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recent reading
Sep. 30th, 2006 04:25 pmThe Ig Nobel Prizes 2 - I doubt I need to say much about this one; either one's sense of humor runs to science practical jokes, or it doesn't. Mine does.
The "Golden Hamster Saga" - a series of children's books about Freddy, a literate golden hamster. The author, Dietlof Reiche, is German; the translations into English are excellent - nicely idiomatic American English; most people would never suspect that the books weren't set somewhere in the US in the first place if they didn't happen to know, for example, that there are no hamsters native to the New World, and that field hamsters occur only in Europe/Asia (from the third book, Freddy to the Rescue.) The first book is I, Freddy, wherein we meet Freddy, he learns to read, and finally gets adopted into a home that has a computer keyboard sensitive enough that a golden hamster can type on it. (Shades of Archie and Mehitabel!) The other pets in the household are Sir William the cat, and Enrico and Caruso, a pair of guinea pigs who fancy themselves the successors to Gilbert & Sullivan. How could I resist a set-up like that? Anyway, the library didn't have the second volume on the shelves, so I've only read the first, third and fourth volumes. I don't think the fifth volume is in print over here yet. I liked these enough that, since I read German well enough to read kids' books (though my ability to produce a grammatically organized sentence when speaking is minimal), I am going to go hunting on BookCrossing to see if someone has these in the original German to trade.
Other stuff: went to Baltimore Symphony concert last night. Mediocre "Kindentotenlieder," fantastic Shostakovich 5. (My favorite Shostakovich symphony anyway!) While there, crocheted 7 pairs of little pink triangles for use in kitty ears on kitty ear hats.
That's the news from Baltimore!
The "Golden Hamster Saga" - a series of children's books about Freddy, a literate golden hamster. The author, Dietlof Reiche, is German; the translations into English are excellent - nicely idiomatic American English; most people would never suspect that the books weren't set somewhere in the US in the first place if they didn't happen to know, for example, that there are no hamsters native to the New World, and that field hamsters occur only in Europe/Asia (from the third book, Freddy to the Rescue.) The first book is I, Freddy, wherein we meet Freddy, he learns to read, and finally gets adopted into a home that has a computer keyboard sensitive enough that a golden hamster can type on it. (Shades of Archie and Mehitabel!) The other pets in the household are Sir William the cat, and Enrico and Caruso, a pair of guinea pigs who fancy themselves the successors to Gilbert & Sullivan. How could I resist a set-up like that? Anyway, the library didn't have the second volume on the shelves, so I've only read the first, third and fourth volumes. I don't think the fifth volume is in print over here yet. I liked these enough that, since I read German well enough to read kids' books (though my ability to produce a grammatically organized sentence when speaking is minimal), I am going to go hunting on BookCrossing to see if someone has these in the original German to trade.
Other stuff: went to Baltimore Symphony concert last night. Mediocre "Kindentotenlieder," fantastic Shostakovich 5. (My favorite Shostakovich symphony anyway!) While there, crocheted 7 pairs of little pink triangles for use in kitty ears on kitty ear hats.
That's the news from Baltimore!
