Books I'm excited to read!

Here's a list of books I am excited to read. For this topic, I've collaborated with the amazing @ToReadersItMayConcern
Don't forget to check out his video as well! ☕ He has a brilliant channel, and I am convinced you will enjoy his content.

0:00 - Counting The Days
0:24 - Book 1
1:24 - Book 2
2:28 - Book 3
3:45 - Book 4
4:55 - Book 5
5:53 - Book 6
6:41 - Book 7
7:55 - Join us!

Feel free to use our #countingthedays tag to create your own video. We'd love to see them.

🕯 You'll find links to my other platforms and the 📚 bookclub on my YouTube homepage. Make sure to subscribe to my monthly newsletter!

[ToReadersItMayConcern]

I'm so glad we did this one together! You nailed the selection here, with I, Claudius to start (such a strong start) and then each one that follows signaling a wonderful passion for books in all their various sentiments. How fantastic that we could pick such different titles, and yet these worlds within worlds are literary splendor all the same. (No problem about skipping comedy; that is a rare accomplishment for any book to actually be funny, and I'm not sure my choice actually fits the bill—I hear only rumors of its humorousness.)

[zamplify]

I am about 100 pages into Middlemarch. It is SO GOOD. The psychological depth is off the hook.

[marinepigneur]

Amazing selection of book! I may be late to the party, but for Dante I recommend the translation of John Ciardi (after buying 3 translations!) He made compromises on the rhyme system to get some more freedom on the translation and this changes a lot for me. I think Mandelbaum would also work for me, as I adore his translation of Ovid's metamorphoses! Hope this helps you a bit 😊

[davidmccalip]

Hello Emmelie! I hope all is well with you. What a pleasant surprise for a second video this week. I really enjoyed your thoughts and anticipated books to read, several of which I have already read. Your video content is always top notch and I look forward to your next video! Have a great weekend! 😀

[matthewwatts]

HI Emmelie. For a 'humorous' read, I can recommend Decline And Fall by Evelyn Waugh. It had me laugh out loud, which I did not expect.. So many wonderful characters, PS: Your channel is very special and unique. Thank you.

[binglamb]

Such great choices! I really enjoyed this video and it reminded me that I really want to read more French literature, in particular, Hugo, Balzac, and Zola. I have only read Les Miserables and The Hunchback of Notre Dame but Hugo wrote so much there is a lot to choose from. Happy reading!

[MaleniaArtHoarder]

Hi Emmelie! Just recently started watching your videos and I'm so glad to have found such a cozy nook on YouTube!
I'm leaving this comment to suggest a way to read the Divine Comedy, hoping that I'm not late on commenting. What I found very useful is to just go with one of those books that people use in school during classes when reading the Divine Comedy. My version is in Italian so I can't suggest it to you, but the idea would be to find a version made so that it contains all those elements (characters, places, rethorical figures, themes, ideologies, ...) that authors put in to help students in school. Hope this can help you in some way. Wish you all the best!

[HenryEdwards-msjm]

Very good selections! Here, is that a painting behind you I can't stop staring at

[ArthurKain]

The Divine Comedy is marvelous, currently savoring my journey through that one. Since I'm a good part Italian that grand epic is particularly special to me.

[TheLinguistsLibrary]

Ha! We both have Le Père Goriot on our TBR list. Loved this 🦄

[cesar_rojasbravo]

I have that same edition of I, Claudius ❤

[BookChatWithPat]

I enjoyed your responses very much. Ruben has tagged me on this one, so I will be working on it soon. This one is incredibly thought-provoking, and I am looking forward to doing it.

[ChaosandComics]

I also plan on reading Dante soon. I'm not sure how I'll read the other two parts, but for the Inferno, I'll definitely be putting up the money for the illuminated version from beehive books. Especially for something so dense.

I read parts of Inferno and Paradiso in high school two decades ago, and I probably wasn't ready for it, but I remember having the feeling that it was great.

[apoetreadstowrite]

Just discovered you via Rueben, very enjoyable, such considered & far-ranging discourse. 'Daniel Deronda' (her 'Jewish' novel is probably my favourite Eliot, but 'Middlemarch' is obviously the classic. Yes, apparently 'George' was the only grownup in Woolf's very exclusive array - incredible thing to think about, isn't it? I look forward to following your adventures with books & ideas.

[michaelmasiello]

Hi! Love your channel. I’m here with Dante recommendations. First of all, it is really essential to have a facing-page translation. You likely have background in Romance languages already; you can learn to read Dante by moving from translation to original. I recommend this because the music of the Commedia is indescribable and untranslatable. The Paradiso, which people who read it in translation sometimes deem boring, is perhaps the most extraordinary sustained explosion of poetic energy I have ever encountered. Dante is constantly coining words for things the human mind cannot directly comprehend. Take, for example, “s’inluia”: Dante is talking about how we are “in-Himmed, ” drawn into unity with the godhead. Read slowly and let the poem teach you its language from yours.

