Before moving to different countries, the author read local literature to gain a deeper understanding of each culture. This approach enhanced their experiences in Thailand, Germany, and China, revealing insights beyond surface-level knowledge. The author emphasizes that thorough research while writing builds trust with clients and improves the quality of the work produced.
When you read a translation, you notice the seams. A slightly unnatural phrase catches your eye. A sentence that feels too American for a Japanese novel makes you pause. A word choice that seems odd forces you to reread. As you’re reading, you’re watching someone work. That awareness is the core skill of copyediting. You […]
A translator sits with a sentence in Korean, Japanese, or Italian and faces a hundred possible English versions. One is literal. One captures the rhythm. One preserves the emotional weight. The translator cannot have all three so a choice has to be made. Deborah Smith, who translated Han Kang‘s The Vegetarian and Human Acts, faced this constantly. A […]
James Joyce does things with punctuation that should not work. Long stretches of prose with no periods. Sentences that start without capitals. Dialogue that runs into narration without quotation marks. A copyeditor would have a heart attack. The writing works. The punctuation choices make it work. The Breathlessness of No Periods Near the end of Ulysses, […]
I have a complicated relationship with The Catcher in the Rye. I read it at seventeen, the right age, and I found Holden Caulfield insufferable. I read it again at thirty, and I found him heartbreaking. But one thing has not changed across either reading. He is right about the phonies. Holden hates anyone who performs. […]
I first read Fahrenheit 451 as a teenager and understood it as a book about censorship. The government burned books. That was the horror. But I reread it recently while watching the internet fill with AI-generated listicles, formulaic content, and brands shouting into a void, and I realized I had missed the point. Bradbury was not only […]
I have a tattoo on my hand. It is a small asterisk, the kind you might see at the bottom of a page pointing to a footnote. Most people do not notice it. The ones who do usually ask if it is a star. I tell them it is a reminder. Kurt Vonnegut started his […]
So I’ve never done this before, spotlighting a single author’s work. There’s not often when I come across an author, I immediately need to rush through their whole bibliography. Also, if something like that happens, it’s not often that the author doesn’t seem to be read or even known by many readers. That last sentence […]
If you follow me on any social media platforms, you might have seen the big news. Halie and I are moving to Bangkok this summer!! I’m really excited to move to a new country and experience a different culture and be immersed in a different language. But to prepare myself for this, I wanted to conduct […]
Here it is! The final 100 Greatest Novels post! Can you believe it? I can’t. These last four novels bring us to the final. I posted the blog introducing this idea almost 4 years ago. We completed the first novel, Ulysses, and posted the blog in August 2012. We finished the first 50 books with […]