely no idea what to make of this book. It starts as a whodunnit, although I initially got it because it seemed to be about Greenland, which I thought would be interesting. Turns out the author is Danish, has nothing to do with Greenland, but seems to have done his research (I'd be curious to hear what Greenlanders think of what he says). But the result is a hodge-podge of mystery, random references to Greenlandic ways and traditions, and a very odd literary style. The conclusion of the mystery is a let-down and pretty implausible, to put it mildly, but it does make me more curious about Greenland. Does anyone know any good Greenlandic authors? 

One great sentence, however, that I had to highlight: 

"There is one way to understand another culture. <i>Living</> it. Move into it, ask to be tolerated as a guest, learn the language. At some moment you grasp what is foreign, you will lose the urge to explain it. To explain a phenomenon is to distance yourself from it." (p. 193)

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Review: The Histories

The Histories by Herodotus
My rating: 0 of 5 stars

"In peace, sons bury their fathers. In war, fathers bury their sons."

This needs to be read a lot more attentively than I did. It is a history book, but it reads a lot like mythology quite frankly (a man being saved by riding on a dolphin to safety, oracles, prophecies, etc.). Regardless, just reading it without much background (besides what I randomly already knew or had already heard of) it is certainly a collection of interesting stories. Much like mythology. 

I think I found the section on the different populations and differences between them most interesting. Also the story of the battle of Thermopylae. 

Some notes:

The Hellenes kissed each other on the mouth when greeting?

The Babylonians didn't have doctors but if someone was ill he or she went to the town square and tried to see if anyone else had had the same sickness and how they got better. 

Amazed at how much the Ancient Egyptians seem to have in common with the ancient Israelites (circumcision, aversion to pork, etc.)

"from lands which are not rugged men who are not rugged are apt to come forth"

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Review: Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Traitor to His Class: The Privileged Life and Radical Presidency of Franklin Delano Roosevelt by H.W. Brands
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I've decided I prefer biographies that dedicate a large portion to the subject's childhood and formative years. I think most, if not all, of the decisions and actions taken later on in life, are somehow tied to how the person was raised, and who his/her influences were, etc. 

Unfortunately, this biography didn't seem to dedicate enough time to FDR's childhood, in my opinion. We do get a decent idea that he was given everything he could possibly want, and was possibly kept in too sterile an environment as a child (the author infers that the polio that struck him later may have had something to do with this), and was oozing self-confidence. Still, I would have appreciated more. 

Of course, when someone has gone through all that FDR has gone through, there is plenty of material from later on in life, so this book was by no means tedious or boring at any point. 

I had been curious to read it also because Herbert Hoover's biography painted a picture of FDR that was less than flattering; as someone who was more politically motivated than inclined to do what was right. I can't say this biography refuted that. FDR seemed very much to be an "end justifies the means" type of person. Of course, when the "end" is an end to the great depression or world war II, then it is difficult to disagree. 

Eleanor Roosevelt's role also seemed suspiciously vague. She obviously didn't like his affairs, and never really was close to FDR in a personal sense after a certain point, but she achieved a great deal in her own right. This wasn't her biography, so I didn't expect a play-by-play of her activities, but she seemed to come off as rather weak, and I suspect that wasn't really the case. 

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Review: The North Carolina Experience: An Interpretive and Documentary History

The North Carolina Experience: An Interpretive and Documentary History by Lindley S. Butler
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The structure of this book is original: Each chapter has an introduction, broadly describing what happened during a certain time period. This is then followed by original letters and documents. 

This is a pretty effective way of going through North Carolina's history, at least for me. I was able to understand the general situation, and then read first-hand accounts of the goings-on (complete with original spelling, such as: "This towne is seated on ye river side, haveing ye clefts of ye river on ye one side..."). It does, however, seem to gloss over certain events for which there is little documentation. For example, the Tuscarora war is just mentioned several times in passing, remarking on how important it was, but it is never dealt with in detail. 

The parts about slavery, the civil war, reconstruction, and civil rights were enlightening. I can never help wondering what bias, if any, there is, given how current these issues still are. 

Some of my notes:

The treaty between the Cherokee and the United States (p. 21) was so blatantly not followed I am amazed. The treaty itself is almost equitable (the cherokee shall have a delegate to Congress, only the Cherokee who wish to leave need to. Those who leave will have all expenses covered, and a doctor shall accompany them, etc.) To think this was followed through with the trail of tears is mind-boggling. 

