Books Received (and bought)–April 14
Jeff VanderMeer • April 14th, 2008 @ 6:51 pm • Book Reviews
It’s guess what we bought and what we received, once again. The buying–that has got to stop…
It’s been awhile since I’ve bought a writing book, but this looked interesting.
And who could resist this? I sure as heck couldn’t.
Ann bought this, which kind of lets the cat out of the bag on another trip later this year…
Finally, the very generous James Owen (thanks, James!) sent us a copy of his latest…
…and signed and illustrated it for Riley, our grandson!
April 14, 2008 at 8:04 pm
I’ve got Pale Fire in that Everyman series, a really nice edition which I expect you’d want as well, young and severe Vlad in profile on the cover. (Although knowing you, you have a signed first of that or something…) That Flann O’Brien volume would make a good replacement for my motley selection of FO’B paperbacks.
April 14, 2008 at 8:14 pm
I’ve got a copy of Pale Fire! And had someone fake his signature in it. Which seemed appropriate.
Yeah–I had copies of At Swim and Third Policeman, but both had grad student scribbles in them. Annoying. Why do intelligent human beings DO that.
JV
April 14, 2008 at 8:40 pm
You should have got Moorcock to fake Nabokov for you, he claims to have signed quite a few books on behalf of other writers in the past.
I would hang on to my copy of The Poor Mouth, thinking about it, it’s a nice Picador edition illustrated throughout by Ralph Steadman. Makes a good companion to the Mervyn Peake books they did round about the same time (mid-Seventies).
April 14, 2008 at 8:55 pm
I have that O’Brien saved for next month’s purchases, since my copy of At Swim-Two-Birds is now on semi-permanent loan in Buenos Aires and I want a hardcover of all of his stories. And as for guessing what you bought, I thought about being facetious and saying that Weis book, except I received that in the mail as well. Always nice to get the end to trilogies that I’ve never bothered reading.
And while I’m sure a nice Romanian might correct me, isn’t all you have to do is speak slurred, drunken Italian over there and many would understand you perfectly? :P
April 14, 2008 at 8:59 pm
Er, I wouldn’t know. Everyone speaks perfect English in Romania, that we met, so it’s kind of funny Ann’s learning Romanian.
April 14, 2008 at 9:07 pm
I guess she might be curious about the language, despite knowing that most people will know how to communicate in English? And written Romanian at least, based on what I’ve read at blogs such as Horia’s, is fairly intelligible to anyone who speaks/reads a Romance language, so my little quip was just teasing the Romanians that I know visit your blog.
April 14, 2008 at 9:24 pm
It’s funny to me only that whenever I try to be polite and learn some of another country’s language the results are so monstrous that it’s better that I stick to English, alas.
JV
April 14, 2008 at 9:30 pm
When I travel (hopefully) next year overseas, I’ll probably be speaking English mostly, but I’ve found that being able to read the road signs at least can make sure that I’m not at the mercy of some psychopath. Luckily, my years working in South Florida led to me picking up enough Spanish that I can confidently cuss out a moron whenever I head to South America. And as for the guides, sadly most of them contain some rather outdated references. That in and of itself is bound to make for hilarious reactions from the native speakers.
April 14, 2008 at 9:34 pm
Please tell if the Charles Baxter is any good. It’s always nice to read something that doesn’t make me feel like I’m procrastinating rather than writing.
April 14, 2008 at 9:35 pm
Will do, Jonathan!
April 15, 2008 at 1:59 am
Survival Romanian: ‘o bere, va rog’ (a beer, please).
The rest is negligible.
Larry, Romanian seems to me more complicated that other Romance languages (at least grammar-wise). The Italian thing works in reverse perfectly: I don’t speak any Italian (but I know Spanish, some French and of course Romanian), and when I went to Italy I understood everything perfectly. I didn’t try to speak Romanian to them, but Spanish worked :D
Romanian grammar is horrible and full of exceptions and we have funny squiggly letters that even confuse the Windows drivers. Good luck to Ann! Not all Romanians know English (or even decent English), but you’ll probably be alright. And everyone here will be impressed if you know a couple of words in Romanian, anyway. It’s the ‘whoa, someone bothered to learn MY language!’ thing.
April 15, 2008 at 7:09 am
“It’s the ‘whoa, someone bothered to learn MY language!’ thing.”
Yes, of course, but I’m so bad at it it tends to have a “whoa, stop learning my language” kind of effect. Ann’s much much better at it.
JV
April 15, 2008 at 7:51 am
Jen, I knew someone who visited Italy a few years ago who was a native Spanish speaker (Tejana). She spoke Spanish to them in Naples and they thought she was from around Milan. Then in Milan, they confused her for a Neopolitan. Quite amusing story. And yes, I’ve read about Romanian grammar and how it still has more noun cases than the other Romance languages and I have seen the diacretics on the letters and read what sounds those made, which makes my comments all the more facetious, right? :P
But I can’t help but wonder if there’s a Romanian equivalent to the horror story of someone reading from a Spanish travel guide and using the verb “coger” in a sentence in a place like Cuba or El Salvador, for example. In Spain, that’s a perfectly fine word, but in most of Latin America, to “take” has come to have a sexual connotation! It’s for reasons like that why I try to avoid such guides.
April 15, 2008 at 8:39 am
I find it very arrogant that many Americans expect everyone else on the planet to know English. And the more I learn about another language, the more connected I feel to the people and the place I am visiting. And why travel if that’s not the goal, right?
