Book FanCarroting Award
I’ve been tagged by the French book blogger Bookmaniac for this little Book FanCarroting Award invented by another blogger, Le Roi Carotte. I thought the questions were intriguing, so, here we go…
Which book would you like to see re-written by your favourite writer?
I’m going to answer a bit differently. I wish Philip Roth wrote the sequel to White Dog by Romain Gary. It would be a heck of a book.
What release do you wait impatiently?
New translations of classic Noir like Chandler, Himes…The old translations are incomplete, full of outdated slang and they really don’t do justice to the original. I’ve written about this here.
If you had a less-than-15-words sentence to say to your favourite writer, what would be?
If Romain Gary were alive and in front of me, I’d say “You changed my life”.
To what places described in a book would you like to go?
Almost all the books I love make me want to visit the places they describe unless they’re awful places, like a concentration camp, a hellish jungle or that village in Herta Müller’s book. Well you get the drift. Yes, I’ve been to places solely or partly because of books. Budapest. London. Vienna. Dublin. New York and other places in the USA. To Proust’s Cabourg. To Hardy’s Dorchester. To Shakespeare’s Elsinor. I want to go to the Lake District. To Stratford-Upon-Avon. To Cornwall. To the Hamptons. To Jim Harrison’s Michigan and Upper Peninsula. To Craig Johnson’s Wyoming. To Didion’s Sacramento. To Boston. To New Orleans. I want to go to Awad’s Lebanon. To Louise Penny’s Québec. To Cicero’s Sicily. To Mahfouz’s Cairo. To Moscow and St Petersburg. To Gary’s Vilnius. And to Melbourne to meet Lisa…
The list is endless due to my bottomless curiosity. Some of these visits are filed under the category Literary Escapades.
Please describe your literary paradise.
It would be a world where I have Hermione’s wonderful clock that allows you to relive your day. First I’d go to work and take care of my family. Then I’d rewind the clock and start by reading and blogging day. This second day would be spent in my fantastic library in a Haussmanian appartment with high ceilings, wooden floors and mouldings. Bookshelfs everywhere, a ladder to get the books on the top shelves. A big fire place, comfortable armchairs and a samovar. *swoon*
Then I’m supposed to tag three other bloggers. Instead of doing that, I’ll point out to Bookmaniac a blogger with similar tastes, Tony from Tony’s Reading List and that would be for his love of Japanese literature.
Book Around the Corner 
I don’t think that there’s anywhere I’d like to go that I’ve read about. I’d rather just read
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I like to do both.
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*blush* I am so delighted to be included in your bucket list, Emma:) I would so love to take you round all the lovely places in my city, starting with our famous state library… the reading room may just possibly tempt you to change your idea of a reading paradise.
But book your ticket for any time but summer, I think you would find it too hot…
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I heard the best time is November and I can’t be on holiday at that time of the year. Visiting Australia will have to wait…unless I come during your winter.
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Pretty answers to these issues, I think i ‘ll add Romain Gary to my next reading. I appreciate your literary paradise 🙂
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Start with La Promesse de l’aube or La vie devant soi.
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I read them a long time ago, I must dig out to find them in my library 🙂
Next to be read
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Looking forward to your review.
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I’m surprised to hear about the translation issues with Chandler’s oeuvre, especially given his reputation as a writer. How frustrating! Didion’s Run River left me keen to visit Sacramento, too. She writes beautifully about the different regions in California.
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Not all Chandler is badly translated, some are translated by Boris Vian.
I’m lucky I can read them in English but not everyone here can read the original.
You definitely want to go to California after reading Didion.
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I’d rather like to live in the far future Culture written about in Iain Banks’ novels, but only because it would basically be a utopia from our perspective. Otherwise most novels take place in circumstances it wouldn’t be ideal to live in.
The first question’s a bit odd. Why would one want a book rewritten by someone who wasn’t its original author?
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The thought of answering this with a universe existing in a SF novel never occurred to me, although it’s a great idea. I guess it says something about me.
The question was about places to visit, not to live in the same circumstances as in the novel. When a novel is deeply rooted in a place, I get curious.
I don’t this it’s an odd question. Did it ever occur to you to read a book, to like the scenario behind the story but to think it would have been better if it had been written by someone else? It happened to me when I read Quo Vadis. I would have loved to read that story written by Alexandre Dumas.
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I think it just says that I read science fiction and you don’t to be honest. Good point re place to visit, if I can combine it with time we start getting 1920s New York, 1940s California, 1910s Vienna, 1920s Paris and for that matter 1890s Paris. Plus, if it’s just a visit, Republican era Rome (I’ve read novels set there), but I’d want to have a sure and quick exit on that last one…
I see what you mean re the question. Basically all of Dickens rewritten by Edgar Rice Burroughs. The books would be a fifth the size and Oliver Twist’s good character would inspire Fagin who would then flatten Bill Sykes with a well timed right fist and win Nancy’s heart. Fagin and Nancy could then adopt Oliver in time for the happy ending. The more I think about it, the more fun that sounds.
Admittedly, I’m not a huge Dickens fan…
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See, you’ve found places you’d like to visit AND a book you’d like re-written. 🙂 I’d like to see Paris in the 1950s too. No going back in time to see how London was in the 19th century?
Your idea of Oliver Twist sounds fun. Full of twists and turns, if I might say so.
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