The Reading Room

9:20 AM

@Randal'Thor I also have a possible answer, but I don't know whether it was the first novel that did this.

Fabjaja

9:43 AM

@Randal'Thor I've submitted an answer. Interesting question :-)

9:57 AM

@Librarian Hmm... I'll at least make a token effort here, of checking the library catalogs.

@Rand Could you please mention specific recommended works of this author in the announcements?

"author who's written many books in both English and Turkish" -- so mention specific ones, and tell which ones were written in which language an potentially which ones were translated by the author itself (like Szathmári Sándor did with some of his works)

10:10 AM

@b_jonas Can you suggest books for purchase at your library? The public library in my city accepts such suggestions. After all, librarians can't keep track of all the new publications "out there".

Elif Şafak definitely looks worthwhile.

@ChristopheStrobbe In theory I can, but they generally have very little money, and the little they spend they spend on maintaining their existing collection.

So most of the books they newly get are donations, such as from relatives of dead people who had a book collection, or (in one particular case) by the British Council when it left Hungary.

And since I don't yet know Elif Şafak's works, and don't even know which book to recommend, I wouldn't recommend it yet.

Let me search the library catalogs and the online book store webpages now.

For the record, some online book stores in Hungary, for both new and used books mixed, with the first one preferred, is bookline.hu , antikvar.hu , alexandra.hu , lira.hu , libri.hu , antikvarium.hu , regikonyvek.hu (and I think I forgot one)

A partial list of library catalogs in Hungary is on math.bme.hu/~ambrus/sc/blu

The library catalogs do find some books by Elif Şafak in Turkish and Hungarian

That's at least a start.

I can definitely wait for Rand or someone else to suggest particular works.

Aug 13 at 19:04, by b_jonas

Oh, and in Sci Fi, no, I'm not reading Nemere István or Lőrincz L. László; and while you convince me to read Трудно быть богом (Hard to be a god) for the topic challenge because I'd only read bad books from A & B Strugackij, I didn't like it, so I'm not willing to read any more from them.

Not all works of an author are made equal.

10:28 AM

Here in Germany, many libraries appear to have a "Friends of the Library" booster club, which can also make donations to the library.

@ChristopheStrobbe I am also allowed to make donations to a library (or at least most libraries), in the form of money or books. Sadly domestic charitable donations such as donating money to a library are no longer all deductable from my income tax base. They used to be, back before I had started to earn my own money to donate.

I don't know of a club, but I don't understand what it would do.

These "booster clubs" (I don't know what else to call them; the German term is Förderverein) appear to organise events I found out about them only recently, so I don't know much about them.

4 hours later…

2:59 PM

@ChristopheStrobbe Your answer is the same book I was thinking of. I don't know whether it's the first SFF story featuring a language without words for "I"/"me"; maybe @user14111 would be able to comment on that.

3:17 PM

@Randal'Thor I suspected it would be the same book. I was vaguely hoping that Zamyatin's We wold be an older example, but what I found about the book didn't confirm this.

@b_jonas Let me check. I'm not actually familiar with her work myself, but a Turkish friend recommended one of her novels to me.

I tried to find stories which are legally available online (since that was such a success with Nalo Hopkinson), but I only found one audio story, which I already linked to in the post. Perhaps @Christophe will have better luck.

3:34 PM

Hmm, Nalo Hopkinson published those stories in online magazines in order to get more attention to her work. It is a conscious strategy on her part.

I found A Migrating Bird, but access requires registration...

Also, when the elif-safak tag is created, we should make a synonym elif-shafak. Maybe even the other way round.

Because the Turkish letter Ş looks like an S but is pronounced like the English "sh".

@Randal'Thor I would go for elif-shafak, based on the spelling used on her official website.

@ChristopheStrobbe I've read Zamyatin's We and don't recall anything about a language with no words for "I"/"me". (Weird book, btw. Reads like it was written by someone on I don't know what kind of drugs. Not sure how much of that was due to the translation.)

@ChristopheStrobbe Well, that's inconsistent. The URL is elifsafak but the title says Elif Shafak.

@Randal'Thor Even better: eflishafak.com redirects to www.elifsafak.com.tr, where the title element (see the browser's top bar) says "Elif Şafak Official Website" but the first visible title on the page says "Elif Shafak".

The online availability of some of Hopkinson's stories was helpful, but we don't want to be "Short Stories Stack Exchange".

3:51 PM

Sure. But if you're asking people to read works by an author they've never tried before, it helps to make that a smaller commitment.

I know, but it's a bit said if they never move beyond that. I'm currently reading Midnight Robber and the short stories we read didn't prepare me for the novel.

4:07 PM

Damn, I can't recall which Elif Şafak novel it was that was recommended to me.

İşkender maybe? Hmm.

4:19 PM

@Randal'Thor Unless the Turkish letter Ş can actually be used in tags, I would prefer elif-shafak to be the default.

2 hours later…

6:05 PM

@Randal'Thor Ah. I asked you because you were the one who posted the proposal.

@Randal'Thor Um, I keep forgetting, doesn't our site just let us create an [elif-şafak] tag directly, and have both of those as synonyms either automatically or explicitly?

@ChristopheStrobbe Nor do we want to be "Harry Potter Stack Exchange". How about "Jules Verne Stack Exchange"? The originals of his stories are legally available online, although the good translations usually aren't.

JKR is most famous of his novels, and Verne of his short novels and novels, and Verne doesn't have any good short stories.

(He has one or two short stories published, but frankly they suck.)

I'm re-reading G. Szabó Judit's “A macskát visszafelé simogatják”, her first famous book and perhaps the saddest.

2 hours later…

Q: Relevance of Findlay's poem 'Stolen' to Hopkinson's novel Midnight Robber

8:22 PM

So now we have 11 questions about Nalo Hopkinson.

Bookworm

Nalo Hopkinson's novel Midnight Robber (published in 2000) is prefaced by the poem "Stolen" by David Findlay. I don't know where this text was first published and it is probably not available online, so here are the first few lines: I stole the torturer's tongue it's the first side of me so...

poetry nalo-hopkinson midnight-robber

Bookworm

9:15 PM

Q: Help me identify 2nd grade 1970s child's story

The story I am thinking of appeared in my 2nd grade (73-74) reading textbook and was set in winter and featured a group of animals. It was heavily illustrated and showed an injured fox bleeding from the leg. One of the other animals was responsible and was scolded by the other animals. Lots of...

story-identification

1 hour later…

Bookworm

10:16 PM

Q: Source of quote: "Speaking the truth that somebody wants you not to publish is journalism. Everything else is marketing."

Heard from a BitCoin motivational speaker: Oscar Wilde said, "Speaking the truth that somebody wants you not to publish is journalism. Everything else is marketing." However, we all know that Oscar Wilde also said (or was that Abraham Lincoln?) not to believe everything attributed to him on...

quote-identification oscar-wilde