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Reading and writing on not a Wednesday
Oct. 14th, 2021 01:29 pmFinal report has been sent \o/ Sounds like the project leader wants to discuss it with me next week sometime.
I finished reading Tokyo Ueno Station yesterday. I enjoyed the voice of it, and most of the book, but I found the ending unsatisfactory. The part where we found out how the narrator became homeless also came across strangely - he feels that he's a burden on his only remaining family and walks out, goes to Tokyo, and starts living in Ueno Park. But it was mentioned only a page or two before that he's receiving a pension (so what happened to that income?), and this part is written so incredibly distantly that even recognizing there's some cultural disconnect probably happening here, it fell completely flat. Who on Earth chooses to become homeless over a single thought of 'hm, kinda sucks for my grandkid to have to live with me, kbye'? 3/11 also comes up a few times, but it was never really tied into anything else going on, unlike the mentions of the upcoming Olympics (which are connected with efforts to 'clean up' the park without actually helping any of the homeless).
The translation was surprisingly non-handholdy compared to what I am used to seeing - maybe this is typical for literary fiction? There were a fair number of words that went without being translated, footnoted, or 'word, brief explanation, rest of sentence'. E.g. 'nembutsu' rather than Genji's 'calling the Name [of Amida Buddha]'. The prose was also clearly translated from another language, but in a very pleasant and non-distracting way, rather than the kind of thing you see in bad fantranslations by people who think 'authentic' means 'clunky prose you could almost translate back phrase by phrase and as much as possible left untranslated'.
This week, I've been going to several sessions of a writing workshop. Some of the sessions I enjoyed more than others. (Sorry, marketing person, maybe I am different from romance readers, but the idea of an author badgering me with emails that have nothing to do with their books to 'build a relationship' is a No from me. Nor would I feel like they are 'only contacting me when they need something' if they only ever sent me notices that they have a new book coming out. That's why I subscribe to things!) The plotting and structure ones I liked the best and found the most useful. Plot structure is one thing I've never super focused on working on, so it's about time to get around to it. I certainly have a lot of ideas for things to try out on the origfic I want to revise.
I finished reading Tokyo Ueno Station yesterday. I enjoyed the voice of it, and most of the book, but I found the ending unsatisfactory. The part where we found out how the narrator became homeless also came across strangely - he feels that he's a burden on his only remaining family and walks out, goes to Tokyo, and starts living in Ueno Park. But it was mentioned only a page or two before that he's receiving a pension (so what happened to that income?), and this part is written so incredibly distantly that even recognizing there's some cultural disconnect probably happening here, it fell completely flat. Who on Earth chooses to become homeless over a single thought of 'hm, kinda sucks for my grandkid to have to live with me, kbye'? 3/11 also comes up a few times, but it was never really tied into anything else going on, unlike the mentions of the upcoming Olympics (which are connected with efforts to 'clean up' the park without actually helping any of the homeless).
The translation was surprisingly non-handholdy compared to what I am used to seeing - maybe this is typical for literary fiction? There were a fair number of words that went without being translated, footnoted, or 'word, brief explanation, rest of sentence'. E.g. 'nembutsu' rather than Genji's 'calling the Name [of Amida Buddha]'. The prose was also clearly translated from another language, but in a very pleasant and non-distracting way, rather than the kind of thing you see in bad fantranslations by people who think 'authentic' means 'clunky prose you could almost translate back phrase by phrase and as much as possible left untranslated'.
This week, I've been going to several sessions of a writing workshop. Some of the sessions I enjoyed more than others. (Sorry, marketing person, maybe I am different from romance readers, but the idea of an author badgering me with emails that have nothing to do with their books to 'build a relationship' is a No from me. Nor would I feel like they are 'only contacting me when they need something' if they only ever sent me notices that they have a new book coming out. That's why I subscribe to things!) The plotting and structure ones I liked the best and found the most useful. Plot structure is one thing I've never super focused on working on, so it's about time to get around to it. I certainly have a lot of ideas for things to try out on the origfic I want to revise.
