Which version?
In Latin? Greek? Hebrew?
The King James, along with Churchill and Will Durant, makes for a wonderful education in how to read and write.
@Gotflute @afre
I am reading the Good News Bible just because it was the one lying around the house. It does have some simple illustrations throughout. When I want a more accurate idea of what the text says I refer to King James version online, which I do quite often. And when I want a more accurate idea still I will look at the Strongs definitions of particular words at the blue letter Bible website - Greek for the new testament and Hebrew for the old. That is quite revealing. I cant read those languages natively, but sure wish I could. Who knew there were different types of wrath? Or that sorcery = pharmakeia? The Greeks did!
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We could all use some “good news” these days.
Thanks for sharing.
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I am reading 2 books simultaneously:
- On This Day in History, Sh!t Went Down, by James Fell – It has a short, and very funny, description of an event that occurred in history for each day of the year. I read the stories on the day of the year in which they occurred which is why I am reading 2 books simultaneously
- Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, by Robert B Cialdini – The title of the book may use the more palatable word ‘Persuasion’ but inside it speaks of compliance, which is the more truthful word. A fascinating read on all the ways in which one can be manipulated
Once upon a time it was compulsory reading:
Vance Packard: The Hidden Persuaders.
Have fun!
Claes in Lund, Sweden
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What am I reading?
A lot. But book-wise, one of my most enjoyable moments was when I visited a small town, a bit off. They had one antiquarian bookseller, which had just received a large amount of books in a foreign language (i.e. English), written by a foreign author (i.e. P G Wodehouse); all for sale at a ridiculously low price.
I bought them all, phoned my wife to tell her that I’d be a bit late for dinner, because I had to go to IKEA to buy a new bookshelf first.
Great fun. They still bring me great joy…
Spiffy, eh?
Have fun!
Claes in Lund, Sweden
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I’ve read that one, too. 
Mostly manga to keep my Japanese sharp over the summer while I prepare my study/presentation for this Fall. It’s actually pretty cheap to import used Japanese language manga into the States. Looking to grab the Japanese versions of Spy x Family. I’m a simple man and like pictures in my books.
Also making my way back through Mother American Night which is John Perry Barlow’s autobiography.
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This seems like a great read. I am not familiar with it but from a quick wikipedia read I got the general idea of what it is about, specially since I have read some books from people who inspired him.
Whether you agree with his premise or not, for us photographers, there is utility in assuming basic contextual symbolic threads in the fabric of humanity. We can either use those old stories or react to them.
As a modern society it feels like we’ve become more disconnected with these archetypal ideas and stories, specially considering the disbandment of the large families, people talk less in groups where these stories used to flourish. We are constantly bombarded with them from popular media, but it seems that something is lost in translation, and to use your term, people react a lot more than they used them.
I have watched enough anime to get the gist of what they are saying without actually understanding the Japanese if that makes sense.
Yeah anime is aimed at the youth market mostly so it’s very slang laden. Lots of simple one liners. It’s a good way to broaden a textbook based education in the language. A few Japanese newspapers publish a simplified version online for learners as well.
But overall day-to-day Japanese tends to use very simple phrases which seems fine on the surface but I find it makes translation extra challenging. Yokatta, sugoi, yaroo and dame for example can have different intents depending on the context and they are used a lot. Japanese also has fewer verbs than English so they make heavy use of onomatopoeia to indicate the difference between say a chuckling and laughter for example as both are referred to with the warau (to laugh) verb.
My barrier to learning languages, and programming, is that I am very forgetful. So, it is difficult to build vocabulary and learn formally. I will likely do better with conversational partners, though I have not tried that yet.
PS - Speaking of simple one-liners, it is funny when the subtitle translations seem to be more complex/sophisticated than what the actual content really is.
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Yes I have the memory problem also. I’m in my mid-to-late-30s so this is probably my last grasp of being able to pick up another language. Picking up new programming and system admin things is becoming increasingly hard as well I’ve noticed. I’m around 16-18 years older than everyone else in my classes and they are so much quicker with far less effort put in. My professors say my writing is usually better than the kids’ though and I show more life experience, whatever that means. But on the verbal and listening side they can just run circles around me. I really have to put in practice and think about that so I come off as frustratingly slow if I have to wander too far off my practiced area.
We don’t like to hear it but the body and mind really does start to break down after 40-45. We’re just better at medically dragging out/slowing down that downward slide with modern technology. Some people manage better than others and a general rule of thumb I’ve heard is if it’s good for the heart it’s good for the brain too. I’ve noticed slow downs in just the last 3-4 years. I was much faster when I started taking JPN classes in 2018. I’m sure the pandemic and watching the world kind of fall apart related stress has been part of my issues too.
