What's wrong with me? This week I've borrowed no less than two, that is 2, novels translated into Finnish from English!! LOL :) Yes, I'm joking :), but I do usually try to read books written in English in the original language. All of a sudden I felt, however, that I would like to read more in my mother tongue and, well, that is in fact a very good thing. I often feel I read too little in Finnish. I do have a couple of books by Finnish writers waiting for their turn, but somehow I now felt that it would be nice to read also some translations.
Over here the ratio between translated fiction and fiction written in Finnish is much better than the amount of translated fiction in the English speaking countries. That's one of the perks of Finnish being a small language spoken by only by 5+ million people. :) (The other side of the coin is of course that there're not so many translators who are able to translate Finnish books into other languages.) The translated/original fiction ratio used to be well over 50% in favour of translations, but nowadays, if I remember correctly, it's something like 50/50. Lots of fiction gets translated from English, but also from the Nordic languages (especially Swedish), German, French, Spanish, Russian etc. etc. The Organization of the Booksellers' Associations in Finland publishes monthly "What Finland reads" -lists in various categories, one of which is translated fiction. The latest list I could find is from August and it includes 8 books translated from English and 2 from Swedish. David Nicholls' novel One Day (in Finnish "Sinä päivänä") tops the list followed by the latest translated Sookie Stackhouse novel by Charlene Harris and a thriller by the Swedish writer Jens Lapidus. No 4 is Jean M. Auel's latest novel. As a curious sidenote, Auel is marketed here as Jean M. Untinen-Auel to tell the audience that she has Finnish roots. :) We are suckers for thinks like that. :)
But what about those translated novels I borrowed this week? One of them is Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger. I read Ana's review of the book and it was also mentioned in a work-related lecture I attended earlier this week. I loved The Time Traveler's Wife and have been waiting for the right moment to read HFS. That moment seems to be now. :) I'm 1/3 through the book and loving it. Loving the translation, too, so it's all good. :) And the lovely thing is that even though I'm rather fluent in English it's still quicker to read in my own language. So, I'm hoping to get HFS read ASAP. ;) The other novel I borrowed is City of Thieves by David Benioff. It's a novel set during the siege of Leningrad and tells the story of two young men, who to avoid the grim fate of thieves i.e. execution, get a chance to earn their freedom, if they are able to find 12 eggs in a city that is starving and where eggs have not been seen for a long time. I also have at home the Finnish translation of a historical mystery by the French writer Romain Sardou. I've heard great things of this novel set in 1284 in Southern France. Unfortunately it seems that Sardou's novels have not been translated into English.
On other news I'm super excited about a short holiday trip I'm planning for December. I'm going to go to Slovenia (yes, I know, AGAIN :)), but this time to Maribor, the second largest town in the country and the European Capital of Culture in 2012 and I'm going to travel there through Vienna. I'm actually going to fly to Vienna and then continue by train, and at the end of my trip I'll spend one night in Vienna in order to have time to visit the Viennese Christmas Markets! I already booked my flight some time ago and today I booked my accomodation. Only thing left is to buy the train tickets and them I'm all set! My Slovene language course started again this week, so hopefully I will also be able to use a few more sentences in the local language while in Maribor.
But there's still two months until my trip. Before that there will be quite a few busy days at work (this is always the busiest time of the year), a few dance competitions to take part in, and hopefully many great books to read!
ps. And what about the photo in this post you might ask? Well, it has absolutely nothing to do with anything I talked about! Lol! ;) Or it does have to do with travelling. That's the center of my lovely Helsinki photographed from the airplane window on my way back home from France last June. (Click the photo to enlarge)
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