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[wwidsith]

The most popular books on LibraryThing sorted by original language:

French: The Stranger by Camus
German: Siddhartha by Hesse
Japanese: The Wind-up Bird Chronicle by Murakami
Spanish: One Hundred Years of Solitude by Márquez
Russian: Crime & Punishment by Dostoyevsky
Italian: The Name of the Rose by Eco
Dutch: Anne Frank's Diary
Portuguese: The Alchemist

Comments

[commonpeople]

Paulo Coelho is a disgrace to Brasil. Everything he has written is shite; and I even have a theory that The Alchemist - his biggest success - was actually not written by him, but by his musical partner in the 70s, Raul Seixas (a kind of semi-genius of the brasilian psychedelic generation).

It should be Jose Saramago under Portuguese.

[wwidsith]

I haven't read anything of his. Any recommendations?

[commonpeople]

Blindness. It was the novel that secured him the Nobel for literature.

[muckefuck]

Pet peeve: The author's name is "García Márquez". Like most Spanish-speakers, he uses both a paternal and a maternal surname and the paternal comes first. (The exact opposite of the usual order in the Portuguese-speaking world.) If Library Thing has him under "Márquez", well, then they're doing about as well as most chain bookstores.

Oh, and I've only read three of these, and I feel no disgrace in that. In fact, I'm almost more annoyed that I've read Wind-up bird than that I haven't read Crime and punishment. That was my fourth Murakami novel and it pretty much soured me on his writing.

[wwidsith]

You're pretty touchy for a descriptivist! Put it down to lazy English shorthand..

[muckefuck]

If by "lazy English shorthand" you mean "pig ignorance", then I'm more than happy to do that. You wouldn't abbreviate "Bulwer-Lytton" to "Bulwer", would you? Of course not--that's a different fellow entirely. You see, names are not like ordinary words. You can abbreviate my name any way you like, but at some point it ceases to be my name and becomes some sort of obnoxious nickname instead, eh ww?

[wwidsith]

It's not ignorance - I'm well aware of how Spanish names work. In fact when I worked in Quito I was given a matronymic myself to tack on to my surname on the stafflist! Just using the "last" name seems fairly understandable to me - it might make a name into a nickname, but I'm not convinced Gabo would find it that obnoxious.

[gnossiennes]

I have read eight of these. I agree that The Alchemist is terrible, but I am not surprised that Hesse beat Kafka. This is, after all, a list of popular books, not a list of masterpieces.

My roommate agrees with you that The Stranger is overrated, but I am a miserable existentialist so I love it.

[wwidsith]

Oh, no! From what you've posted about your flatmate I'm slightly annoyed that they agree with me!

[wwidsith]

Yeah I've read other Ecos and liked them, although he is a bit up his own arse. My Moriarty is Moby-Dick. I've started that one three times (including a Folio Soc edition!) and although I love the moody opening chapters, I just lose it about a third of the way in. It's weird because I normally enjoy long difficult books like that.
I joined the Folio Society about a year ago, when I took this job. It is the biggest sap on my finances I've ever had, but I just don't care.

PS I think I love you for your Bulwer-Lytton footnate. Which I never knew.

[wwidsith]

Sure! Welcome in. Please take your shoes off if you're going upstairs though.