The Misadventures of A Book Club

     While seemingly a good idea, creating and managing a book club proved to be as difficult as opening a can of pâté with a broken can-opener. Why, one would ask and I would not be able to give him a specific answer but more of an outline of the pâté. And what a pâté it would be!

      But comparing a book club to food is just not right, unless we include all the existing dishes and that would be pretty much waste of time, because I’m not knowledgeable in both fields and could end up comparing a star fruit to 50 Shades of Grey. But comparison is not really important and metaphors get really useless when you have a book club. Books are serious *stuff*, no kidding! So I wanted to share the joyful story of how we decided to have a book club. 

~One rainy night after a difficult exam~ 

      It’s 4am. 10 students sit in a small and dark apartment, due to the fact that the bulb in the room blew up a few hours ago but fortunately two candles and one flash-light were enough to see the remaining bottles of beer. Furthermore the candles immensely helped in locating the last package of chips. After drinking some litters of some number of bottles of some kinds of alcohol, the students decided that it is time for Shakespeare.

      At 4am. Shakespeare… After drinking all night long… No, that’s neither a joke, nor a lie. It’s more of those comical situations that occur once in a lifetime and you are not really certain what the hell had happened but whatever it was, it sure sounds sophisticated as fuck. Actually arguing about the notion of “read” was quite fascinating. As a translator by profession and slightly more by heart, I took the liberty to sit and relax, while listening to what my new colleagues form completely different departments and interests had to say about the whole idea of translating books. Indeed fascinating as apparently some completely disagreed that you can say you read a book unless it was in the original language. Why? But of course, it was due to the all these reasons like change of style, word choice, colloquial expressions…blab la…bla.. The author puts his soul into the book and then the translator ruins it all for the reader. Ah, the joys of being a reader and not the one translating the book! And the never ending problem of: “how should we translate this to keep the meaning but not change the words too much and somehow incorporate it into our culture so it touches the heart of the reader”. Let’s not discuss the difficult life of the person pondering over these questions. Although…remember the poor girl that everyone blamed for that particular Bulgarian translation of that particular Discworld book? Well, yes, can you possibly imagine how she felt when ALL fans labelled her the worst translator of all time without even knowing her situation? But who cares about copyrights, let’s blame the translator! Being familiar with both sides of the problem, I can conclude – unless you can do a better job, shut up!

      Thus, the night (or morning, depending on the perception but I say it’s not “morning” unless I go to bed and then wake up) went on while discussing if you can say you “read” a book if you read its translated version. Translators put their soul into the work too, but that changes the book. It’s as if it  now has a co-author. And I agree. But is that bad? Have you ever read Shakespeare in original? Yes? Now, if you can read Bulgarian I suggest you read Hamlet translated by Geo Milev. Because, honestly, this is one of the best things I’ve ever read in my life. Now is it Shakespeare that made me love his works or was it the translator that this such an amazing job of translating his works, making them understandable for me and even a lot more poetic than I found the original to be. You see, it really has something to do with cultural differences. So why say we cannot say we read something unless we read it in the original language? Is it something to do with the message of the book, as I’m pretty sure all translators do their very best to keep that message. Now we can’t say that for sure, being constructivists, such conclusion would not be appropriate. But the notion of “reading something” should be narrowed down to the idea that you are reading something and you get a general feeling, idea and moral of the story. Or in some cases no moral. Actually, in most cases.

      We argued how the feeling changes when the book is translated but the general notion and idea remain. At least for me. It is just the way of conveying the words that changes. But let’s take for example books written in languages that we do not understand. Can I read Italian? Or Latin? Or Vietnamese? No. According to the idea my colleagues had, I was not supposed to read them or, to be more precise, to say I’ve read them as I never did so in the original language. Well, then what did I read? Air?

      But I never told them how I feel regarding this matter. I sat quietly while they were discussing out loud the pros and cons of a translated book. And I felt sad. The decisions between buying the book translated in your own language and the original (if you can read it) is really hard. Take for example Terry Pratchett’s series about Tiffany. Well now, I can’t possibly decide if the original or the translation with Bulgarian slang expressions is more hilarious. I mean… They both are hilarious in a completely different and yet similar way.

      And this is how you realize that only when you read the original you start to appreciate the translation.

      So did I read this book? I guess I have. Because I have seen both sides of the coin, haven’t I? This is how I felt that night. And this is how our book club came to exist. Because we could not decide on what “reading” a book is. We could have been looking for something in common. But can books connect people? One would think “of course”. You know, readers can sniff each other, like animals. Books of a feather shelve together.

      So how the hell can this go wrong?

      Well…It went horribly wrong! While it is fine to have a "sophisticated" conversation about Romeo and Juliet around 4am, it appears that the lack of sufficient quantity of alcohol does not help people think better and reach a conclusion. While we all decided to read books in English for the sake of the common good, you know – better command of written and spoken language due to larger vocabulary; knowledge regarding literature and authors which enhances ones culture and etc. But why does one need a club in order to “force” himself read?! But maybe this is not the problem. Maybe we need some sort of sense of achievement.

      This is most certainly caused by our number-driven lives. You need a number when you are born, one when you get in school where they give you numbers that indicate your knowledge. Then you get numbers that buy you cloths and other things. Then you get numbers in exchange for your work. Your social life is numbers literally and not. How many social networks do you follow? And how many friends/followers do you have? How many films have you seen? And how many books have you read? Numbers here, numbers there – numbers are just everywhere. We compare ourselves by means of numbers and feel sad when the numbers are lower than those of someone else. Rings a bell? Why is achievement measured and counted in numbers? Why is our sense of accomplishment, self-esteem, whatever you want to call it, being destroyed by fake numbers?

      Now going back to the notion of “read”, why don’t we discuss it in sheer numbers? Have you read this book or not? I have read it – I have the number! You can’t say you read it! You are inferior! It does sound like that, more or less. It really depends on how much you believe in the good side of humans.

      So how much do I believe in our book club? Too much to admit it, I guess. So much that is starting to get really sad. By this point and time, discussing a book with someone is starting to be “out of question”. We are so number-centred that enjoyment is also out of the question. We have no time to understand, no time to discuss. Time means more numbers and therefore we cannot waste it to chit-chat about what the main hero in this book did on page 140. So does one crave for the narrative or the number? Tricky question, heh! Why not both!?

      So how much do I believe we can manage it? A lot. But we shall see. One can never know when humans are involved. And I do take it too seriously. My own idea about reading being a hobby for the elite is just doing me a bad favour. Again. As always. When will I learn that this is not the case and dividing people into “those who read” and “idiots” is not really how life works? But we are all humans and therefore not flawless. On the contrary, let’s be happy that we are not fair with each other as now we can enjoy our numbers with such passion unknown to those who live in perfection.

      So we are reading now. We got our viable reason to read, more or less. And we got our books up! I mean down, we are reading after all. Will this work out? We shall see after we read our first book and I update more misadventures and philosophical interpretations of books, life, death and what is between them.:)