I move on to another book series.


Last week, the last Percy Jackson book came out. About a year ago the fourth one came out, and a week before that I read the three first books in the series for the first time because a bunch of my friends were hyping up the book. I ended up not reading the fourth book intil July, and since I don't remember a lot of the plot from the previous books I've decided to reread the books before I read the last one.

I only have the first one, Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief, and the fourth one, Percy Jackson and the Battle Of The Labyrinth, so I borrowed Percy Jackson and the Sea of Monsters from one of my nerd friends, and now I'm all set until I want to read the third book. Maybe I'll read that in Swedish. I borrowed it from my library last year, and the translations aren't that bad with these books.

If you know the basic plot of the Percy Jackson series, you know why I want to read these books when we talk about Greek mythology in my Swedish class. I really loved the portrayal of the Greek gods when I first read the books, and I'm loving it again.

As for the hitchhiker, I finished Mostly Harmless the day before yesterday. Towel Day is a week away. Is anyone else gonna have a towel with them?

Thursday, May 14th.

"These numbers round the edge mark the hours. In the little window on the right it says THU, which means Thursday, and the number is 14, which means it's the fourteenth day of the month of MAY which is what it says in this window over here." - From Mostly Harmless (Douglas Adams), Chapter 15.

Yesterday, on May 14th, I read that. It was Thursday. 

The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy.

When I started my school in August last year, I met a few friends who liked The Hitchhiker's Series by Douglas Adams. I read the books many years ago, and I didn't remember much of it, so I decided to reread the series. My only problem was that I seemed to have misplaced my 5 in 1 paperback. It was not fun to realize. I decided to borrow it from my school library in December, but I didn't get around to reading it and had to return it before the Christmas break.
So when I found a set with all the five books for a resonable price in February, I decided to buy it, with a goal of rereading all the books before Towel Day (May 25th).

At the moment I'm on book four, So Long, And Thanks For All The Fish, and I'm almost finished. It doesn't, like The Restaurant At The End Of The Universe and Life, The Universe And Everything, have the same appeal as The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy, but I think I like this one more than book two and three just because of all the references to rain. I'm a  real rain lover, so the fact that the first chapters are all about rain makes me really happy.

Last week, I got a strong urge to go to the library. I will do so as soon as I finish the Hitchhiker's series. I'm not sure of what to borrow, but I think it would be wise to read some Swedish books now, since I'm going to Canada in August, and it probably won't be easy to find books in Swedish there.

Also, I'm gonna participate in "214 dagar med Harry", where we reread the Harry Potter series, one book each month, starting from June through December. I will read the books in Swedish, since I haven't done so in a while, and even though I hate the translations with all my being, I feel like I should read them in Swedish. Plus, I can complain about the horrible translations here. Hah. 

This Is Why I Don't Like Translations:

You never know what you actually get to read.

A few days ago I saw that my dad was reading a Jules Verne book in English. I asked him why he didn't read it in Swedish, becuase the original language is French and then you might as well read it in Swedish when you don't know French well enough to read it in it's original language. He told me he didn't trust books translated to Swedish from French, because most of his Jules Verne books in Swedish had been shortened, even the one I read a few weeks ago.

I took a look at the book (Jorden Runt På 80 Dagar), and it says it's "översatt och bearbetad av Henrik Wranér", which means "translated and worked on by Henrik Wranér".

Of course it's been worked on, the language has been changed from French to Swedish! The thing that disturbs me is that they really don't warn me. The book looks like this:

Nothing whatsoever about any shortening.

This is what I see when I open it:


See, I think the word bearbeta doesn't really say shorten. Maybe that's just me. But I really think if you shorten a book it should be announced with big bold letters on the cover. It's just not cool to hide it.

In other news, I've been sick, which means I've read a lot, so I finished Eragon a couple of hours ago and I'm working on the review. Started Washington D.C. (or All American Girl) just because I love the way Meg Cabot writes. I don't know if I'm remembering wrongly, but I feel like the Swedish translations of The Princess Diaries were better...I'm not sure, I read them a while ago.
Also, I'm thinking of ordering a big stack of books soon. But my first priority is Hank Green's So Jokes.

That's it, I'm going back to reading (and coughing xO). DFTBA!

Monday!

Hey peoples! I've decided to write some more blog posts so this thing doesn't get too empty. These posts will be book related, as this blog is about books.

Today I got home an hour earlier than I usually do on Mondays, since my French teacher didn't show up to the lesson. When I got home I noticed that the library was still open, so I went down there. I live in a pretty small place, a little village, if you may. We don't have a book store or a record store, and the only reason I can bare to live here is the Culture School. It's where I spend most of my afternoons, playing bass/guitar or singing, taking music theory, rehearsing with my muggle band. It's awesome indeed.

Since my village is very small and decepticon-y and generally notsome, the library here isn't that big. A few years ago I was pretty bad at returning books on time, so I was kind of afraid to go there. But I'm over that fear now.

I remember when I was about six, and I was really excited because I was getting my own library card (yeah, I was very excited. Nerd from the start). I thought about that when I was checking out the books I was borrowing today, because I saw my name on the back of the card. I had insisted on writing it myself. I didn't turn out very pretty, since my hand writing was kind of shaky, the way it is when you've just learned to write and you're writing on a slippery plastic card. It looks kind of horrible, but it makes me smile when I see it, because I love books and I always have.

What books did I borrow? Ondskan by Jan Guillou, The Nanny Diaries by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus and Washington D.C. by Meg Cabot.

I really like Meg Cabot and The Princess Diaries, so I'm looking forward to read her book. It's english title is All American Girl if you're wondering. Yeah, I'm hoping the weird translation of the title will make sense in the end.

Jan Guillou is a famous author and journalist in Sweden. He's an interesting person, but I've never read anything by him before. I've seen half of the movie that's  based on Ondskan, and apparently it's a pretty good book. I'm going to read this first, because I decided to read it for Swedish class.

The Nanny Diaries...I just borrowed that because I wanted to read something in English, and the cover looked interesting.

I was originally planning on borrowing The Book Thief by Markus Zusak, and The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald (both in Swedish though), but I found neither. When I looked the latter up on adlibris (the biggest nordic online book shop), I found this:



Nothing in Swedish, that is (some of my scandinavian friends will be happy though). But my library was supposed to have it, so I guess someone else have it at the moment.

That was all book talk for the day. I'll see you in the near future.

DFTBA!
Ron

(EDIT: By the way, I'm still on Eragon, and then I have to read Tomorrow When The War Began for English. I'm afraid I'm going to have to read several books at the same time. Gah. Ah, well)

Yes, we are active.

So yeah, this is the third post I'm making today, so I guess I'm being good to this project. I just posted reviews of Paper Towns and Around the World in 80 Days, and I started reading Eragon yesterday. I should finish The Three Musketeers, but it's going slow and I'm behind on this. So yeah. Hope people are good.

So...

I'm a little behind with this thing. I've barely read half of the three Musketeers, and I should've been on my second book by now. And I'm going to have to put it down for a while, since I have to write an epic book report/analysis of Paper Towns, and I haven't read that since November. But I just wanted to check in, if anyone's reading ;)

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