And while we wait

Ok - so we're still waiting for a scan and Daughter the Second has been sick again overnight. The duty doctor came round this morning, says he wants more blood tests and by the way, there are no scans at the weekend.

What? But we were told....

And depending on the blood test results, DTS might have an endoscopy. They don't explain fully what this is, but an elderly patient next to her (a fabulously feisty woman) is a retired nurse, so she explains and DTS mildly freaks. At the moment, we don't know when she'll get the blood test results - so here we are....admitted Thursday afternoon, potentially get scan done Monday, but maybe an endoscopy....sometime?

I retreat to my books.

My reading group have Goodnight Mr Tom by Michelle Magorian, and The Five People You Meet In Heaven by Mitch Albom, to choose from. If I can, I shall read both. One for the third time (Mr Tom) and one for the first (Five People). What I'm enjoying about the group is the fact that I read books I just wouldn't ever choose for myself, and my reading is very wide and varied anyway. This includes biographies, Born on a Blue Day by Daniel Tammet, and Wasted by Mark Johnson. The biographies I read tend to be historical, so these are very unusual, but eye-opening, informative and they certainly pulled me up sharp a few times.

I was looking forward to reading Ocean Sea by Alessandro Baricco. A friend and colleague loves this book and it was her choice but sadly I just couldn't get on with it. Like the book and its author, my friend is Italian, and of course she read it in the original. I found the language and phraseology awkward, jarring and ultimately irritating as it stopped the flow. After mulling it over, I put that down to the translation.

It lead me to think of the problems of translating books, and how much the success of a book must depend upon how well it is translated. Harry Potter has been a phenomenal worldwide success, probably in more languages than I knew existed. I have read Stieg Larsson's Girl With a Dragon Tattoo, and two novels translated from German . First Bernhard Schlink's The Reader, and because I was so engaged by that book, second was Homecoming. Now I'm going to try another of his, Flights of Love, a collection of stories, and will certainly be finishing the Larsson trilogy as they're published.

Would I be doing this if the English translation had been as awkward as the Baricco? The resounding answer is NO! I apply my three chapter rule as I have so many books to read and not a long enough lifetime to read them all. I wonder how many wonderful books we miss out on because of the translation?

No translation problems with one books I've read recently - a teen novel by Ross Kemp, but thats another blog entry all on its own.