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Forgot to reply to this one earlier: but yes translations are complicated. For a simple example “yokatta” is the past tense of the adjective ii (pronounced ee, it means “good”) and by the dictionary means “it was good” but it’s used all the time to mean “I did well” or “hooray we did it” or “If you like, please go on it’s fine” or “that was fun/amazing” (although sugoi and its derivatives are used often for the last) etc. Japanese is rather vague compared to western European languages and there’s usually a lot of play in direct translations. I’ve watched some anime and heard some translations I didn’t quite agree with. Like most things there are some words/phrases that don’t exactly 1:1 move over and you’ve got to do your best to follow the spirit of what’s being said instead of the literal meaning.
What I mean is that some translations go from simple to unexpectedly academic and well-read. It is as if a PhD student dropped by and wanted to add colour to otherwise mundane dialog. I know some people are extra passionate but it just cracks me up. What also cracks me up is when anime characters end their sentences with what sounds like n**ga. Sounds offensive or rad. Ha ha.
I only know one guy who was super serious about learning Japanese in elementary/middle school. It was because he was deep into the culture, wanting to read manga and play video games, esp. RPGs, in the original language, like the Final Fantasy games. That was before I believe translated manga were widely available.
A way to segue back into books is to say that what attracted me to anime/manga was the strong female (main) characters in them. Of course, the corpus also has innumerable exploitative characterizations. But yeah, for the elementary school me and the current me, good fiction and my favourite stories require strong females. I only realized that pattern when I become an adult. Next requirement would be good prose, art and/or music (if it were animated or made into a movie).
I usually read crime novels, preferably those with series heroes. I think Donna Leon invented this genre. In the meantime, there are quite a few of these book series. But every now and then my brain needs something more challenging, mostly in the fields of politics and (the bad german) history, architecture, natural sciences and, of course, photography.
Lee Miller impressed me, for example her picture in Hitler’s bathtub (Lee Miller in Hitler’s Bathtub, Hitler’s Apartment, 16 Prinzregentenplatz, Munich, Germany, 1945 - Lee Miller - WikiArt.org). It wasn’t the bathtub that was essential to her, but her shoes on the carpet in front of it: it was a satisfaction to her that the dirt from the Dachau concentration camp, which she had visited immediately before, had now ruined Hilter’s spotless white carpet.
I’m mostly into it for my mid-life crisis (maybe more like one-third-life) if I’m honest, not entirely happy with the direction of my day job career as I picked a safe but uninteresting option out of grad school. A little more than a decade down the road now and I don’t think I’ve got much longer in corporate type IT world before I go completely and utterly mad. Unfortunately I went and did some dumb things like buying a house in a place I don’t really want to live for career I’m not interested in so uprooting is going to be painful and probably financially unwise. But as one of the 36 stratagems goes sometimes you need to sacrifice the plum tree to save the peach tree.
But my interest has been mostly academic as I’m looking into Japanese and Asian astronomy folklore. My BS and MS degrees are in physics, astronomy and engineering and I remember the astronomy history classes being very western focused. I’m a curious type, thought about it, realized entire other civilizations existed with agriculture and maritime traditions which (if you don’t have a compass or a clock) infers astronomical record keeping and folklore. Unfortunately between the Great Leap Forward in the mid-20th century China and the Meiji Period’s extreme focus on westernizing in Japan a lot of that has been lost, certainly not much of it has been brought into the western world either. So I guess you can count that as some reading material, there’s been some recent papers I’ve been reading on this subject in preparation for deciding next moves, potential grant proposals, etc.
My wife and I also have several Japanese friends and it’s nice to at least be able to make an attempt to communicate with them in their native tongue. A close friend of ours has her mother over from Japan this month and her English isn’t that strong so it’s been good practice. She’s given me good, honest feedback on my abilities and where I should practice. Plus she’s really good at making bento lunch!
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Non-western science and society? I don’t what else to call it as it is late into the night. 
Speaking of folklore, our discussion of manga/anime and your admission of mid-life crisis, I am reminded of Mushishi. If you haven’t read/watched it, give it a try. The OP song for the first season (I think I shared it in the forums before for some reason but I can’t find it…):
Finally have time this morning to pitch in a post…
My leisure reading has been predominantly science fiction. My time for reading over the years winnowed down to periods of airline travel; one item of my pre-trip checklist was to get a couple of tomes for the Nook, and later the Kindle. So, COVID and semi-retirement pretty much shut down that opportunity, with the only travel I’ve done in that period being a trip to see my mom.
Okay, that’s not about what I’ve read, but on that trip I finished up a Joshua Dalzelle series I’d started a few years ago, and then the “A Memory Called Empire”/“A Desolation Called Peace” duo by Arkady Martine that @bastibe referenced. Quite a different take on diplomacy, culture, and the bearing of arms than what I was used to.
If I had to call out one work I’ve read in the past two decades, it’d be “The Three Body Problem” series by Liu Cixin. Really give you pause to consider the possible outcomes of evolution, and the implications of our place in the universe…