North Carolina never produced a farming economy comparable to the plantation system of lowcountry South Carolina or tidewater Virginia, so its relationship to slavery was ambivalent, and it pretty much joined the civil war out of solidarity with its Southern neighbors (is this true?). 

Nearly one-fourth of all conscripts in the southern army (21,348 men) came from North Carolina (p. 267)

Description of North Carolinians, 1865:

"Spindling of legs, round of shoulders, sunken of chest, lank of body, stooping of posture, narrow of face, retreating of forehead, thin of nose, small of chin, large of mouth, - this is the Native North Carolinian as one sees him outside the cities and large towns. [...]- the man who pays a tax and votes, but never runs for office; who was a private in the Rebel army, but never anything more; who hate the Yankees as a matter of course, but has no personal ill-will toward them; who believes in the Divine right of slavery, but is positive that a free negro cannot be made to work."

-Sidney Andrews (p.294)

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Review: Straight Lines and Poison Gas - At the Hospital Wards

Straight Lines and Poison Gas - At the Hospital Wards by Lim Chulwoo
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A strangely haunting book (novella or short story actually). Reminiscent of Korea during the dictatorship. A cartoonist is reprimanded by his boss for a cartoon that was apparently overly critical of the government. He is then brought in for interrogation by the government. And then.. well, not to spoil it, but this story conveys how not much really needs to happen. 

Knowing that the author himself was blacklisted in school due to his father makes it all the more poignant. This story seemed more along the lines of Korean fiction during the 1990s and early 2000s, but it was also original. I look forward to reading more by the author. 

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Review: I Am a Cat

I Am a Cat by Natsume Sōseki
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I would have to agree with many other reviewers in that this was a long book to read (aside from the length itself). The paragraphs carried on and on, and many of the nuances in conversation were probably lost on me, since they were apparently meant to satirize life in Japan at the turn of the 20th century. 

However, some sections were definitely humourous, and the point of view of the cat (who refers to himself in the honorific apparently) is an interesting one. 

At times it was difficult to get through, but it provided interesting material and I'm glad I read it. It also seemed to sometimes touch upon a bemoaning of the changing times, and then revert to making fun of people who were lamenting change. 

Interestingly, this book made me wonder if there is a special place for cats in Japanese literature. After having read "The Traveling Cat Chronicles" and a bunch of Murakami novels, I noticed a focus on cats I hadn't seen in the literature of other languages, so I can't help wondering if this book started it all, since it is a classic of Japanese literature. 

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Review: Is That a Fish in Your Ear? Translation and the Meaning of Everything

Is That a Fish in Your Ear? Translation and the Meaning of Everything by David Bellos
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I read this book for the Translation Book Club: https://www.facebook.com/groups/TranslationBooks

This wasn't as entertaining as I hoped it would be, but should probably be required reading for anyone who wishes to take translation seriously. It contains a lot of the history of translation and reasons behind the things we do, and it goes through many of the intricacies of translation and interpreting for organizations like the European Union, etc. 

If you think you might be interested in translation, start with "Through the Language Glass" by Guy Deutscher. If you are already committed to translation, read this book. 

Some of my notes:

"The translator's job is to express the force of the utterance in those particular circumstances in forms appropriate to the target language and culture. Whether or not the chosen form of words corresponds to the sentence-meaning of the sentence that Jim uttered is beside the point".  

(p. 70)

'It's complicated' would be "C'est compliqué" in French. But the 2009 movie "It's complicated" (Alec Baldwin, Meryl Streep) was translated as "Pas si simple". Why? Because it worked much better in terms of the movie. In fact, in Spanish it was "No es tan facil". In Italian, it was "E' complicato", but I wonder if it would have been better as "Non è così facile" or something. 

(Taken from p. 79)

"To know a language is to know how to say the same thing in different words (p.102)

The whole section on 'class presumption' (p. 189) was fascinating. I've seen it in other instances, but this example is one of the clearest. 

"Translation is the opposite of empire" (p. 212)

The spread of a language as a 'pivot' is not due to its native speakers. Ex: China's Confucius Institute translates the Chinese classics into French, German, Spanish, Russian, Arabic, Hebrew, Hindi and Malay, but all 'on the basis of the English translation' (p. 223)

"Children and women with babes in arms" Do the children have babes in arms as well? (p. 246)

Shibata Motoyuki (p. 303)

Otto Von Bismarck's "Adjutant" vs. "Adjudant" incident (P. 315)

Translation is a thankless task. When a book is translated well, the author is praised. When translated badly, the translator is blamed. (p. 330)

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