Current Reading
I saw the end of the movie 'The Secret Garden' on TV, and decided to read the book, which I've been seeing for several years at my local book store. I straggled over, but they had no copies available.
However, I decided not to pass up tempting tomes yet again, so I picked up a few books. These books cost about €1.25, or 17s3d each.
One was The Thirty Nine Steps, originally 10¢ in the US, or 6d in the UK. This is one of the very few books that was better after Hitchcock turned it into a movie. In the book, the steps are just steps leading down from (or up to) a villa in England. In the movie, Hitchcock made the steps into something much more sinister. In the book, the problem of the steps was posed to the narrator by a man. Another of Hitchcock's improvements was to have the problem posed by a beautiful femme fatale.
A second book was The Importance of Being Ernest. I had been unable to answer a question (I've forgotten what the question was) but the answer was 'Miss Prism.' I had seen the play (on TV) many years ago, but decided to get the script. After reading the script, I wouldn't mind seeing the play again.
The third was Sir Richard Burton's Arabian Nights as adapted by Jack Zipes. (I suppose Sir Richard did his 'translation' after Elizabeth Taylor left him.) I remembered reading and enjoying the Nights as a schoolboy. Sir Richard's version is quite different from what I read in school. It is also quite different from a fairly literal translation I saw in Al Ain. I'm afraid, after trying to read the literal translation, if I'd been the Sultan, I'd have had Scheherazade executed after the first night. Or possibly sooner. Zipe's version of Burton's version, on the other hand, has kept me up for several nights (not quite 1,000 yet), since I can't put it down. I understand Burton added several good stories to those actually found in the Arabic original, and Zipes left out the less entertaining ones. Zipes' adaptation changed some of the Victorianisms in Burton (e.g. Wazier to Vizier) and deleted a lot of the less compelling bits, but the bits Zipes keeps are mostly from Burton's original translation. In any case, it's a very entertaining book.
Arabia sounds like it had even more going for it at the time of the Nights than Dubai has now. Which is saying something.
However, I decided not to pass up tempting tomes yet again, so I picked up a few books. These books cost about €1.25, or 17s3d each.
One was The Thirty Nine Steps, originally 10¢ in the US, or 6d in the UK. This is one of the very few books that was better after Hitchcock turned it into a movie. In the book, the steps are just steps leading down from (or up to) a villa in England. In the movie, Hitchcock made the steps into something much more sinister. In the book, the problem of the steps was posed to the narrator by a man. Another of Hitchcock's improvements was to have the problem posed by a beautiful femme fatale.
A second book was The Importance of Being Ernest. I had been unable to answer a question (I've forgotten what the question was) but the answer was 'Miss Prism.' I had seen the play (on TV) many years ago, but decided to get the script. After reading the script, I wouldn't mind seeing the play again.
The third was Sir Richard Burton's Arabian Nights as adapted by Jack Zipes. (I suppose Sir Richard did his 'translation' after Elizabeth Taylor left him.) I remembered reading and enjoying the Nights as a schoolboy. Sir Richard's version is quite different from what I read in school. It is also quite different from a fairly literal translation I saw in Al Ain. I'm afraid, after trying to read the literal translation, if I'd been the Sultan, I'd have had Scheherazade executed after the first night. Or possibly sooner. Zipe's version of Burton's version, on the other hand, has kept me up for several nights (not quite 1,000 yet), since I can't put it down. I understand Burton added several good stories to those actually found in the Arabic original, and Zipes left out the less entertaining ones. Zipes' adaptation changed some of the Victorianisms in Burton (e.g. Wazier to Vizier) and deleted a lot of the less compelling bits, but the bits Zipes keeps are mostly from Burton's original translation. In any case, it's a very entertaining book.
Arabia sounds like it had even more going for it at the time of the Nights than Dubai has now. Which is saying something.
posted by Dubai@Random at 3:00 pm
1 Comments:
The full Sir Richard translation is well worth a read. Very racy in places, and great fun. I trust you're joking with the references to the alcoholic actor, though.
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