I've started reading The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. I don't know Spanish well enough to read a novel but I have a feeling this book uses a lot of idioms and the translator struggled to create a reading experience that would feel the same in English. I hope I get used to it soon because I keep feeling like I'm reading subtitles.

BTW, Laga, my friend confirmed that the language is very idiomatic. That is one reason she really likes the author. She said it would be hard to translate well.

I'm having a similar experience with A Novel Bookstore. It has a very self-conscious style that I find annoying. But I like the plot description so I may check it out while in France and see if it reads any better in the original French.

I think I may want everything I read to be The Long Ships now! Epic and hilarious! I just finished it the other night.

Oh, I've been looking at that because it's an NYRB imprint. I know Chabon loves it too.

I know Chabon loves it too.

He thinks every man, woman, and child would benefit from reading it. I'm not sure I'd go that far but it is highly entertaining.

I'm staring to enjoy Shadow of the Wind more as the plot advances and I read faster but there are still some moments where I have to slow down because the language is trying too hard.

I found a copy of Tanith Lee's Dark Dance at Half Price Books and bought it with some vague memory that this was a favorite of Jilli's.

I like the opening but I was struck by the fact that even though the book was written in the 90s, so much of the nuts and bolts of that world were now outdated. It just struck me sharply that there was a continuity in the way the world worked roughly from the 20s through the 90s that was gone: land-line telephones at home, book stores, newspapers, record stores. Certainly all those things still exist, but they're not longer the primary way people communicate with each other, get news, get music or buy books.

David, I've just read (re-read for the first couple, but I hadn't read all) the "Tomorrow When the War Began" series and was thinking about how some of it would be totally different now, with cellphones and all. Heck, even a lot of stuff like Seinfeld is totally outdated with misunderstandings when now they'd just text each other.

Heheh. I think about that a lot! Literary device thwarted by modern technology!

I love the Tomorrow books, but if they were set today, they'd have to include forays to charge batteries. There's been such a shift that I wonder if children today can identify at all with books I loved as a child, like the Edward Eager and Elizabeth Enright books.

Sara is loving the All of a Kind Family and Little House books, but I think they're both so far removed from her daily life, it's fascinating to her. That vague middle ground might be a little harder.

I wonder if children today can identify at all with books I loved as a child

There were no books with events like my childhood when I was growing up. Not even remotely, until I got to school in England. Is that really something kids are looking for?