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[beebooks]

they've been there for five years? how old are celie's kids by now, if they were two when she married, and then the long list of events above transpired, and THEN another five years

i should just give up on trying to understand. literally this would all have been fixed if nettie didn't see sofia with the mayor's wife. unless that wasn't sofia and we are going to learn it's a reoccurring issue

reading the color purple and it's pretty nice so far. i mean it's not always a pleasant read, but the writing style is easy and matter-of-factly, and the main character is interesting. i really like sofia(Very pleased when harpo came back with bruises and cuts on his face) and i liked nettie though i don't know if i'm gonna be seeing any more of her

haven't really met shug avery yet but i think that's soon

[beebooks]

i don't really understand the timeline of nettie's letters (hello btw welcome back to the narrative) i assumed the first letters would've been from years ago, but she almost immediately references sofia being the mayor's wife's maid, meaning either celie is missing a bunch of letters, or nettie stayed with corrine and samuel for years and years, long enough for sofia and harpo to get married, have five kids, get seperated, sofia to get a boyfriend, get a sixth child, reunite with celie and her family, and then get arrested and be in jail and then get taken on as a maid, all before writing another letter to celie. and now she's spending a long time in africa and that's all supposed to have happened since sofia started as a maid, and i don't know how long that's been because i'm never given any years or dates for any of this. which isn't a plot hole so to speak, it makes sense that celie maybe doesn't keep track of the dates of things, but it means i don't have any real sense of how much time passes, and that makes lining up events like this very confusing

reading the color purple and it's pretty nice so far. i mean it's not always a pleasant read, but the writing style is easy and matter-of-factly, and the main character is interesting. i really like sofia(Very pleased when harpo came back with bruises and cuts on his face) and i liked nettie though i don't know if i'm gonna be seeing any more of her

haven't really met shug avery yet but i think that's soon

[beebooks]

shug avery what an icon. get it girl

reading the color purple and it's pretty nice so far. i mean it's not always a pleasant read, but the writing style is easy and matter-of-factly, and the main character is interesting. i really like sofia(Very pleased when harpo came back with bruises and cuts on his face) and i liked nettie though i don't know if i'm gonna be seeing any more of her

haven't really met shug avery yet but i think that's soon

[beebooks]

the author writes the characters really well. all the women feel distinct and interesting, loveable to an extent, all in their own way. the men suck but in a distinctly human way. few of the men feel like the caricatures you sometimes get when "men suck" is a big part of the narrative, instead they have their moments, they have their own relationships with their fathers that inform how they treat other men and how they treat women

[beebooks]

reading the color purple and it's pretty nice so far. i mean it's not always a pleasant read, but the writing style is easy and matter-of-factly, and the main character is interesting. i really like sofia(Very pleased when harpo came back with bruises and cuts on his face) and i liked nettie though i don't know if i'm gonna be seeing any more of her

haven't really met shug avery yet but i think that's soon

[beebooks]

i never used to read two books at once before and i didn't understand people who did and said they read more when they did, but man i kinda get it now. i don't know if i read mote, at least not significantly so, but it's fun to have two books on the go. books from different categories usually, or at least not two novels at the same time. a poetry book and a novel or nonfiction is good fun. currently i'm reading a novel and an anthology, and the anthology is over 800pgs so that's gonna be my secondary book for a while now

[beebooks]

flipping through the contents pages, and like i did know this anthology was 800+ pages, but tell me why the entirety of carmilla is included in it. maybe there's more full length novellas that i missed here but from what i can tell it's mostly poems and experts of the relevant parts. maybe just all of carmilla is relevant

am i gonna read all of carmilla again, well, yeah i guess i am. and i guess i don't need to buy a copy of it either, i seem to have accidentally done so already

[beebooks]

[beebooks]

ordered my fourth translation of sappho yay✨ yippie✨ and under such exclamations

[beebooks]