I can recommend two great translations in English. In verse, Robert and Jean Hollander’s translation seems to me as perfect as one can get. In prose, John Sinclair—the literal sense is conveyed perfectly (but the sheer magic of the Italian is gone). I also recommend reading some companion volumes. For example, Charles Singleton’s three-volume commentary on the poem will enrich your experience of its complexities and depths immensely. Prue Shaw wrote a lovely introduction to Dante and his poem called, blandly enough, *Reading Dante*; it’s a lovely book and very instructive. For the Paradiso in particular, I recommend reading *The Metaphysics of Dante’s Comedy* by Christian Moevs. It will blow your mind.

Don’t be daunted by Dante. Like Shakespeare, he is inexhaustible and rewards rereading over a lifetime. And also like Shakespeare, he is as great a poet as has ever lived. He will find you wherever you are and enlarge you—and he will do this anew every time. A wonder of the world. I envy you the chance to read him for the first time.

But to emphasize the importance of going slow and learning to read the original, I want to give you an inspirational example. In hell, Dante and Virgil are repeatedly stopped by demonic gatekeepers. They are stopped because Dante is alive and does not belong in the eternal realms of the afterlife. Virgil has been given a “word of power” to say. But God and Christ are not directly named in that awful place; time is told by the moon, not the sun. So this password is oblique.

In English it hobbles: “it is so willed where will and power are the same, so ask no more questions.” God’s will is enacted instantly; it is in him that to will and execute are identical. But this version hardly sounds like it would scare a demonic power.

In Dante, of course, it sounds like a magic spell. Listen the the o sounds, the alliteration on c and v and p and d, the almost circular phonetics of the original:

Vuolsi così colà dove si puote
ciò che si vuole, e più non dimandare.

There, in what Dante called the harsh, clucking poetics of the ugliest canticle, is a base-level distinction between limping translation and the effortless sublimity of the poem itself. Learning to read Dante was one of the great joys of my life; I wish you the same joy.

Thanks for this lovely video.

[csabrendeki]

Glad to see the Divine Comedy on your list! As for translations... that's a hard one. Namely, is it better to go gor a really faithful and accurate one, but one that can't communicate the poetic qualities of the work, or for a poetic one, but one that is maybe not so faithful, or for one that is aware that translating this work can never be faithful enough, so goes the opposite direction and tries to recreate the work, a new literary work in it's own right.
From the first category I would recommend the Hollander translation. It's very accurate but easy to read.
Another good one from this category is the Mandelbaum translation (Everyman's Library), very accurate but also quite beautifully written.
And the Sisson translation (Oxford Classics) deserves a mention too. I used it often to help me understand passages with great succes, but as a whole I found it a bit dense and not so easy to read.
From the second category I would choose the Steve Ellis translation (Vintage Classics). It's also an easy read, the flow of the language is perfect imo, and it really underlines the humor of Dante it's a lot of fun.
Another great one is the often overlooked translation by Peter Dale. He is quite a genius by staying very close to the meaning of the original and employing an understandable, modern, but also poetic language.
And for the third category (which I prefer) I would recommend the "englished" version of Alasdair Gray. He shortens Dante by a lot, but is cery close to his spirit but also makes the Divine Comedy very much contemporary, that it impacts you right now. Reading it feels like you would've felt reading the original in the 1300s.
Also worth checking out the yet unfinished translation of Mary Jo Bang. It belongs to this 3rd category and is the most irreverent translation ever, but quite fun.

[jennyyeh]

John Ciardi is the translation we had during school for Dante !! One of my favorite reads

[paulhammond]

If you enjoyed other Hardy books, you'll have a good time with Madding Crowd - it is one of his more famous titles, and one of his best. I Claudius is a brilliant read, and there is also an excellent adaptation of the book as a TV series from the 1970s, with Derek Jacobi as Claudius and Brian Blessed in one of his best roles as Augustus.

[BookZealots]

Your edition of Far from the Madding Crowd is pretty. I hope you enjoy it. I'm curious to know how you will feel with the ending. Which book do you choose for sense of humour?

[stephaniem]

I read Divine Comedy earlier this year. I borrowed the Everyman's Library one, translated by Allen Mandelbaum, from my library. Notes by Peter Armour. I didn't have much trouble understanding it. I took my time and read the notes. The notes are extremely helpful. So many old Roman, mythological, and biblical references. I loved Inferno. Purgatorio was okay. Paradiso was a big disappointment for me. I hope you enjoy it!