встретила хороший пример, смотрите how lovely, в русском руки и ноги немеют, а в английском засыпают 😴
“All my joints complain and my left leg has been asleep for so long that it takes several minutes of pacing to bring the feeling back into it.”
*а тут ещё и суставы жалуются*
“All my joints complain and my left leg has been asleep for so long that it takes several minutes of pacing to bring the feeling back into it.”
*а тут ещё и суставы жалуются*
Jesse Jarldane tips on enjoying your May holidays (and basically any other day)
🔥4😁1
I thought I might just start sharing my book reviews here in English as well, and there’s a discussable book I’ve read recently - Michel Houellebecq’s “Submission”
This book caused a huge stir across Europe — its release coincided with that infamous issue of Charlie Hebdo, and the attack on the magazine. I’d been meaning to read it for ages, and we finally tackled it in our book club. We ended up talking for three hours straight — even the smokers barely stepped out for a break.
I’d read that it had been compared to 1984, and I found myself wondering: is that comparison really justified?
At first, it seems almost absurd. How can you compare Orwell’s tragic dystopia with something that feels so… muted? But the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. Orwell’s protagonist is horrified by what’s happening — terrified of betraying himself and the woman he loves, frightened by how his mind is being twisted. Houellebecq’s protagonist, on the other hand — an average representative of the liberal intelligentsia — reacts far more calmly. As long as his way of life isn’t seriously disrupted — as long as there’s good food, women, and a place to give his lectures — corpses at gas stations, a change of regime, a shift in religion, or women being pushed out of universities… all that somehow fades into the background. It might even seem, bizarrely, like a promising new order.
And then you start to wonder: how far can things go when Orwell’s protagonist gets replaced by Houellebecq’s? (And were they ever really different people?) (I do think both types exist. But the warning about the intellectual elite rings true — not all professors are equally useful.)
I also came across a new word: identitarianism. (Not a pleasant concept, but still — good to know.)
Toward the end, the protagonist mentions another book, saying it had all the things he usually hates: blatantly displayed sexual fantasies and a whiff of smug kitsch — I really hope that’s Houellebecq making fun of himself.
Also fascinating: how the covers vary in each country, e.g. compare the Russian and Hungarian editions
This book caused a huge stir across Europe — its release coincided with that infamous issue of Charlie Hebdo, and the attack on the magazine. I’d been meaning to read it for ages, and we finally tackled it in our book club. We ended up talking for three hours straight — even the smokers barely stepped out for a break.
I’d read that it had been compared to 1984, and I found myself wondering: is that comparison really justified?
At first, it seems almost absurd. How can you compare Orwell’s tragic dystopia with something that feels so… muted? But the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. Orwell’s protagonist is horrified by what’s happening — terrified of betraying himself and the woman he loves, frightened by how his mind is being twisted. Houellebecq’s protagonist, on the other hand — an average representative of the liberal intelligentsia — reacts far more calmly. As long as his way of life isn’t seriously disrupted — as long as there’s good food, women, and a place to give his lectures — corpses at gas stations, a change of regime, a shift in religion, or women being pushed out of universities… all that somehow fades into the background. It might even seem, bizarrely, like a promising new order.
And then you start to wonder: how far can things go when Orwell’s protagonist gets replaced by Houellebecq’s? (And were they ever really different people?) (I do think both types exist. But the warning about the intellectual elite rings true — not all professors are equally useful.)
I also came across a new word: identitarianism. (Not a pleasant concept, but still — good to know.)
Toward the end, the protagonist mentions another book, saying it had all the things he usually hates: blatantly displayed sexual fantasies and a whiff of smug kitsch — I really hope that’s Houellebecq making fun of himself.
Also fascinating: how the covers vary in each country, e.g. compare the Russian and Hungarian editions
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