[beebooks]

unexpectedly fucked up the graphic

i was looking forward to seeing a delicious spread of bubbles in the pre 2000s in 2024 but no fuck me i guess i read some sappho and we gotta chuck her down in -600 and push everything else up top

feel like we should be able to write her off as an anomaly and just have a little arrow pointing down because now this statistic isn't good for anything except comedic effect

[beebooks]

a quick look through the book again and mary barnard has taken her fragments from edmonds' lyra graeca from 1922 and 1928 which does explain and excuse the confusion in numbering, it's just a personal annoyance for me, and anyone else who wants to compare several translations easily, but i can't fault her for that i guess 🙄

mary barnard's translation not including the lobel & page fragment numbering is very annoying to me because it makes it hard to look up the poems to compare with the other books, so i'm happy josephine balmer included a key

[beebooks]

as for the other parts of the books, that is to say footnotes and introductions, i think i prefer josephine balmer's, though i am aware i am not immune to recency bias. maybe there was just more of it, and maybe it was also a case of lesbian bias (maybe i want to hear about sappho's love of women anne carson, no let's not just leave it at that) but anne carson had pretty good footnotes too

which translation do i prefer though? hard to say still. to begin with, and i believe i've expressed this before, i didn't always see the point in including the originals alongside the translation in if not winter, but having read some more now, i kinda get it. the choice to leave in space where there is text missing i've also grown a bit more fond of. at times, yes, it felt like a pretentious annoyance, but without it i'm left wondering where the translator has added and shuffled things to make the poem read more coherent and to cover over what is gone

mary barnard's translation takes the path of making "completed" poems out of every fragment she includes, but when i know the fragments are rarely that complete it makes me wonder where the gaps that have been covered over are

josephine balmer strikes a bit of a middle ground by having the poems read more naturally and complete than a lot of anne carson's while putting her "additions" or conjectures in brackets so the reader knows what is actually present in the fragments and what is the author taking poetic liberties

alll comes down to what the various translators aim to do and what the readers want. anne carson has included all fragments, even if all you can make out is a single word, while the other two have chosen to include more complete fragments and quotes and then tried to capture the essence and intentions of sappho in how they format the poems

each to their own, and there's certainly a lot to gain from the different translations

[beebooks]

which translation do i prefer though? hard to say still. to begin with, and i believe i've expressed this before, i didn't always see the point in including the originals alongside the translation in if not winter, but having read some more now, i kinda get it. the choice to leave in space where there is text missing i've also grown a bit more fond of. at times, yes, it felt like a pretentious annoyance, but without it i'm left wondering where the translator has added and shuffled things to make the poem read more coherent and to cover over what is gone

mary barnard's translation takes the path of making "completed" poems out of every fragment she includes, but when i know the fragments are rarely that complete it makes me wonder where the gaps that have been covered over are

josephine balmer strikes a bit of a middle ground by having the poems read more naturally and complete than a lot of anne carson's while putting her "additions" or conjectures in brackets so the reader knows what is actually present in the fragments and what is the author taking poetic liberties

alll comes down to what the various translators aim to do and what the readers want. anne carson has included all fragments, even if all you can make out is a single word, while the other two have chosen to include more complete fragments and quotes and then tried to capture the essence and intentions of sappho in how they format the poems

each to their own, and there's certainly a lot to gain from the different translations

[beebooks]

normal times, regular behavior

[beebooks]

hmm though i suppose her translation was first published (at least from what the copy i own claims) in 1958 and the lobel & page edition came out in 1955, so maybe it's just that she didn't see any reason to adopt their numbering. still, if my scholars could please agree on a numerical system so as to make my life easier, that would be much appreciated

mary barnard's translation not including the lobel & page fragment numbering is very annoying to me because it makes it hard to look up the poems to compare with the other books, so i'm happy josephine balmer included a key

[beebooks]

mary barnard's translation not including the lobel & page fragment numbering is very annoying to me because it makes it hard to look up the poems to compare with the other books, so i'm happy josephine balmer included a key