As you may already know from my previous post, for the third round of the Multilingual Book Club, I'm attempting to read the book in Italian, even though I've only recently taken up the language. In this post, I'd like to tell you about my experience with the reading process.
To be fair, I've already studied a bunch of other Romance languages such as French, Spanish and Portuguese, so I wasn't reading something completely foreign to me. For better comprehension, I also bought the book in European Portuguese, Seda. When it comes to reading in a foreign language, I don't like to spend too much time looking up words. So I would read a chapter or two in Italian and then switch over to Portuguese. While reading it a second time in a language I knew better, I grasped far more details I would've missed otherwise.
Sometimes the story got very interesting, and I would read more chapters in Portuguese than I had in Italian. That way the language order was inverted. That was really interesting because it seemed to give the Italian reading a boost since I could then focus more on words rather than the storyline.
Then some fellow readers mentioned that they had already finished the book and didn't like it — especially the ending. So I was really curious as to what may have made them feel that way. At that time, I was still happily reading a book in an unfamiliar language where I was able to follow the story well without having to look up a lot of words. On Sunday, right after the second book club livestream, I sat down to do my daily reading and became so engrossed that I finished reading the Portuguese version within two hours. In Italian, I'm still stuck at 68%.
After having read the end of the book, I was really confused. I realized that I liked the writing style, but the story itself was strange. At first, I thought that I simply hadn't gotten all the details of the story because I had read the book in a foreign language. But then I read Cloudy's post about the protagonist, Hervé Joncour, and realized that I probably wouldn't have understood the story any better if I had read it in German.
In conclusion, I'd say that it was good that I had been warned that especially the ending wasn't good. That way, I had very low expectations and it even turned out slightly better than I had feared. At this point, I'm not sure that I'm going to continue reading the Italian version. We'll see.
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- Picture by stux on Pixabay
Finally a fresh new post from Linda!
This was a fun read. It's really relieving and reassuring to read Cloudy's text earlier today and now yours. I feel less alone in my disliking, or rather, questioning of the book (in terms of style and the message it wants to deliver to the reader). About your reading technique, I find it really similar to mine. I've also mostly read without checking up the meaning of words, and in my case I didn't have a backup language (although I definitely have the book in several languages on my computer and smartphone), like you. For now, I've had enough of Baricco, I think, so I won't be reading Novecento for the moment (which is a pity, because I found the paper book in a bookstore in Barcelona and even bought it). Now I'm curious about two things: (a) Will you exercise the vocabulary of the book in some way, or how do you plan to spend the remaining time of the book club, when it comes to learning Italian? (b) I already suggested it, but here it is once more: Will you write some sort of language comparison between Italian and Portuguese, using words or sentences from the book? I'd personally be interested in even another thing: (c) What sorts of words in the book do you find completely strange/difficult to understand? :D
Okay, as a final short comment: Thank you for writing this!
I find it really interesting to read that most people here seem to dislike the book. With translations in over 32 languages and the German translation selling seven editions in the first year it seems to be a popular book. I don't intend any judgement with this, it's just a curious observation. Maybe the overall taste in literature has changed over the last 25 years.
Ok, now to your reading experience: do you think reading the novel in Italian helped you in your learning of the language? I tried the same for Catalan in the last round of the bookclub but am still not sure wether or not it was helpful.
@Linda: well, I read the story in Italian and German and I think the book leaves a lot of space for interpretation. This is something you might like or not. I've now as well read the Wiki article about the book and to some things I can nod and to others I can't. @Eduard: Yep, I also have Novecento already on my Kindle, and I'm going to read it, but not now.
@Caro: Yes, I was thinking about that as well. I mean, if so many people like the book, how can I not really like it? Maybe I'm just kind of ignorant? Dunno. Maybe I am just not made for books which I find illogical. Still I admit that the book was able to awake emotions in me, which is one thing, I think, a good book has to do.
I haven't finished the book yet, but I'm eager to get to the end. I'm about halfway through and I think it follows a fairly similar structure of older literature that just doesn't seem to age very well (for most readers anyway). Also, I'm rereading certain sections of the book every Wednesday and I think it's helping my overall comprehension of the book, but I am also finding the plot a bit hard to follow! I'll post my final thoughts as well when I finally reach the end of the book haha
@Linda I also have a lot of questions about this book, and I look forward to discussing it here with fellow readers now that I've finished it. I ended up reading it twice, and the second time it did make more sense, but I still feel like Baricco left a lot of things unsaid.
@edufuga For what it's worth, I've read 64% of Novecento so far, and I like it much better than Seta! The writing style is different, and I find the main character much more likeable.
Linda, since I'm not taking part in the Book Club, I really have nothing to say except that I love reading your posts because it's cool to see how you assimilate previous corrections from other posts and apply them to your writing. Great job!
@Cloudy: I don't think you (and everyone else who dislikes the book) are ignorant. I'm still not sure how I feel about the book. There are many aspects I really enjoyed, such as the style of narration and the atmosphere it created. However, there are some points regarding the content I find problematic. All in all I'd say the novel offers a good basis for discussions :D
@Wendy: It's good to read that you like Novecento better than Seta. The first few pages didn't convince me yet, but maybe I'll give it another try.
@MimmiCaro I hope you do give it another try! I find the character of Novecento (yes, it's a person's name) really fascinating.
@Eduard: I still owe you some answers:
(a) Will you exercise the vocabulary of the book in some way, or how do you plan to spend the remaining time of the book club, when it comes to learning Italian?
No, I don't plan to do that. To be honest, I didn't really track the words I didn't know. The thing is that I don't like learning vocab, so yeah ... :D
For the remaining time, I'll continue reading the Italian version of the book.
(b) I already suggested it, but here it is once more: Will you write some sort of language comparison between Italian and Portuguese, using words or sentences from the book? I'll see what I find interesting. If I'll find something interesting, I'll probably write something about it.
(c) What sorts of words in the book do you find completely strange/difficult to understand? :D
I liked the word: "contrabandisti", but as I said before, I don't really have a list. Do you have a list of such words?
Linda: Thank you for answering my questions! That's really interesting!
(a) I think I (without being fully aware of it until now) actually enjoy learning vocabulary quite much. At least now that I have a system that works for me.
(b) All right :)
(c) Yes, I do have a list. At least I just created one for you :). Here it is: https://pastebin.com/pFGYcqxU. This is the current "statistics" of the book Seta, i.e. the vocabulary of the book, filtered with my current Italian knowledge, grouped by the different knowledge levels (ignored, unknown, guessed, comprehended, known). According to this, there are 361 unknown words in the book Seta, which is 11.27% of the book's vocabulary (of all words, without considering repetitions). At line 22 in the text document, you see what kind of words these are. Some of these words I could theoretically guess, but they are unknown enough, so to say :D, that I want to review them at some point in the future. (Additionally, there are 267 uncovered/missing words, which for sure contain more unknown words. These are all words that appear only once in the book and that I am still "re"viewing with my program).