I personally tend to lean more toward the Garnett school of translation--in my mind, a translated text can never actually replicate the original, so it's better to embrace the difference than try to minimize it. Like, Tolstoy-via-Garnett (or via Pevear/Volokhonsky) is almost a separate thing from Regular Tolstoy in Russian, but that's kind of how it has to be for literary translation to be effective. And I think a lot of people tend to hate on that interpretation, so I kind of get why Janet Malcolm is so defensive?
But on the other hand, there's also definitely a need for an accurate, word-for-word, maybe kind of awkward translation a la Pevear/Volokhonsky, because people need to know what Tolstoy actually wrote without learning an entirely separate language. For academic reasons, if nothing else. So maybe what we need is to have both an extremely accurate translation that's maybe kind of difficult to read AND a looser but better-written version that readers in the non-original language can enjoy?
I do actually have experience with humidity (I lived in SE Asia before TX), and I know how thermoregulation works. That being said, the reactions to this comment make me think it didn't come across the way I meant it to. I was trying to make a self-deprecating joke about weather-related smugness, but I think it sounds like me ACTUALLY being smug, and I'm sorry I didn't word it better. So...um, I'm an idiot, I guess, but not an idiot who thinks I'm cool because I once lived through a debilitating multi-year drought? Yay?
Well, see, now my pride is on the line, so I'll either stoically make it through to October or melt into a puddle of hairspray and regret halfway into the summer.
(Plus, even if I do survive, I AM spending part of this winter in Russia, and while I am generally confident in my ability to handle various types of hot weather, I am completely unable to deal with temperatures below 40 degrees. Catch me this February, trying to claw my way into the molten center of the Earth!)
I jussst moved to DC from Texas, and watching other people complain about the heat here is making me feel INCREDIBLY smug.
Can't wait to tell everyone at work about that summer in HS where I waited tables in 100+ degree temperatures on a patio next to a desiccated, mostly-empty lake! Yeah, I'm hardcore.
My dad forbid me from reading Girl With a Dragon Tattoo when I was in middle school. I don't think I was even that interested in reading it, but it was EXPRESSLY FORBIDDEN to me. Still haven't read it. I was pretty deep into the world of smutty fanfiction by this point, so I doubt it really helped anything.
Oh man, the Anastasia Royal Diaries was probably the worst in the series. Like half of it was just chilling in the Crimea in summer 1914, and then the entire war was just a series of increasingly shorter and more depressing entries. It definitely gave me a biased sense of how rad it was to be a Romanov daughter.
Olga, just as I expected. (Although I got more Tatiana than I thought I would? Like, I too project an image of distance and self-possession to mask my fear of vulnerability! TWINS.)
I was always Team Olga as a kid, largely due to oldest-sibling solidarity. Others this made me unduly sympathetic toward include Beezus Quimby, Meg March, Mary Tudor, and Dmitri Karamazov.
I mean, he's definitely playing her. (And, as the person with a spouse, arguably holds a greater share of moral culpability.) But she is ignoring reality and willfully buying his bullshit about how much his wife sucks AND planning to bring a kid into this fucked-up situation. Plus, she's 30 now, and I kind of feel like at a certain point you have to take responsibility for what you're willing to believe/ignore in order to get the things you want? I mean, "Jeremy" obviously sucks too, but I don't think that really excuses her behavior.
(Side note: I am currently in the process of breaking up with a Jeremy (obviously not this guy, but an unrelated college student), and this + the reddit thread are kind of flipping me out.)
I'm too young to really remember the pre-2005 internet, but in the late '90s I would play games on NickJr.com that took literally HOURS to load. I remember setting up a game with the Tickety Toc loading screen and very carefully telling my dad NOT TO CLOSE IT after I went to bed, and then in the morning I got up and hunted for Swiper with Dora. I was maybe 4 when this happened? I really wish I still had that ability to plan ahead.
This is too late for you, but it can help to change your phone/watch to destination time as soon as you get through airport security, and then plan your plane sleep schedule accordingly. That way, when you get there, you are KIND OF mentally adjusted to the time zone? Idk.
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