Plato's cosmology and theory of the human body, and the story of Atlantis; courtesy of a phantastic audio version featuring David Rintoul as Socrates, David Timson as Timaeus, and Peter Kenny as Critias.  Philosophical and scientific enquiry redolent with the joy of the intellectual exercsie for its own sake -- that alone makes it a joy to tag along (however much Plato might be distressed to learn that his theories on the human body have at long last, after some two millennia. been proved wrong after all -- and despite his warnings about the falliability of the human mind, even by scientific experiment).

(Task: Read a book about philosophy or a philosopher, or a how-to book about changing your life in a significant way or suggesting a particular lifestyle (Hygge, Marie Kobo, etc.).

The subtext of love and lust being equated with disease continues.

In which context, incidentally, Spanish allows the author to create nuances and allusions that are pretty much untranslatable into English or German (or even French or Italian, for that matter), by dint of the sole fact that "to love" and "to want, to desire" (in both a physical sense and otherwise) are the same word -- querer.  And he doesn't even have to use it all the time, either.

On a separate note, the German translator is skipping parts of the original text.  In chapter 3 it was only one sentence (and I did such a double take there that I reread the paragraph in question a couple of times in both Spanish and German because I initially thought I'd just missed it -- but nope, it really wasn't me), but in chapter 4 it's an entire fragment of dialogue.  In both cases, the gist of the missing stuff is incorporated (by the author himself, mind you) into another statement in close proximity, but Vicent clearly considered the extra sentence / dialogue important nevertheless, otherwise he wouldn't have included them -- so who is the translator to decide they don't merit being included in the translation?  It's one thing not to translate literally, and to play with punctuation and sentence flow in order to better convey a sense of the original.  It's another thing entirely to decide part of the text doesn't need to be translated to begin with!

Finished the first chapter.  So far, this is shaping up as a story told with gentle irony -- foil rather than epee or broadsword. Several passages had me laughing out loud; I particularly like the juxtaposition of a Spanish seaside town somewhere south of Valencia at the full, exasperating and more than just a little ridiculous height of the summer tourist season with the fierceness and elegance of the story of Ulysses / Odysseus and Circe ... and Penelope (whose name here is Martina).

And I can already see that to me, this is also going to be an a study of translation.  I notice that the German translator -- while by and large fairly literal -- at least occasionally sets literal accuracy at naught in order to catch the spirit rather than the words; e.g., when inane lyrics such as

"Corazón de melón, de melón, melón, melón, corazón"

are rendered by the equally inane and rhythmically similar

"In meiner Brust schlägt die Lust, Lust, Lust, in meiner Brust"

-- never mind that the actual words are entirely different. (I bet Willi Zurbrüggen, the translator of the German edition, had a lot of fun looking for that one, and I actually wish he'd had that kind of courage a bit more often.)  And now, of course, I also want to know how that particular bit was dealt with in the English translation ...

Having just finished Sarah Bakewell's The Existentialist Café, one of the passages that had me laughing for reasons that the author may or may not have intended was this:

"Entre las personas que aguardaban al juez no había ningún filósofo. De ser así, mientras llogaba el informe oficial de la muerte, se pudo haber discutido de fenomenología, de la apariencia de los seres o de la realidad de los cuerpos presentes."

 

"Ein Philosoph befand sich nicht unter den Personen, die auf den Untersuchungsrichter warteten. Wäre dem so gewesen, hätte man, bis der Tod offiziell festgestellt war, die Zeit mit einer phänomenologischen Diskussion über die Gegeständlichkeit der Wesen oder die Wirklichkeit vorhandener Körper überbrücken können."

What goes around comes around!

(Though, I don't think "die Wirklichkeit vorhandener Körper" fully captures the meaning of "la realidad de los cuerpos presentes" , but anyway.)

Onwards to chapter 2, where we supposedly learn how this book's Odysseus and Penelope first met.

Gaiman says in the introduction that he didn't revisit his own childhood favorites -- Kevin Crossley-Holland's and Roger Lancelyn Green's renditions of the Norse myths -- but this comes across decidedly more like an update of those books, i.e., The Norse Myths for Young Readers, than an adaptation of the actual Edda texts.  I'm enjoying it, though ... author's own narration and all.  I also appreciate that Gaiman is taking great pains to get the pronunciation of the Icelandic / Norse words right.

This would probably count for the "Supernatural" square anyway, but since Gaiman is my wild card author, I haven't used my wild card for anything else yet, and I also know I won't be needing it for any of the remaining squares on my card ... what the heck.

Irreverent, insightful, funny, deeply humane and empathetic.

The myth of Odysseus is one of my favorite parts of Greek mythology: in telling it from the perspective of Penelope -- with a good bit about Penelope's childhood and youth, and her and Odysseus's marriage thrown in for good measure, as well as with her 12 slain maids acting as a very Greek chorus -- Atwood turns it inside out, gives it a feminist spin, and puts it together again in her very own way.  And Laurel Merlington's narration is sheer genius ... if you're into Greek mythology and audiobooks, get the audio version now.  (If you're not into audiobooks but into Greek mythology, still get the edition of your choice.)

Absolutely loved every second of it.