Russian V cover

[Jamie McKittrick]

When I was young I read an Abridged Classics version of Great Expectations
without realising it was basically a chapter-by-chapter plot summary. It
was about the same width as a slice of toast, and about as challenging to
read. For years I was going around chuffed with myself for having dominated
such a mammoth of literature at the tender age of 8.

Needless to say I was confused, then embarrassed and downright angered when
I saw the actual version was about as big as a loaf. To this day when
people ask if I've ever read it I just say yes to save myself the trouble.

"Mrs Havasham was an old woman in a white dress in a big room. She was very
sad. Pip was scared when he saw her but he knew everything would be alright
one day."

Sorry, I felt this was as good a place as any to get that off my chest.


On Fri, Jun 13, 2014 at 2:33 PM, Max Nemtsov <max.nemtsov at gmail.com> wrote:

> stand corrected )) "in russia"
> they still consider it "a difficult read", even older readers.
> a-and i applaud your daughter, Kai. what i said doesn't mean there aren't
> any precocious readers at all. i don't think, personally, there's any harm
> in reading TRP at, say, fifteen (before it might still be kinda boring),
> but, apparently, not everyone in russia shares this point of view
>
>
> On 13.06.2014 15:20, Kai Frederik Lorentzen wrote:
>
>>
>>
>> > the age marker (to be read only after you're 18 years of age; i don't
>> have a problem with that for i can't imagine anyone reading TRP _before_
>> this age anyway) <
>>
>> My daughter, who read "Moby-Dick" in translation before she was ten, had
>> her first TRP with twelve. Of "Vineland" and "Against the Day" she read
>> about 150 pages in German. She liked it but realized the limits of her
>> understanding. Four years later, when she spent a school year in Estonia,
>> she picked up a copy of the original "Vineland" in a Tallinn bookstore,
>> started to read and finished it in between days with enthusiasm. It was her
>> breakthrough to American literature in original. Now she plans to study
>> English (along with history). This morning she came back from her last
>> class trip which had led her to Dublin. And you know what she brought home
>> with her? A copy of "Ulysses"! Of course we have one in the house, but she
>> wants to have her own.
>> It's not bad not to understand everything as a young reader. Me I
>> profited a lot from my juvenile misreadings.
>>
>> On 13.06.2014 10:25, Max Nemtsov wrote:
>>
>>> this is how it will look like: http://spintongues.wordpress.
>>> com/2014/06/13/pearls-after/
>>> sorry for the poor quality but you've got the idea
>>>
>>> the gray stamp in the lower left corner is the censorship stamp that is
>>> demanded by the new russian anti-bad-words law: apart from the age marker
>>> (to be read only after you're 18 years of age; i don't have a problem with
>>> that for i can't imagine anyone reading TRP _before_ this age anyway), it
>>> should (by law) now contain the inscription "Contains Unprintable Abuse"
>>> (something like this, for the russian state duma, as everyone knows by now,
>>> is comprised of clinical idiots who can't distinguish between obscene
>>> words, explicit lyrics, foul language and, well, abuse). to the credit of
>>> the publisher, they designed the stamp in such manner that it reads rather
>>> Yoda-like: Abuse Contains (upside down) Unprintable
>>>
>>> and yes, it must be sold sealed in cellophane
>>>
>>> from your beleaguered translator
>>> Mx
>>> -
>>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
> -
> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>
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