Honestly, though, the most difficult languange I have ever “tried” to learn was Welsh (and I haven’t given up yet!).
Ann V.
April 15, 2008 at 10:07 am
I can speak basic French. When I went to France, knowing the language really enriched my experience there. I could have simple conversations with people and I think I have a pretty good accent.
April 15, 2008 at 11:51 am
I speak Caribbean-accented Spanish fairly well and I hate not knowing what others are saying, so I do agree with you Ann on that. I’m just fascinated by how “street” dialects differ so much from the standardized forms taught in schools. I carried on a brief conversation with a HS Spanish teacher recently; she could barely make out half of the terms, probably because they were slang expressions. That’s why I prefer learning from living around people than from a course, although the courses have their positives as well.
As for Welsh, well…that’s perfectly understandable.
April 15, 2008 at 6:25 pm
jen’s right, she told you the basics :)
as for the other “nice romanians visiting your blog”, they can’t wait to see jeff trying to ask for a bottle of water in a bar (loooooool!) honestly, we’re honored! and we can’t wait to have you here! stefana will be absolutely thrilled to hear that you’re learning romanian. can’t wait for the morning to tell her.
April 15, 2008 at 6:28 pm
ah, yeah. and we’ll have to teach you some romanian four-letter-words :) jen and i will see to that :) as long as you don’t say them loud when junior bear is around. she knows already too high a percentage of them!
April 15, 2008 at 8:21 pm
Admit it, Horia, you’re so going to have them saying “I have stinky fish breath” when they want to order seafood at a local restaurant, right? :P But as for those Romanian curse words, what’s the most impressive curse that you know? As in what sounds impressive, not something that comes from a dull-witted teen boy?
April 15, 2008 at 9:42 pm
Gawd, Larry, you don’t want to know that info. Horia’s answer will burn your house down.
April 15, 2008 at 10:12 pm
Oh, those are worse than Cuban profanities? Those were quite…expressive, in their desire to do certain illegal acts to one’s mother, goats, and pigs, if memory serves. I’m curious to know what Horia will make of those. I wonder if Romanian has an equivalent to “Se hizo una paja” :P
April 15, 2008 at 10:50 pm
“As in what sounds impressive, not something that comes from a dull-witted teen boy?”
How about “Duce-te-ai in pizda ma-tii ca sa-i faci laba lu ala micu cand te fut in cur!” ?
In Welsh you might try “Ma bys bach fi yn fwy na esgys ti am goc!”
God bless Insultmonger.com.
April 15, 2008 at 11:33 pm
That sounds a bit forced there, alas. But telling someone to crawl back in to jerk off an unborn brother while the mom gets it in the rear is quite visual, though. But I have to give bonus points to those who can take an innocent animal (pato, duck) and turn it into an insult of one’s masculinity.
April 16, 2008 at 6:19 am
larry, don’t make me write it down… when i first heard it, i was so shocked that i couldn’t even comment on it for about two days.
April 16, 2008 at 6:21 am
john: nice try, but the one i consider the most terrible only marginally involves sexual intercourse.
April 16, 2008 at 7:28 am
Let me guess: It is a religious one that involves the Virgin, the Holy Infant, and a few others from the Holy Host, right? That’s the type of curse that I imagine to be the worst in some parts of the world.
April 16, 2008 at 11:52 pm
not quite… it has a hint to sexual relationships in it, but to an inanimate object, it has blasphemy too, a hint of incestuous suggestion… and it’s a very visual one… in all, it’s an effective one :)
April 17, 2008 at 2:25 am
Larry, as far as I know Romanian is pretty much the same all over the place, not like Spain Spanish/Latin America Spanish. At least we have the same curse words all over the place :P
Jeff & Horia, I said the beer thing because an American friend asked me to teach her that and it seemed an useful phrase. What I didn’t mention was that I’d taught her a few basic cursewords years before :P And they were very useful to her, as she now lives in a Russian-speaking part of Ukraine and the name for female genitalia is the same as in Romanian. She impressed people with her immense knowlegde :D
I’m not sure I know what swear-expression Horia’s talking about, but I rememeber something being told to me as the worst insult even and it involved the cross on the grave of someone’s mother and some other stuff I can’t remember. But I’ve never heard something so inventive (or something like John’s) in real life. We stick to the basics, it’s easier to get your point across :P
April 17, 2008 at 5:31 am
Ah, good to know that using “coger” or “pato” equivalents in Romania won’t lead to that sort of confusion for the poor gringos! :P
And hrmm…sounds like the insult deals with taking a cross and using it to rape/sodomize one’s mother and yes, that would be extremely bad. Am I close now at least? :P
April 17, 2008 at 8:40 am
The beginning was about masturbating over said cross. Unfortunately, I don’t remember the rest…
I just found another creative one while googling.. “May I cum on the first bee that sits on the flower on your mother’s grave”.
And maybe we’d better stop before Jeff kicks us out for swearing too much :P
April 17, 2008 at 9:16 am
John: that insultmonger.com website is pure gold. Thank you!
I don’t know about Spanish, but the only way you can use “pato” as an insult in Portuguese is when you want to call someone a rube or a sucker.
April 17, 2008 at 5:10 pm
Luís, think about how a duck shakes its ass when it walks. Then think about the stereotypical “flaming gay” walk. That’s how pato came to be another way of saying maricón in Puerto Rico and Cuba. Amazing how inventive people get with their insults, no?
And Jen, I think we’re safe on page 2 (soon to be 3?) – surely Jeff doesn’t check every page, right? Right?