(Untitled)

[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

[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.

[muckefuck]

I'm not sure if it peeves him personally or not, but it certainly cheeses off most Hispanics I know. If you're not going to use his proper name out of laziness, then why not write "Gabo", an informal moniker we know he doesn't mind? But, seriously, if you can go to the trouble of writing "Stanisław Lem" with a freakin' slash-l, you'd think "García Márquez" wouldn't be much of a stretch. Your sloth shows itself in strange ways, friend.

[wwidsith]

Yes, as does your industriousness.

[muckefuck]

Do keep in mind, I'm the kind of person who rearranges the bookshelves when I'm out browsing the shops. You wouldn't believe how many booksellers can't distinguish the family names of East Asian authors! Disgraceful if you ask me.

[wwidsith]

Heheh. Personally I never know if Louis de Bernières is going to be under B or D....

[muckefuck]

That's more understandable, as the convention varies from language to language and even from bearer to bearer. My surname contains a "von" and I've gotten used to looking for under both "V" (American style) or the first initial of my surname proper (German style). But not being able to figure out what the surname is? When it's almost always clearly indicated on the title page or t.p. verso? Inexcusable!